Flutterby™! : Dicks looking for your ass 2008-07-09 22:43:12.614618+00

Dicks looking for your ass

2008-07-09 22:43:12.614618+00 by Dan Lyke 17 comments

In Flint Michigan, (Police Chief David) Dicks is looking for your ass, specifically, Flint cops are cracking down on sagging pants.

"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."

Uh. Yeah. In fact, I believe that there are actually clothes sold which incorporate that "jeans over boxers" look. I think a great test case would be a cop ticketing someone wearing underwear under that get-up.

While I think the style is hilarious and ludicrous... I enjoy watching people walking around downtown this way, add some loose floppy untied basketball shoes, a hat on sideways or backwards and I get a smile that most professional clowns would pay money for. I fight the urge to "tag" them and shout "you are it" to see if they can run after me, but that would be wrong. Still, All they are missing is a big red nose and greasepaint. Still. the Police Chief is wrong.. he can't dictate fashion and I'd have to say unless more skin/genitals are exposed than a bathing suit shows, he's wrong.

Don't worry about them running after you, it's hard to run with one hand holding up your pants. First time I had to chase someone sagging like a prison bitch, I was laughing so hard at his pants falling to his knees every 20 feet or so that I nearly lost him. The cop with me fell on top of him and I fell on top of the other cop, we were cracking up laughing while trying to handcuff this kid.

Giggle. It wasn't 'til I was at the skate park today that I realized that skaters have been back to wearing normal clothes for quite a while.

The good news is that, apparently, serious crime is completely under control in Flint.

Dan, I found it amusing a couple of years ago when I was picking Nick up at the local skate park and found that the shirts they were selling were very similar to the one I was wearing.

I've never had a problem with the kids wearing their pants sagging. Like Meuon, I think of it as entertainment.

A few years ago, I was laughing at one from the windows of the Virtual Building on E. Main and Central (the 'Hood) and I was glad he didn't see me as I watched him pull a 12gauge shotgun out of his pants, re-arrange things and put it back. I called the cops, they picked him up in under 5 minutes. The "fashion" may be from the 'hood, and was useful for concealing or signaling that they were carrying: drugs or guns. But it's become mainstream and lost its roots.

The really BIG criminals wear conservative suits, white shirts and ties. When they figure that out, it'll be all the style in the 'hood.

Meuon,
I actually used to work corrections when I first started in police work. Before this was popular on the street, it used to mean that someone was "taken" when they were in jail. It was a signal that you weren't to mess with that particular person because they already belonged to someone else. When I first saw it on the street I used to laugh at it. Now when I see 12 year olds on playgrounds wearing the same style as their dads, I wonder if they even know where this all originated from.

Baggy clothes have always been for concealment, at least they were since I took my first academy and a cop walked in with baggy clothes and no less than 20 weapons on him. The sagging pants however are relatively recent, and the sag itself goes right back to prison. Of course, when I see those 12 year olds at the park with their sagging pants falling down while trying to get from the slide to the jungle gym, I do wonder who's bitch they are.

JT, huh, I thought the skate boarders were just kids buying baggy stuff at thrift stores so they could move easily. But i think most of them didn't let the clothes sag, so that may be a different branch of the style altogether.

Dan,
Big difference actually. We used to wear baggy clothes when I was in high school, however we kept the clothes above our hips and such. The style of sagging pants with your undies sticking out left prison, went into the "ghetto" scene, then was taken over by rappers and moved into other cultures. The only reason I even paid attention was because of the prison sag.

I misstated above when I said that baggy clothes have always been for concealment, there have been styles for quite some time that have a lot to do with baggy clothes. When I used to ride a skateboard it sort of hid the movement of your legs so it would make your movements appear more fluid. My ex's daughter used to wear baggy clothes because Avril Lavigne did, which was a popular skater chick style to hide your femininity and attempt to look more straight-figured and boyish. However, the art of concealment of weapons has been around for many centuries, all the way back to the samurai who would conceal daggers and other (god knows what) weapons in their clothing so they wouldn't be defenseless without their swords

On the street though, the guy with the baggy clothes usually carried the bat or the shotgun, as meuon witnessed, and was the first person to watch when you got out to talk to anyone on the street. The bagginess of your clothes and sag are unrelated in fashion, they seem to be two separate styles and come from different origins. Both of my boys own belts though and think that the "sag" look is ridiculous and mainly held by "wannabes" who want to pretend they're gangsta. Even the boy who follows his skater style wears his pants in a proper place where it doesn't restrict his movement, and his friends do the same.

A quick check on Snopes however shows that although they deny this is a prison look, they seem to center the article around homosexuality. This isn't the origin of the way this was done in jails, and even though they deny it completely, the rumor that they quote is still far from the truth, also I noticed that they fail to say where the originated, only that they claim it didn't start in prisons by homosexuals... which is still half right. However, working in prisons before this style hit mainstream, I can tell you that Snopes isn't the most accurate source of information out there, just as it isn't in many other cases I've found perusing their articles.

guys, the kids know what the original intent of saggy pants in prison meant. they don't care. the teacher's/principal's concern is how many weapons can they hide in those saggy pants?

jt knows, there is a video the police share that shows how many shotguns, handguns, knives, and bombs can be hid in baggy pants, long sleeved shirts hanging out and trench coats. it is scary.

polly: That video of the kid taking the guns out of his clothes is from a Michael Moore film, and the fact is, I'm not sure he'd be able to walk w/ that much hardware on him. It'd be spotted in an instant. Baggy clothes can conceal a pistol, but that's about it.

#Comment Re: made: 2008-09-18 01:40:09.866258+00 by: meuon [edit history]

Shadow, bring the video camera, I will blow your mind how much I can carry with the proper attire, and have.

If I were a cop, and stopped a beautiful nude women in a convertible, I would be fearful of the sword and two .45's possibly duct taped to her back.

Shadow, we didn't actually see a video, one of our lieutenants walked in with baggy clothes and pulled out so many guns that most of the recruits just sat there with their mouths gaped open. I've seen the video polly's talking about much later, it's from well before Michael Moore was making movies, it's actually of a New York Police Defective (narcotics I believe). The video that you're talking about I believe is this one of the boy in school.

After watching the demo in person, I tried it just using the clothes I normally wore without anything special or extra baggy, I got a mossberg pistol grip shotgun, a glock .45, a beretta .40, a snub-nosed s&w.38, three of my favorite knives, and a canister of pepper spray. Two of my friends, one recruit and one veteran didn't see any of it when I walked in to their apartment and asked how many weapons they thought I had on. They both guessed two but didn't see any. Mind you, I'm not near as talented as the guy who showed up in class who was a veritable clown car of weapons, but as just your average guy wearing regular clothes without buying or wearing anything special, I could still hide quite a bit.

I'm remembering a day when Al Gore was scheduled to speak at the Chattanooga convention center, and Meuon was headed down there to wire up some networking stuff for the conference and decided that he should leave his weapons at the office, lest he raise the suspicions of the Secret Service. It really looked like some over the top Quentin Tarantino or John Woo action movie.