Fan who tried to sell Washington National tickets at face value arrested and put in jail in DC

6/21/13, "Welcome, baseball fan. Go directly to jail." Washington Post, Joe Carr

"As we drove off in a squad car, me in handcuffs and without my shoelaces and belt, the officer explained how I could have avoided my fate (if I hadn’t put a price on the tickets or if I had stood 15 feet further off the street). He told me that scalping at a Taylor Swift concert at Verizon Center in May was so bad that the powers that be had mandated a zero tolerance on ticket resale. He (my buddy now) said that he felt bad but explained that he had “no discretion” regarding whether to arrest me.
I begged to differ, and he (no longer my buddy) said that I could go along without a fuss or I could wait until Monday to see a judge. Of course, that would necessitate my being sent “downtown.” He informed me that I would not like it downtown.

So I shut up and went to jail. I sat in a cell for 2½ hours, stood for a mug shot, got fingerprinted, paid 50 bucks and was released. In the grand scheme of things, my travails were minor to all but me. But when that cell door slams shut, the world becomes a different place.

I broke a law. Guilty. But what purpose was served by my arrest? It didn’t make any financial sense. I am certain that the costs of my arrest, transport and processing had to be many multiples of the $50 I paid. Does the District have a massive budget surplus it needs to spend down?"...via Drudge

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