Ok, so I said I was going to stick with sports and gaming… I lied…
Flint residents now have to watch their butts because Police Chief David Dicks is on the lookout.
Dicks, who took over the department last month on an interim basis, announced that his officers would start arresting people wearing saggy pants that expose skivvies, boxer shorts or bare bottoms.
“Some people call it a fad,” Dicks told the Free Press this week while patrolling the streets of Flint. “But I believe it’s a national nuisance. It is indecent and thus it is indecent exposure, which has been on the books for years.”
On June 27, the chief issued a departmental memorandum telling officers: “This immoral self expression goes beyond freedom of expression.”
The crime, he says, is disorderly conduct or indecent exposure, both misdemeanors punishable by 93 days to a year in jail and/or fines up to $500.
Dicks, 41, broke down his interpretation of the laws as such: Pants pulled completely below the buttocks with underwear showing is disorderly conduct; saggy pants with skin of the buttocks showing is indecent exposure, and saggy pants, not completely below the buttocks, with underwear exposed results in a warning.
I was lurking my usual skate websites and came across this article. When the diagram popped up that showed they meant business, I dropped everything and threw down my pants to their “Indecent Exposure” level. Now granted that only lasted twenty or so seconds, I think I made my point to myself.
My initial response to seeing this article was deciding to myself whether or not this was just a joke, because naturally, I’m just prone to falling for internet pranks. But then I realized it’s not April Fool’s nor the month of April, so there, I’m awesome.
How can we be so concerned with the way we wear our clothing? Now, I understand if like someone is literally showing off their booty or dick (and the minuscule amount of people who would be upset with seeing a pair of boobs), but really, to tell someone that they can be fined or jailed over showing their underwear is just…. stupid! Because in saying that, you’re also telling women that they can’t wear spaghetti straps that show bra straps either, and to be perfectly honest, that’s not even being addressed in the article! Once again, invisibly noting the gender barrier that is so powerfully embedded into society, but that’s another story.
The worst part about this article is reading that it’s a gang related topic. Seriously? What’s a gangster today beyond being a part of the largest gang organization in the country that is our police force? We haven’t had a real one otherwise in over thirty years otherwise, and we have the tyrants known as the cops beating down these “thugs” over what is nothing more than drug possession. Now, I’m not advocating that we get a revolutionary to rise up and spit bullets left and right until the police force is nothing more, I’m just saying that just because they “look” like a gangster, doesn’t mean they are. So don’t tell me that they need to pull up their pants, ’cause you have to have some go-nads to think you’re any better than they are.
So, to the city of Flint, Michigan, read this, get angry at me, and tell me I’m a hippy liberal that smokes marijuana and does nothing all day, because I love it how we in the Midwest have such a liberal out front, yet we have some of the largest branches of the KKK, some very regressive leaders in office, and yet we smile to ourselves and say that we’re out to make a big difference in the world.
And that’s just me ranting about pants.
[via freep]
