Free Republic

Rock legend Bob Dylan was treated like a complete unknown by police in a New Jersey shore community when a resident called to report someone wandering around the neighborhood. Dylan was in Long Branch, about a two-hour drive south of New York City, on July 23 as part of a tour with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp that was to play at a baseball stadium in nearby Lakewood. A 24-year-old police officer apparently was unaware of who Dylan is and asked him for identification, Long Branch business administrator Howard Woolley said Friday. "I don't think she was familiar with his...

Exactly one week after the highly-publicized arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates stirred a national discussion on race relations, legendary singer-songwriter Bob Dylan was detained by police officers in a "low-income, predominantly minority neighborhood" in Long Branch, New Jersey. Makes one wonder why it took so long for this to get reported, and if news outlets that were convinced Gates's arrest was racially motivated will see the delicious irony in a white rock star being questioned by police just because he was "wandering around the neighborhood." The Associated Press sure didn't (h/t Clarence Page): Rock legend Bob Dylan was...

On a rainy day last week in Long Branch, NJ, Bob Dylan, wearing a hood, was peering into a for-sale home when a neighbor called the police fearing he might be a burglar. Two young officers arrived on the scene and neither of them knew who Bob Dylan was. They asked for I.D. - he had none but explained he was a musician on tour with John Mellencamp and they were set to play at a nearby stadium in Lakewood. Without fuss or anger, Mr. Dylan was escorted back to his tour bus where he produced I.D.

After a bitter five-year legal fight, the city of Long Branch has suggested it will abandon its plan to seize more than a dozen modest homes to make way for an ambitious oceanfront development project. Mayor Adam Schneider, who has long contended the small neighborhood meets the "blighted" designation necessary for the use of eminent domain, said today he now wants to settle with the homeowners rather than fight them in court for several more years. "The goal is to not use eminent domain," Schneider said. "I want this case settled. It's not going to settle if we use eminent...

For 3 1/2 years, Long Branch residents fighting to keep their homes out of the city's oceanfront redevelopment plan mostly battled alone. That changed yesterday. The state public advocate and a national constitutional rights advocacy group will lend their legal muscle to the residents of MTOTSA -- Marine Terrace, Ocean Terrace and Seaview Avenue -- as they appeal a ruling allowing their oceanside homes to be given to a private developer though eminent domain. "As of today, this neighborhood is ground zero in the fight against eminent domain abuse, not only in New Jersey but across the nation," said Chip...

LONG BRANCH, N.J. (AP) - The city wants Anna DeFaria's home, and if she doesn't sell willingly, officials are going to take it from the 80-year-old retired pre-school teacher. In place of her "tiny slip of a bungalow" - and two dozen other weathered, working-class beachfront homes - city officials want private developers to build upscale townhouses. Is this the work of a cruel government? Or the best hope for resurrecting an ocean resort town that is finally showing signs of reviving after decades of hard times? Echoes of the debate are happening across the country, after a U.S. Supreme...

<p>WASHINGTON -- Federal authorities arrested 582 alleged gang members, including 22 in South Jersey, over a two-week period, targeting an estimated 80 violent groups they say have spawned street crimes across the country, officials said yesterday.</p> <p>Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff called the gangs "a threat to our homeland security and ... a very urgent law enforcement priority."</p>

A nationwide crackdown on a violent Latin American street gang called MS-13 has so far led to the arrests of more than 100 alleged gang members in six states, including several in New Jersey, federal immigration authorities said yesterday. The gang, established in Los Angeles in the 1980s by refugees of the Salvadoran civil war, has spread to Hispanic communities around the country while developing a reputation as one of America's bloodiest criminal organizations. In New Jersey, where officials estimate there are hundreds of MS-13 members, the gang is believed to be responsible for several murders, but its activity has...