Jaywalking historian suffers ‘abominable treatment’

A DISTINGUISHED British historian claims he was knocked to the ground by an American policeman before being arrested and spending eight hours in a grim jail because he crossed the road in the wrong place.

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, 56, said he had been the victim of “terrible violence” after he inadvertently committed the offence of “jaywalking” in Atlanta, Georgia, last week.

The slight, bespectacled professor claimed five burly officers pinned him to the ground after policeman Kevin Leonpacher kicked his legs from under him as he hesitated to show his ID.

He was left “traumatised and disorientated” and with a gash on his forehead as he was taken to the local jail and charged with pedestrian failure to obey a police officer and physical obstruction of police.

The prominent academic, professor of global environmental history at Queen Mary College, University of London, and a member of Oxford University’s modern history faculty, said he had been subjected to “very humiliating procedures” and his box of peppermints were confiscated.

But when he appeared in court the next day, “tortured” by the fear he would end up with a criminal record that would wreck his chances of a green card and stop him working in America, prosecutors agreed to drop the charges.

He said he was innocently crossing the road between the two hotels serving as conference venues when his ordeal began. Because Officer Leonpacher was wearing a “rather louche” bomber jacket that covered his uniform, the professor said he did not realise he was from the police department.

“All I was aware of was a rather intrusive young man shouting at me telling me that I shouldn’t have crossed the road there,” he said.

Officer Leonpacher then demanded to see identification before losing patience.

“I still find it incredible that an ageing, mild-mannered professor of impeccable antecedent, should be the subject of such abominable treatment.”

The professor, who has written books on the Americas and global exploration, was handcuffed to another suspected criminal in a “filthy, foetid paddy wagon” to be transported to the jail and have his fingerprints and mugshot taken.