In November, New York City-based fashion photographer Andre Perry was in the subway on his way to his SoHo office from his Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, home when a plainclothes officer stopped him at the Union Square station because of his fashion accessory.
"Do you know you can hurt someone with this?" the officer, Jonathan Correa, asked Perry, according to DNAinfo New York.
The officer was referring to the 32-year-old's two-finger ring.
"Yes, I'm aware I can hurt someone with it, but I can also hurt someone with my fist," Perry told the officer, according to DNAinfo.
Perry began recording the Nov. 19 incident on his camera phone. The recorded exchange ended with Perry being arrested and booked for wearing brass knuckles, a deadly weapon, according to DNAinfo.
"I was upset and surprised that it went that far. I thought the issue could have been handled by confiscating it or warning me not to wear it," Perry said to the New York Post.
Perry told the newspaper that he was forced to spend the night in jail around actual lawbreakers even though he had done nothing wrong. He said that he was released the next day without bail.
"The most disturbing thing was, I was next to people who actually made a choice to break the law. I didn't make a choice to get arrested," Perry told the Post. "Basically you can get arrested for just being."
Read more at DNAinfo New York and the New York Post.