“Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.” — Rudy Giuliani, 1994

So Matthew Jones was arrested in New York for a rather heinous crime: standing around when other people were walking.

Seriously.

Per the New York Times:

According to the original complaint against Mr. Jones, the officer “observed defendant along with a number of other individuals standing around” on a public sidewalk in June 2004.

[snip]

Mr. Jones’s reckless intent, [assistant district attorney Paula Rose-]Stark said, was evident from the fact that his behavior was noticeable in the first place “amid the inevitable hustle and bustle of Times Square…"

Bottom line: It is apparently a crime to do something out of the ordinary. That brings up some scary possibilities, especially for a guy like me who often does things out of the ordinary.

Maybe I’ll wear one green contact lens and one clear one. Or maybe I’ll make a full circuit through a revolving door before entering. Or who knows what. But I guess I won’t dare to stop on the streets of New York.

* * *

An amusing note about sourcing. I heard about this story by reading Radley Balko’s column in Reason. But I chose to link directly to the Times because Balko’s blog entry consists of large chunks of the Times story with only a few lines of commentary.

In fact, it has 338 words from the Times compared to 73 from Balko — 103 if you count his 30-word title. Nice work if you can get it.