The Flint, MI police department decides to crack down on loose-fitting pants. Apparently Flint has seen a large drop in its once sky-high murder rate over the past couple of years so maybe they have nothing better to do.
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Walking While Sagging
10 Jul 2008 09:39 am
Comments (49)
Sorry to see that my old bookmarked link to Matt, which somehow got me to his site at Atlantic, now displays this message
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But, but . . . getting rid of the squeegy people lowered NYC's murder rate! Just ask Giuliani! Making people in Flint pull up their pants will lower that city's murder rate, too!
You people may think I'm kidding, but what I'm saying is, indeed, the current fashionable view in law eforcement circles.
Maybe it's a variation of the "broken window" theory of urban renewal. In 10 years we'll be hearing journalists speak glowingly of the "exposed asscrack" theory.
They have started this in certain areas of St. Louis as well. Ridiculous, obviously, and it was brought on by business owners. Buttcracks scare away non-buttcrack showing customers I suppose. I think the second and third pictures are awesome because it makes it look like the blue man also pulls the jeans down in the front as well. Haven't seen that one as much.
I'm going to take a stab at the law enforcement logic.
1. If you raise the cost of something, you get less of it.
If you raise the cost of dressing like a criminal, you get fewer young men dressing like criminals. Hopefully, criminals will cling the hardest to markers of criminality. Then it'll be easier to tell Tyrone the drug dealer from his brother Jamaal the youth minister.
2. If you stop, ID and frisk everyone in Flint with sagging pants, let's say 80% of the criminal-age male population, you'll end up hitting on a lot of outstanding warrants, pockets full of weed and illegal guns. (You'll also search the rest of the population for no better reason than we don't like their pants. Seriously, as an old white schoolteacher I don't like admitting this, but the "underwear" the boys wear today would pass for shorts if they weren't wearing baggy jeans over it. It's more covering and more presentable than the shorts Magic, LArry and I wore playing basketball in the '80s.)
What if I just wear the shorts?
What John Bragg said, although the implications of police regulating how we can and can't dress are a bit unnerving.
However, the exposed asscrack crackdown seems totally justifiable. There's no need for that.
Butt cleavage is indecent exposure and a criminal offense? I hope the plumbers' union will rally some opposition. (Flint's still a union town, right?)
I hear the International Brotherhood of Plumbers and Electricians has filed a strongly-worded protest against this discriminatory policy.
Damn it, phil, you beat me to it.
Sorry, folks - but no buttcracks are exposed. You only get to see a person's lovely choice of boxers or briefs.
Phil and LaFollette,
Plumbers, great minds and all that.
Damn, missed by "that much"
Dammit, I'm late to the party with my plumbers joke...
"If you raise the cost of something, you get less of it."
You're overlooking a crucial factor. Young guys who think the world should look at their underwear are mostly very stupid in a way that's not above deciding that if the police don't like it, then it must really be cool and show how bad they are.
What I expect: Pants that can be quickly raised (when the man comes around) and lowered back down (when it's safe to fight the power again).
How is this not a proxy for racial profiling?
"If you raise the cost of something, you get less of it."
You're overlooking a crucial factor. Young guys who think the world should look at their underwear are mostly very stupid in a way that's not above deciding that if the police don't like it, then it must really be cool and show how bad they are.
What I expect: Pants that can be quickly raised (when the man comes around) and lowered back down (when it's safe to fight the power again).
hee hee, "crack down"
"What I expect: Pants that can be quickly raised (when the man comes around) and lowered back down (when it's safe to fight the power again)."
I've already started a patent on pants that jump up and down like a low-rider car. I'm going to make millions.
I was in mind of proposing a similar ordinance, but with a different criteria:
1. a square foot to two of butt exposed: a warning
2. two to four square feet exposed: disorderly conduct
3. more than four square feet: indecent exposure.
The other day, a cleaning lady in my building exposed between 1 and 2 square feet, per diagram for warning, although, truth to tell, it was a rather narrow strip. So, given half-cicumerence (a.k.a. horizontal butt dimension) of 3 ft, 4' of exposed underwear you would place you on the verge of a warning, and more than 16', indecent exposure (even though most of the butt could be still modestly covered).
OTOH, with horizontal butt dimension of 1 ft, you could show it all, and more, and still be within bounds of decency.
Enforcement would require photographs from various angles and special 3D software for area calculation.
I guess it would have been a proxy for racial profiling around ten years ago. But kids of all races dress that way now. Just the other day, I overheard a white guy bragging about how he pantses the kids on the baseball team he coaches and asks them "why do you want to look like the homies?"
So it isn't racial profiling if it only affects "the homies" and white kids who "look like the homies"? Good to know.
Hey I'm all for this, particularly if the fines are heavier for a hairy ass.
If you raise the cost of dressing like a criminal, you get fewer young men dressing like criminals. Hopefully, criminals will cling the hardest to markers of criminality. Then it'll be easier to tell Tyrone the drug dealer from his brother Jamaal the youth minister.
Bullcrap. No one is a criminal until they commit a crime, regardless of what they look like or how they dress. Take your logic to the next level - think Enron and all the other white collar crimes and criminals - what next - outlaw suits and shirts and ties?
This is profiling at it's most obnoxious to civil liberties - if there is nothing indecently exposed, then there is no "disorderly conduct" to speak of except for aggregious abuse of police powers.
I would, however, support a crackdown on visible panty lines on fat women.
What if you're wearing a bathing suit instead of underwear?
It's not racial profiling if anyone with pants showing their cracks is ticketed. I'm just happy they're finally cracking down on crimes against fashion.
I'm sorry, civil libertarians. It had to be done. Even by American standards, the pants-down look is just too stupid to be allowed to roam the streets.
If you raise the cost of dressing like a criminal, you get fewer young men dressing like criminals. Hopefully, criminals will cling the hardest to markers of criminality.
I can't wait for the gangstaz to start wearing flag lapel pins. Let them pass laws against that.
There are a lot of white kids adopting the ass-showing look, enough that I'm not sure profiling would be a factor. I think I'd have to know a lot more about the fashion scene in Flint.
Helter, I'm willing to agree, as long as everyone wearing shorts with black socks is ticketed, as well.
Ideally, the asscrackcrackdown would be left to vigilante enforcement and lynch mobs. But since that's not happening in our degenerate era, of course the police must act.
For what it's worth, this look still seems to be popular on the Stanford campus too, though these days people do it with tighter pants.
What I don't get is, the sagging-pants thing with visible boxers was popular when I was in high school 10 years ago, and seems to have been going strong (though not as strongly as it was back in the day) continuously since then. WTF's with that?
I've witnessed some vigilante justice on that coutn, SqueakyRat. It usually involved a class clown helping the offender's pants on their way down to the ankles.
> How is this not a proxy for racial profiling?
Someone has to warn the Blue Man Group to assiduously avoid Flint, MI.
> How is this not a proxy for racial profiling?
Someone has to warn the Blue Man Group to assiduously avoid Flint, MI.
Shoot to kill would be a more appropriate and efficacious policy.
If you stop, ID and frisk everyone in Flint with sagging pants, let's say 80% of the criminal-age male population, you'll end up hitting on a lot of outstanding warrants, pockets full of weed and illegal guns.
So it's a good thing to manufacture an excuse to randomly stop, ID, and frisk people on the street? Jesus motherfucking Christ.
So the right wing is ok with being literally a bunch of buttinskies?
It's reminiscent of the "short-doublet" craze of the 15th century:
"Alas! some of them show the very boss of the penis and the horrible pushed-out testicles that look like the malady of hernia in the wrapping of their hose, and the buttocks of such persons look like the hinder parts of a she-ape in the full of the moon. And moreover, the hateful proud members that they show by the fantastic fashion of making one leg of their hose white and the other red, make it seem that half of their privy members are flayed. And if it be that they divide their hose in other colours, as white and black, or white and blue, or black and red, and so forth, then it seems, by the variation of colour, that the half of their privy members are corrupted by the fire of Saint Anthony, or by cancer, or by other such misfortune." -Chaucer
Good Lord. Call me crazy, but I have the feeling that white people committing improper underwear exposure will not be cited.
I agree with the broken-windows interpretation of where the law came from, although I'm agnostic about the validity of the broken-windows thesis because I don't know enough about it. I did want to say something about Matt's idea that the police shouldn't worry about little things until they've solved the big things, i.e. no quality-of-life stuff until the murder rate is down. Even if we discount the broken-windows thesis, which after all claims that going after butt cracks will actually reduce the murder rate, my sense is the much of the misery of living in high-crime neighborhoods isn't the high crime itself (even if that's #1 on the list of misery-inducing factors), but the general yukkiness of the environment is part of it too, and people who go around like slobs is a big part of that.
people who go around like slobs is a big part of that.
Yes, but that includes track suits, pleated khaki shorts with black socks and wingtips, excessive exposed chest hair with lots of gold chains, and overweight women who go for the "exposed midriff" look which creates a "muffintop" effect. So why are the fashion crimes of the white middle class exempt from legal attention?
This isn't the broken-window theory in action, it's the Vice-Principal theory. You know, the big fat asshole who was never ever going to actually be a principal (and was too stupid to be a teacher) and so got his jollies enforcing arcane and arbitrary disciplinary rules because, well, that made him a tough guy. If you can't be loved or respected, at least you can be feared.
The police love nothing more than to show everyone that they're in charge, and this is no exception. Flint's lucky that it's just silly underwear rules... here in NYC they blow people away occasionally just to keep folks in line.
Good to see that Jim Crow is alive and well. That is, however, a hilarious graphic.
Chief Dicks: "This is not a black issue." It's just an issue that will disproportionately affect the black population.
Are people supposed to wear their pants HIGHER than their underwear? Does that defeat part of the purpose of wearing underwear?
The funny thing is saggy-pants culture originated in the prisons, where prisoners are not allowed to wear belts. We've really come full, idiot circle on this one.
Seriously, I have no objection to the two panels on the right, but a warning for the panel on the left does seem like incipient fascism. Belt buckles can be cold.
For God's sake! Baggy pants hide weapons. It's an attempt to make it more difficult for people to carry concealed weapons!
What about the front of the diagram? Are they flashing their pubic hair too? Funny that everyone's so obsessed only with kids' asses.
Let's see - do the Flint cops intend to fine hot young babes whose thongs are exposed when they bend over in those tight jeans?
Probably - just so they can be groped in the police wagon by the same cops.
Fuck cops. The only good cop is a dead cop.
And anybody who doesn't like that statement: fuck you.
That said, the current fashion of most young people is pathetic. I've seen homeless people better dressed. In fact, I was a better dressed homeless person any time I was homeless (with the exception of the first few days out of the joint at the shelter when I hadn't gotten to St. Anthony's to pick out better clothes). I can understand my outfits sucking, since I can't afford classy stuff. But to wear baggy pants is just stupid conformity with a capital C.
I like what Nicky Hilton said once: "I don't care who made it, I'm not paying $3,000 for a T-shirt."
Don't worry, there's a simple solution to the devotees of droopy drawers:
http://www.flintexpats.com/2008/06/flints-new-police-chief-is-cracking.html
Comments closed July 24, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Maybe it's a variation of the "broken window" theory of urban renewal. In 10 years we'll be hearing journalists speak glowingly of the "exposed asscrack" theory.
Posted by JH | July 10, 2008 9:55 AM