The Chief of Dicks: Butt of all jokes

I got up early this morning to take a second shower after my badly needed haircut as I always do. One after the cut, more often than not in the evening, and one the morning after. It is necessary. After rinsing my skin and drying myself off I slipped on a pair of boxers and a pair of basketball shorts that weren’t quite pulled all the way up to my waist, in fact, they fell way short of the recommended destination. As I pulled out my clothes, I realized that desperately needed something out of my car. I slipped on one of my over-sized shirts and walked outside, shorts still sagging to retrieve what was dutifully needed to complete the mornings routines. What I went out to get isn’t as important as the fact that, if I were to do this in Flint, Michigan, I could be arrested if I were seen by a sworn officer.

On June 26th, the Flint Chief of Police released a memo saying, “Due to a significant number of complaints form citizens regarding youths and adults “sagging” wearing pants and/or shorts below their waist and indecently exposing their buttocks, it is necessary that we enforce the law concerning disorderly person(s), only when sworn officers observe this misdemeanor.” What the chief was saying, in a nut shell, is that if you are caught with your pants below your waist, an officer will take action. The memo continues, “Therefore, any sworn officer who observes a person or persons committing indecent exposure (sagging/exposing buttocks) within the City of Flint jurisdiction has probable cause to effect a misdemeanor arrest…”

The reason, as The Flint Journal’s editorial staff feels, is that the Chief of Police “is trying to create is a higher expectation for our youth, and we're not talking about the altitude of their belt loops. We're talking about a generation of young people who have not been taught proper respect for themselves or others, and their anti-social behavior, in the form of sagging, reflects their lack of values.”

As a young African-American male who grew up in this country with the notion that hip-hop culture, including the style of dress, was not only cool, but acceptable when not in the work place (unless, of course where you worked in a place where dressing like your favorite rapper was acceptable) because of this idea that was worked into our countries constitution more than two centuries ago that says that all of it’s citizens has the right to the freedom of expression as long as it doesn’t take away from the freedoms of others. I could be wrong, but I’m almost positive that I have that right. If my pants, or if the pants of any other individual, happen to slide six or seven inches below the point where the belt is most affective, is that necessarily taking away the right of someone else? I don’t think so.

Sagging of pants is every bit as much a form of expression as guys who wear girls jeans, walking around in a polo with your collar popped, having tattoos of swastikas or confederate flags or wearing dirty pants. Sure, I scoff at the people who do these ridiculous things, but because I don’t like them does it mean those people should be arrested for doing them? Absolutely not. This Chief of Police, Dicks, isn’t looking at the larger scheme of things, or at least he wasn’t when he crafted this silly rule because there are three fundamental flaws with this idea that will do more to ruin this city, which isn’t necessarily thriving in the first place, that it will do to help the those who call Flint, Michigan home: A) This hurts teens more than it helps the community, B) this will be viewed as an attack on the black community even though Dicks is an African-American himself and C) there are much larger issues that need to be dealt with in Flint.

This hurts teens more than it helps the community.

The whole idea behind enforcing this law, or at least this is what they’re saying, is to rid their youth of the style that they are assuming is leading them to gang lifestyles. They’re trying to put the youth of their city in a better position to succeed in this world, but they couldn’t be going about it in a worse way. There is no way a teenager can benefit from this repulsive law because there will be mental, social, physical and monitary repercussions just for having to choose between completely changing their chosen style of dress or having to deal with the damn police. The punishment, as it now stands, for being caught with your pants below your waist could be up to 93 days in jail or a hefty $500 fine. Please, by all means, tell me who this is helping. If we want our youth to succeed in this world, the way to go about it is definitely not to throw them in jail for a quarter of a year for choosing to wear their pants a few inches below where you’d prefer to wear them. It makes no sense, plus, they’re not actually breaking any law and the arrest is, as far as I understand, borderline unconstitutional.

The state law in every single one of the fifty states is defined as exposure of the genitals and/or the female breast in a public place and may in some states require evidence of intent to shock, arouse or offend other persons. This, however, does not include showing your boxers. In fact, the majority of the kids walking around with shirts that are 3-4 sizes to large anyway, so to even notice that one of these kids is sagging, an officer is going to have to pull up their fucking shirts. So, not only will these kids be locked for 25 percent of a year for emulating their favorite rap star, missing out, not only on their childhood, but the education they probably could use considering they probably won’t know that them being arrested for ‘not-indecent exposure’ is unconstitutional, or they’ll pay a five-hundred dollar fine neither they nor their families will have considering the economy and poverty rates of the city. How is this helping any? It isn’t. On top of all of this, they’ll carry around the stigma of “I can’t express myself the way I want to but others can” for the rest of their damn lives.

This will be viewed as an attack on the Black community

Probable cause has a certain ring to it, and it means two very different things to two very different groups of people: Black people and police. Probable Cause is the standard by which a police officer has the right to make an arrest – or conduct a search – or obtain a search warrant. Probable Cause is bad news for the teens (and adults who have sadly failed to out grow the trend) because if your pants are below your waist, any officer has the right to search them and take them into custody without question – something that will easily be seen as an attack on the black community. Dicks has essentially given Probable Cause to any officer who sees a young black man of color who might be wearing pants a size larger than it seems he should be wearing. I can only think of the heightened racial tensions that are sure to come, I can only think of all of the youngsters who will be wrongfully harassed for watching music videos, I can only think of Bazaar from D12 being stuck in those cells with fat ass with the youth from Flint, Michigan that will not be given a chance, things that will only lead to the promulgation of the hatred that black men and women already have for the damn police.

It’s no secret that a whopping majority of American citizens who wear their pants below the waist line are black, so why target citizens who do this in one of the most racially sensitive countries in the world. It’s also not a secret that a whopping majority of the same African-Americans who are wearing their pants below their waist feel like racism is still alive and thriving. Why give them the means to justify their thoughts? Not only is this going to give these people a heightened negative view about the powers that be whose skin tone is much lighter than theirs, but now they feel they can’t even get a break from one of their very own, Officer Dicks, or more accurately, Uncle Tom. It’s ridiculous laws like these that never fail to remind us that we really haven’t grown into a more tolerant nation, it’s just that the weight of the lack of tolerance has been shifted around so much that it’s become much less noticeable, much like women who wear girdles to give the appearance of slimmer thighs and waist lines. This country is no less tolerant than it was 20 years ago, and the fact that people are supporting their Chief of Police (at least according to four of the five comments left on the previously mentioned editorial and the poll of over 1,400 readers on the respective website) is reason to believe that it isn’t going to change.

There are much larger issues that need to be dealt with in Flint, Michigan.

In the 2008 State of the State address, Jennifer Granholm, Governor of Michigan commended Flint on its 46% drop in crime in 2007. In May 2008, new crime statistics for the city were released, showing some of the most dramatic decreases in crime in decades. Murder had dropped 71%, Assault had dropped 48%. Arson and auto theft also saw drops in the 20% range. All of this is amazing, simply amazing, however, even with their 46% decrease in crime in 2007, they were still reported as being the third most dangerous city in the country by the Congressional Quarterly. If your crime decreases by 46% and you’re still the third most dangerous city in the country, you need to be asking yourself two very fundamental questions. One, Where are the police and two, why do you want these police who aren’t preventing crimes to arrest teenagers who would prefer their pants to resemble the style 50 Cent wears his pants? The answer to the first question can be found in recent articles about the city. 48 officers were recently laid off, nearly 20 percent of the sworn officers. How are you becoming a less dangerous city when you don’t have enough tax dollars to pay these officers? How can you afford to have these officers wasting their time chasing down innocent teenagers with baggy pants when you can have a 71% decrease in murder, and still have very high murder rates? How can you afford to jail these children when you had to close your city jail house because of budget constraints?

Where are the priorities of the city? Where are the priorities of the Chief of Police? Where is the state government and why aren’t they stepping in telling Mr. Dicks that this is a terrible idea? Josh Freeman, A resident, and commenter of the Flint Journal editorial broke things down from a first hand point of view when he said, “You have got to be kidding me. Flint has so many problems facing it and this is the first major announcement from the Interim Chief's office? We have hookers walking the sidewalk on an almost daily basis in front of my place of employment. Come to work early and you have to run them and their customers out of the lot. The lady down the street had her house broken into and she calls 911 at 8:00pm. The police finally arrive at 3:00am. There will be nearly 50 lay offs in the Police Department - nearly 20% of the sworn officers. In the Detective Bureau - there are thousands of cases backlogged because there is not enough people to handle them all.”

There is something seriously wrong with society when sagging pants gets more attention than hookers.

Stay Hideous
-PB

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54 days and 58,368 words to go)