SocialStudies, the LivingSocial blog, posted a photo yesterday of Cedric Givens — aka "backwards runner" or "exercise man" — apparently being handcuffed by a police officer from the 1st District. "According to several eyewitnesses, Givens was blocking traffic as several Metrobuses and numerous cars were trying to pass the always-busy intersection of 7th and H streets yesterday afternoon," Eliot Stein, LivingSocial's managing editor, wrote in an update this morning. "MPD officers asked Givens to relocate and determined that he was causing a bit of a traffic jam, so they took him into custody."

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But D.C. police have no record of any such arrest. A 1st District officer searched the MPD database for Givens' name and, when that failed, all arrest reports for that district yesterday. Nothing came up, and yet, Stein tells me, the above photo was taken by LivingSocial multimedia producer Mathew Ramsey at around 3:30 p.m. yesterday. What gives? Was Givens let go after the photo was taken? Email me if you know anything. I'll update this post when I learn more, but in the meantime, here's a relevant quote from an Open Salon blog post about Givens, followed by more videos of his dancing than you could ever want.

Sometimes, cars, busses and taxis swerve, deftly and not so deftly, to avoid him. Sometimes, traffic grinds to a halt while the man does his backwards dance in the center of the left turn lane. Always, police, calmly patrolling their corners, look idly on.