Tired of seeing teens walk around with their pants so low it shows all their underwear? (how do they do that anyway?)
Ocala, FL certainly is. So much so that they have passed an ordinance stating that anyone who wears their pants 2 inches below their ‘natural waist line’ will get a warning or two (complete with pictures), and if they continually violate the law could receive a $500 fine and 6 months in jail.
Plummers beware! This law applies to anyone showing too much of their…backside.
Officials in Ocala, Fla. agree with Platt’s sentiment so much that city council unanimously passed an ordinance that prohibits anyone on city property from wearing pants two inches or more below a person’s natural waist.
“I just think it’s disgraceful to show your underwear,” Councilwoman Mary Rich said to WFTV. “We try to be a nice, clean city. I think it’ll help clean it up some.”
Rich previously tried to pass the rule in 2009, but no one seconded the motion. At the time, Mayor Kent Guinn objected to the ordinance, in part because he thought it would lead to profiling.
Rich said the ordinance applies to both genders and all races.
“It doesn’t matter what color they are,” Rich said, according to the Washington Post blog GovBeat. “They all wear their pants down.”
Guinn, who oversees the Ocala Police Department as part of his mayoral duties, asked Rich at the council meeting how officers were supposed to measure the distance between a suspect’s natural waist and the waistband of the pants. He said it is not like seat belts, which are either being worn or not, the Ocala Star-Banner reported.
“We are not looking to charge people,” City Attorney Patrick Gilligan said. “If they don’t comply, I think the chief will tell police officers to take your phone out and take a picture.”
The sagging pants ordinance is enforceable on city-owned or leased property, including sidewalks, streets, parks, sports, recreation and public transportation facilities and parking lots.
When asked about a service worker, say a plumber, whose buttcrack might show, “He will get a warning like everybody else,” Gilligan said, according to the Star-Banner.
Police are expected to issue warnings to saggy-pantsed offenders at first. After that, those caught with their pants down face a $500 fine or jail time, WFTV reported.
MTV’s Rob Markman condemned the ordinance. “Still, it isn’t the rap stars getting into hot water that’s the most troublesome, it’s the thought that a local government can dictate how young people dress,” the MTV News hip-hop beat writer penned. “First it’s saggy jeans, next it’s the way you tie your shoe laces (sic) or the way you wear your hat.”
Teacher Howard Gunn said he was concerned about enforcement. “Most of these kids you are dealing with are ones that have probably been in jail or are going to jail,” Gunn told the Ocala council. “A lot of times they are going through things. And we slap this on them, they are going to go further.”
“The kids are going to say something to you because they don’t know the law,” Gunn said about the police. “And then, there you go. Escalation. Now you have an assault on a police officer.”
Over the years, lawmakers around the country have proposed and passed laws to try to crack down on the sagging pants trend. In Fort Worth, Texas, you can’t sag and ride the city bus. In Opaocka, Fla., refusing to tighten your trousers will cost you $250. In Colinsville, Illinois, wearing saggy pants on any public property is banned. And in New York, State Senator Eric Adams used his own money to put up billboards that read, “Stop the Sag.”
Source: rt.com
Photo: Reuters / Mohamad Torokman
Some one told me that it started in prison,it means your available……
Does that include the president? He shows his Ass all the time.
It started in prison but not as advertising availability. It started by the policy of no belts (fear of suicide) which resulted in saggy pants.
They just selling that booty!
Maybe I am wrong, but my view is this:
Laws like this are just sad. Seriously, in America we brag about being free and doing/living however we want. Something else that is just as “disgraceful” will take place of saggy pants. Instead of realizing that true change is from the inside and that character and life change are more important than behavior modification, dress code, and blind robotic conformity. But with stuff like this we are literally taking away the constitution and the whole reason we rebelled against England in the first place (to get freedom from a country that was over restricting.) And then we turn and brag out how this nation is so great and free and no other nation in the world has freedom as well. It is pitiful, it is sad that our government/culture is to a point where we value trying to put our citizens into a nice little “good-boy/girl” box instead of focusing on trying to solve major problems (BUDGET DEFICIT, solving our abortion/homosexual marriage debates, schools in poor areas, the list goes on and on of things we are letting slip by.) My main point is that if the attitudes (maybe drugs, gangs, violence, theft, rebelling, etc…) of the people who are sagging is what is bothering people then wouldn’t it be better to come around those people who are struggling and help them change from the inside with genuine relationships, maybe education, maybe mentoring, or anything else that may help instead of push them down, discriminate their culture, and try to put them into a box that satisfies our own selfish desires for what a “good-boy/girl” looks like?
That’s great I’m so sick of this c**p
Should PUSH EACH ONE OVER & WATCH’EM FACE PLANT!!!
Confiscate their trousers on the spot, you want to embarrASS me by having to look at your dumb ass, then I have the choice to emBareAss you too!!! You don’t like it, too damn bad. You don’t care what l don’t like! It’s about respect, something this country is seriously lacking
I don’t give a $#%&!@* what people say or want!
I call it freedom to be myself.
You don’t like it don’t do it!
Other than that unless he’s hurting someone or violating someone’s rights leave him the $#%&!@* alone
And all that sag their pant!
Just cause of this mine will he an extra 6 inches lower!
$#%&!@* you $#%&!@* them!
Live free or die!
The rest of you suck my hairy $#%&!@*!
What if I passed a law requiring your pants to sag or 6 mos in jail?
Fricking Punk ass dumbie !!