Street performer “Baton Bob” Jamerson is sounding off about his June 26 arrest in Midtown. He’s claiming Atlanta police officers showed anti-gay bias and violated his constitutional rights during the incident at Midtown Colony Square. He wants all charges dropped.
Jamerson, Atlanta's self-proclaimed 'Ambassador of Mirth' made the claims in a message posted to his personal Facebook page, according to a report on gavoice.com.
Jamerson, 61, said in his post that he was celebrating two U.S. Supreme Court rulings on same-sex marriage the day of his arrest, according to gavoice.com.
Dressed in a short, white tutu, mask and veil, Jamerson was arrested following an altercation with two security guards, Atlanta police said. The security guards told police that Jamerson had been asked to stay off the Colony Square property, according to an incident report obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. When he was asked to leave, Jamerson began using obscenities at the guards, the report states.
Jamerson said guards approached him “in an aggressive manner.”
“He approached me like I was a criminal,” Jamerson said in the post. Jamerson said he asked the officer, “what the (expletive) do you want?” After that, he was arrested.
“I felt like he was threatened that someone like me had questioned him,” Jamerson said in the post. He claims in his Facebook post that while in he was in custody, the police showed an anti-gay bias toward him, according to the gavoice.com report.
Jamerson, who was charged with two counts of simple assault and one count of obstruction against the officer — all misdemeanors — said he wants all the charges dropped.
Atlanta police had no comments on Jamerson’s allegations, APD spokesman Carlos Campos said.
Known for his hard-to-miss costumes and baton-twirling, “Baton Bob” has been a fixture on Midtown streets for several years, but was temporarily on hiatus until May 2012.
Here's more of the story in gavoice.com.
—Staff writer Alexis Stevens contributed to this report.
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