New York Times media reporter and Lena Dunham BFF David Carr's brother, Joe, was arrested in DC earlier this month for scalping tickets to a Nationals game. Then, scooping the story from the Times, Joe Carr wrote an op-ed about it for the Washington Post. The best part is, it may or may not be Taylor Swift's fault.

The lesser-known Carr says the trouble all began when he was on a trip to DC and had tickets to a Nationals game that got rained out. That left him with $360 worth of tickets to a make-up game that coincided with his departure date. So he decided to sell them.

Now, had he listed them on StubHub (online it's not scalping, it's legal reselling), Mr. Carr would have made some money to spend on fun luxury items, like maybe drinks (or toilet paper) on his flight home to Chicago. But Carr, ever the vox populi fan, decided he wanted to go hand-to-hand, so he headed down to the stadium to find someone worthy of his golden club seat tickets.

When Carr was approached by a police officer who asked how much he was selling the tickets for, he decided honesty was the best policy and said, "Love to get face value." And with that, he was promptly arrested, handcuffed, booked, mug shotted, fingerprinted, and jailed for more than two hours — all over a $50 ticket.

The seemingly large waste of tax dollars was necessitated, according to the cop who arrested him, because of a zero tolerance policy instituted after outrageous scalping occurred at Taylor Swift's show at the Verizon Center in May. Interestingly, the cop also told Carr that he would have been within his legal rights had he stood 15 feet away or not put a price on the tickets. But whether you blame Taylor Swift or not, the cop apparently had "no discretion" to not arrest and book Carr. And an arrest for a minor crime like scalping — which is perfectly legal online — involves dozens of law enforcement officers and can cost more than an average of $2,500 a person. The worst part is, the policy clearly isn't stopping DC's scalpers — Carr writes that he witnessed tons of ticket-sellers hawking the same tickets he had outside the stadium the next morning.

[TWP, photo via AP]