A lot of us can say we’ve seen Bob Dylan, and some lucky few might even say they’ve talked to him. But how many can say they’ve detained him? Well, Long Branch, N.J., police officer Kristie Buble can make that claim, after she briefly put Dylan in the back of her police car last month after residents reported seeing a “suspicious person” looking around a house for sale in the pouring rain.

From the article:

“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.

Read the whole story, with a lot more details, at ABC News.

Now that I think about it, Dylan wasn’t exactly kind to the police force in the New Jersey town 50-some miles to the north of Long Branch in one of his songs:

Meanwhile, far away in another part of town
Rubin Carter and a couple of friends are drivin’ around.
Number one contender for the middleweight crown
Had no idea what kinda shit was about to go down
When a cop pulled him over to the side of the road
Just like the time before and the time before that.
In Paterson that’s just the way things go.
If you’re black you might as well not show up on the street
‘Less you wanna draw the heat.

Wonder what he’ll have to say about this little episode. The man did write “When the Ship Comes In” after being denied a hotel room because of his appearance. Of course, that was 40-some years ago.