Hands up, or I'll play a Carpenters song!

There's a "it would be funny if it weren't so serious" story in the local press about a man being arrested in the street by armed police following a report by a member of the public that he was seen with a gun. The "gun" turned out to be his MP3 player! As he'd got his earphones in and didn't hear the armed officers calling on him to stop, the consequences could have been really bad, but thankfully it turned out all right and he was, naturally enough, released without charge. But what caught my eye was that, whilst he was in police custody, his fingerprints and DNA were taken - and the suspicion is that, although he has done nothing wrong, those will now remain on the database. Indeed, his arrest is now a matter of record, and presumably he will have to reveal this if he is ever asked - all seems wrong somehow.