Bob Dylan seized

[Snowboarder_Bo]

I went looking for more on this story after reading about in this thread, and found this story, which includes an interview with the officer in question. If this is what police training, logic and perception is like, our country is, IMO, fucked.

"We got a call for a suspicious person,‘’ Buble said. “It was pouring rain outside, and I was right around the corner so I responded. By that time he was walking down the street. I asked him what he was doing in the neighborhood and he said he was looking at a house for sale.”

"I asked him what his name was and he said, ‘Bob Dylan,’ Buble said. "Now, I’ve seen pictures of Bob Dylan from a long time ago and he didn’t look like Bob Dylan to me at all. He was wearing black sweatpants tucked into black rain boots, and two raincoats with the hood pulled down over his head.

"So I said, ‘OK Bob, what are you doing in Long Branch?’ He said he was touring the country with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp. So now I’m really a little fishy about his story. I did not know what to believe or where he was coming from, or even who he was.

“We see a lot of people on our beat, and I wasn’t sure if he came from one of our hospitals or something,” Buble said.

She asked for identification, but Dylan said he had none. She asked where he was staying and he said his tour buses were parked at some big hotel on the ocean. Buble said she assumed that to be the nearby Ocean Place Conference Resort.

"He was acting very suspicious,‘’ Buble said. “Not delusional, just suspicious. You know, it was pouring rain and everything.”

Suspicious? In what way and of what? How is being in the rain suspicious?

Following her police training, Buble said she indulged him.

"OK Bob, why don’t you get in the car and we’ll drive to the hotel and go verify this?’ " she said she told him. “I put him in the back of the car. To be honest with you, I didn’t really believe this was Bob Dylan. It never crossed my mind that this could really be him.”

Buble made small talk on the ride to the hotel, asking her detainee where he was playing, she said, but never really believing a word he said.

“He was really nice, though, and he said he understood why I had to verify his identity and why I couldn’t let him go,” Buble said. “He asked me if I could drive him back to the neighborhood when I verified who he was, which made me even more suspicious.”

What in the world was she suspicious of him doing? Getting wet? Looking at people’s houses? Not being in a hospital?

I know Brendlin gave police wide powers to stop and detain people in automobiles, but does any of that apply here? Could Mr. Dylan have walked away from all this and just stayed walking in the neighborhood? From what I’ve read in Brendlin, it doesn’t seem so.

A person is “seized” for purposes of the Fourth Amendment when physical force or a show of authority terminates or restrains his freedom of movement. If the police’s intent to restrain an individual is unclear, or if an individual’s submission to a show of authority takes the form of passive acquiescence, a seizure does not occur unless a reasonable person would not feel free to leave in light of all the circumstances. If, however, the person has no desire to leave for reasons unrelated to the traffic stop, there is no seizure.

Before the Court’s decision in this case, the law was clear that a traffic stop seized the driver of the car. The Court had also repeatedly suggested—but never formally held—that a traffic stop in fact seizes everyone in the vehicle. With its decision in this case, the Court expressly so held. “We think that in these circumstances any reasonable passenger would have understood the police officers to be exercising control to the point that no one in the car was free to depart without police permission.”

I mean, IANAL and I’m having a hard time following the tortuous logic here. If a reasonable person would understand that he was not free to leave, then how can there be any choice in the matter, as indicated by the first paragraph (red text). I mean, once stopped, if I resist, then the police can say I was not obeying their lawful instructions. But if I don’t resist, then I’ve tacitly agreed to the seizure. How can a person actually get out of this situation without being arrested, questioned, searched, etc.?

ISTM that he was not free to leave, that he was in fact “seized” even tho no one involved bothered to articulate any reason for his seizure. In fact, it seems to me that he was effectively kidnapped by the officer and forcibly ejected from a public area, one that he had a perfect right to be in.

As alway, I look forward to others weighing in with their opinions, and hopefully some of our legal eagles with clarification of the relevant SCOTUS decisions.

[Snowboarder_Bo]

@Snowboarder_Bo

I know Brendlin gave police wide powers to stop and detain people in automobiles, but does any of that apply here? Could Mr. Dylan have walked away from all this and just stayed walking in the neighborhood? From what I’ve read in Brendlin, it doesn’t seem so.

That should read: detain people in stopped automobiles.

And I forgot the link to wiki on Brendlin v. California

Sorry for the error and omission, folks. It’s very late here in Sin City. Past my bedtime, ayup.

:o <- yawning

[ivan_astikov]

He can look a bit like a vagrant though. Perhaps someone thought he was trying to break into the house to get out of the rain?

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

A follow-up question: suppose he’d been Bob Schmylan, local homeless guy, instead. Would that have changed the legitimacy of the arrest (assuming he didn’t give a false name to the cop and thereby commit a crime)?

[don_t_ask]

Come gather ‘round people
Wherever I roam
I admit that the waters
Around me have flowed
I accept it that soon
I’ll be drenched to the bone.
If I wander outside
While it’s rainin’
Then I better start movin’
Cause I look like I’m stoned
For the times they are a-changin’.

[Dangerosa]

Its a good thing it wasn’t Henry Louis Gates.

But they didn’t arrest him. They gave him a ride back to his tour bus (perhaps believing that they were going to have to detain him when he turned out to be delusional). He cooperated - got into the car, and got dropped off at the tour buses. There really wasn’t much of an “incident” - cops give rock star a ride back to his tour bus - not believing he is the guy he claims to be.

[Khadaji]

So. How *many *roads must a man walk down … before he gets arrested?

[XT]

Come Senators, Congressmen, please hear the call! ‘Cause it looks like I’m so stoned I’m ready to fall! For he who is flagrant will be arrested because he looks a like a vagrant! There’s an arrest warrant outside a ragin’…I’ll soon be shaking the windows and rattling the bars, for the times, they are a changin’…

(shamelessly paraphrased. I like ole Bob, but I fail to see what the officer did wrong given the circumstances)

-XT

[IAmNotSpartacus]

So an old man claims he’s a famous celebrity, looking for a house because he’s touring the US with other famous celebrities, and can’t produce identification, and the cops are assholes for not taking his story at face value? It appears OP conveniently left out the part of the interview where the officer’s immediate supervisor didn’t recognize Dylan ,either.

Does OP have even the slightest clue how our criminal justice system operates at the street level? Are we going to assume that anyone who claims they are famous, is in fact famous, just because they said so and without any further investigation? If so, I have a bridge for sale, I’ll give you a hell of a deal…

BTW, OP, your entire post is what’s fucked. I was not aware famous people had a constitutional right to be recognized for being famous. They certainly don’t have any fucking rights to special treatment. This all could have been prevented if Bob Dylan had the foresight to carry some identification.

[GIGObuster]

The thing is that nowadays Bob Dylan looks less like Bob Dylan and more like Vincent Price :

http://totallylookslike.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/bob-dylan2.jpg

It is no wonder that many that are/were aware of the singer do not recognize him now.

[hajario]

Huge Dylan fan here. In fact, I’ll be seeing him and Willie later on this same tour when they hit the West Coast. Most of the Dylan fans are very amused by this and I assume that Bob was as well. No one thinks that the police acted inappropriately.

How does it feel
to be without a home
like a complete unknown
like a rolling stone?

[Bootis]

I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with what happened here. Nothing wrong with a cop asking someone to come along for a ride. I’m still not clear on what would have happened if Dylan refused. If the law allows for them to forcibly detain him then, I think that’s a pretty bs law. But he didn’t refuse.

[Rick]

@IAmNotSpartacus

So an old man claims he’s a famous celebrity, looking for a house because he’s touring the US with other famous celebrities, and can’t produce identification, and the cops are assholes for not taking his story at face value? It appears OP conveniently left out the part of the interview where the officer’s immediate supervisor didn’t recognize Dylan ,either.

Does OP have even the slightest clue how our criminal justice system operates at the street level? Are we going to assume that anyone who claims they are famous, is in fact famous, just because they said so and without any further investigation? If so, I have a bridge for sale, I’ll give you a hell of a deal…

BTW, OP, your entire post is what’s fucked. I was not aware famous people had a constitutional right to be recognized for being famous. They certainly don’t have any fucking rights to special treatment. This all could have been prevented if Bob Dylan had the foresight to carry some identification.

QFT
Also left out was the part of the story where the officer was responding to a call from a resident

When Dylan wandered into the yard of a home that had a “For Sale” sign on it, the home’s occupants became spooked by his appearance and called police with a report of an “eccentric-looking old man” in their yard, Long Branch Police said. One of the occupants even went so far as to follow Dylan as he continued on down the street.

Also don’t buy his bridge, I have a much nicer one painted orange in San Francisco I get get you an awesome deal on. That and I also have some ocean front real estate in Iowa you might be interested in.

[Campion]

To the OP: can you clarify precisely what it is about this story that pings your radar? I don’t see anything wrong with what the police did. It is suspicious to be out wandering in the rain. Normal people generally don’t go wandering through neighborhoods in the rain (yes, there are outliers, but we’re talking about the average joe). Part of policing is figuring out what’s normal and what’s not.

So there’s an old guy, wandering through a neighborhood in the rain, prompting a call from residents – hey, there’s a guy we don’t know know wandering around, can you check it out? Police can’t/shouldn’t ignore that.

So the police very politely ask him who he is and what he’s doing. He tells them he is a very famous person, but unfortunately, so sad, doesn’t have id. Guess what? Crazy people sometimes claim to be famous people, and they also generally don’t have id. So now we’ve got a couple weirdnesses.

@Snowboarder Bo

I mean, IANAL and I’m having a hard time following the tortuous logic here. If a reasonable person would understand that he was not free to leave, then how can there be any choice in the matter, as indicated by the first paragraph (red text). I mean, once stopped, if I resist, then the police can say I was not obeying their lawful instructions. But if I don’t resist, then I’ve tacitly agreed to the seizure. How can a person actually get out of this situation without being arrested, questioned, searched, etc.?

ISTM that he was not free to leave, that he was in fact “seized” even tho no one involved bothered to articulate any reason for his seizure. In fact, it seems to me that he was effectively kidnapped by the officer and forcibly ejected from a public area, one that he had a perfect right to be in.

First, I haven’t read Brendlin and don’t really care to. Your question, which isn’t clear, seems to be: how can a person know if they’re free to leave? Answer: ask. My cite is the three hundred million threads here about this very issue, which I cannot be bothered to find but presume someone else will. The point is this – so what if Dylan was “seized” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment? The police had suspicions, he couldn’t allay them (and query whether he was in a jurisdiction that requires people to produce id on demand, as many jurisdictions do), so the police investigated, determined he was who he said he was, and let him go.

I’m just not seeing the outrage here.

[Shodan]

Geez, you can’t tell the rock stars from the winos without a scorecard anymore. I doubt if I could pick Mr. Zimmerman out of a line up either.

Title of Bob’s next album: What do you have to do to get Tasered in this town?

Regards,
Shodan

[Magiver]

@IAmNotSpartacus

So an old man claims he’s a famous celebrity, looking for a house because he’s touring the US with other famous celebrities, and can’t produce identification, and the cops are assholes for not taking his story at face value? It appears OP conveniently left out the part of the interview where the officer’s immediate supervisor didn’t recognize Dylan ,either.

Let me fill in the spaces. A scruffy old man who can’t tell the officer exactly where he’s staying is standing in the rain looking at houses to buy in an outfit that doesn’t scream rock star.

Most people don’t walk around in the rain looking at houses without identification. The police were responding to a suspicious looking person who could not indentify himself beyond his word that he was a rock star. Mr. Dylan had the common sense to realize how unbelievable he appeared.

Maybe he’ll write a song about scruffy old millionairs and the plight of WWW (walking while white).

[Magiver]

@Shodan

Geez, you can’t tell the rock stars from the winos without a scorecard anymore. I doubt if I could pick Mr. Zimmerman out of a line up either.

Title of Bob’s next album: What do you have to do to get Tasered in this town?

Regards,
Shodan

If a respected Harvard professor can’t get tasered what chance does he have?

[Snowboarder_Bo]

@Campion

To the OP: can you clarify precisely what it is about this story that pings your radar? I don’t see anything wrong with what the police did. It is suspicious to be out wandering in the rain. Normal people generally don’t go wandering through neighborhoods in the rain (yes, there are outliers, but we’re talking about the average joe). Part of policing is figuring out what’s normal and what’s not.

IANAL and I don’t live in New Jersey, but I wasn’t aware that it was against the law to be out in the rain. Is there also a law against not being normal?

So there’s an old guy, wandering through a neighborhood in the rain, prompting a call from residents – hey, there’s a guy we don’t know know wandering around, can you check it out? Police can’t/shouldn’t ignore that.

I agree that it is the police’s job to check out calls from residents about potential problems. That’s what we pay them for, in part.

So the police very politely ask him who he is and what he’s doing. He tells them he is a very famous person, but unfortunately, so sad, doesn’t have id. Guess what? Crazy people sometimes claim to be famous people, and they also generally don’t have id. So now we’ve got a couple weirdnesses.

First, I haven’t read Brendlin and don’t really care to. Your question, which isn’t clear, seems to be: how can a person know if they’re free to leave? Answer: ask. My cite is the three hundred million threads here about this very issue, which I cannot be bothered to find but presume someone else will. The point is this – so what if Dylan was “seized” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment? The police had suspicions, he couldn’t allay them (and query whether he was in a jurisdiction that requires people to produce id on demand, as many jurisdictions do), so the police investigated, determined he was who he said he was, and let him go.

I’m just not seeing the outrage here.

The police had suspicions of what? Nothing he was doing was against the law. I mean, Terry stops require that police have a

reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime.

For their own protection, police may perform a quick surface search of the person’s outer clothing for weapons if they have reasonable suspicion that the person stopped is armed. This reasonable suspicion must be based on “specific and articulable facts” and not merely upon an officer’s hunch.

Also

In Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. 47 (1979), the Court struck down Texas’s stop-and-identify law as violating the Fourth Amendment because it allowed police officers to stop individuals without “specific, objective facts establishing reasonable suspicion to believe the suspect was involved in criminal activity.”

I just am not seeing any objective facts that this man had committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime.

IAmNotSpartacus, I don’t know why you’re harping on Mr. Dylan’s fame. I certainly didn’t mention it in the OP, and it doesn’t matter at all to the discussion. It has absolutely no bearing on what happened. I would be asking the same questions if it was a Bob Schmylan (altho I doubt it would have made the national news).

The man was asked who he was and what he was doing in the area. He gave them a name and told them what he was doing (altho the latter part was not required by the law). Since New Jersey does not have a stop-and-identify statute, it seems to me that Mr. Dylan had done all he needed to do by giving his name.

Police may question a person detained in a Terry stop, but in general, the detainee is not required to answer.

In Hiibel

The Court’s opinion implied that a detainee was not required to produce written identification, but could satisfy the requirement merely by stating his name.

So, this man gave the officer his name. At that point, was he free to go? I can’t find any information about this.

In a consensual stop

At any time, a police officer may approach a person and ask questions. The objective may simply be a friendly conversation; however, the officer also may suspect involvement in a crime, but lack “specific and articulable facts” that would justify a detention or arrest, and hope to obtain these facts from the questioning. The person approached is not required to identify himself or answer any other questions, and may leave at any time. Police are not usually required to tell a person that she is free to decline to answer questions and go about her business; however, a person can usually determine whether the interaction is consensual by asking, “Am I free to go?”

But that puts the onus on the citizen, and ISTM that the fact that anyone would have to ask if they were free to go would mean that they reasonably believed they were not free to go.

And so that crosses the line into detention, doesn’t it?

A person is detained when circumstances are such that a reasonable person would believe he is not free to leave.

Police may briefly detain a person if they have reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime.

This man had given his name, but the officer continued to pursue more information, even “suggesting” that he get in the police car.

"OK Bob, why don’t you get in the car and we’ll drive to the hotel and go verify this?’ " she said she told him. “I put him in the back of the car. To be honest with you, I didn’t really believe this was Bob Dylan. It never crossed my mind that this could really be him.”

What reasonable person would not think they were being detained at this point?

What were the “specific and articulable” facts that would justify this detention?

[magellan01]

@IAmNotSpartacus

BTW, OP, your entire post is what’s fucked. I was not aware famous people had a constitutional right to be recognized for being famous. They certainly don’t have any fucking rights to special treatment. This all could have been prevented if Bob Dylan had the foresight to carry some identification.

That about sums it up.

Well, maybe not completely:

@Dangerosa

But they didn’t arrest him. They gave him a ride back to his tour bus (perhaps believing that they were going to have to detain him when he turned out to be delusional). He cooperated - got into the car, and got dropped off at the tour buses. There really wasn’t much of an “incident” - cops give rock star a ride back to his tour bus - not believing he is the guy he claims to

The horrors!:eek:

[DrCube]

@IAmNotSpartacus

So an old man claims he’s a famous celebrity, looking for a house because he’s touring the US with other famous celebrities, and can’t produce identification, and the cops are assholes for not taking his story at face value? It appears OP conveniently left out the part of the interview where the officer’s immediate supervisor didn’t recognize Dylan ,either.

Does OP have even the slightest clue how our criminal justice system operates at the street level? Are we going to assume that anyone who claims they are famous, is in fact famous, just because they said so and without any further investigation? If so, I have a bridge for sale, I’ll give you a hell of a deal…

BTW, OP, your entire post is what’s fucked. I was not aware famous people had a constitutional right to be recognized for being famous. They certainly don’t have any fucking rights to special treatment. This all could have been prevented if Bob Dylan had the foresight to carry some identification.

No, this entire post is what’s fucked.

Police shouldn’t be in the business of detaining anyone walking around in the rain. Who the hell cares whether he was a rock star or not? Even if he was a homeless bum who lied about his identity? Unless he needed help or was committing a crime, the police should have left him the hell alone.