A historic crossing
Chicago Tribune: Why did the British historian cross the road? To get to the other side, only to be roughed up and wrestled to the ground by five Atlanta police officers as though he were Rodney King. At least that's how it's playing out in the British press, where Felipe Fernandez-Armesto's arrest for jaywalking has been blown into an international incident.
"Jaywalking don hit by full force of the law," said the headline in The Times of London.
"Mean streets indeed," said the Observer's head.
"It looks like the U.S. police have nailed Public Enemy No. 1," reported The Mirror.
Fernandez-Armesto, invariably described as slight, bespectacled and courtly, was attending an American Historical Association conference in Atlanta this month when he was stopped for crossing Courtland Street in the middle of the block. Officer Kevin Leonpacher, invariably described as burly and -- gasp! -- armed, directed him to use the crosswalk.
"I thanked him for his advice and went on," the good professor explains in an amusing three-part interview posted on YouTube.
Escalation
Leonpacher demanded to see the professor's ID. The professor demanded to see Leonpacher's badge. One thing led to another. The burly cop couldn't get the cuffs on the courtly jaywalker. He called for backup. Fernandez-Armesto was subdued and whisked to jail, where "for a few hours I belonged to the underclass," he wrote in London's Sunday Times. He described a booking ordeal in which "my peppermints were confiscated" and "the nice young woman who took down particulars of where I work had to ask me how to spell 'university."'
Charges of jaywalking and disorderly conduct were dropped, although it's not clear if the judge was slapping the cop for being overzealous or just cutting the prof some slack.
"I come from a country where you can cross the road where you like," Fernandez-Armesto explained. Yes, and they drive on the left there, too. Here in the United States, we drive on the right and we cross at the intersection, or at least we're supposed to. You'd think a guy smart enough to author 19 history books might have figured that out during the year or so he's been teaching at Tufts University in Massachusetts. Instead, he learned the hard way.
Americans understand that crossing in the middle of the block entails some risks. You could be killed. You could be ticketed for jaywalking. In either case, you've got it coming. No whining.