No Saggy Pants in Flint Michigan!

Glad to see somebody is working hard on the laws that govern us as nation.  from the Flint Journal:

Acting Flint Police Chief David R. Dicks announced Thursday that officers will begin arresting people wearing pants or shorts that sag too low exposing rear ends.

“This immoral self expression goes beyond free speech,” said Dicks in a statement released Thursday. “It rises to the crime of indecent exposure/disorderly persons.”

You know this is not gonna work out the way they think.

Enforcement of these laws is destined for failure—both for practical reasons and constitutional reasons—but the very fact that governments in this country are trying to dictate how Americans wear their clothes should sound an alarm to everyone who values freedom of expression and personal autonomy.

Read more here.

In Flint, any young men wearing saggy attire better not be “walking dirty” because, as the above comentator notes, the police will search anybody incident to an arrest for saggy drawers.

But of course, I forget that Alabama has always been a trendsetter in restricting laws. The City of Bayou La Batre banned saggy pants a month ago.

Phillip Tutor wrote about this in The Anniston Star a month ago and hits the point much better than I:

Look, I think saggy pants are as stupid as men’s Speedos. Some things just shouldn’t be seen. And I have no problem with a city citing people for, in essence, walking down the street in their Fruit of the Looms. I shouldn’t have to look at some guy’s underwear when I’m trolling through the mall.

We already have on-the-book laws that address public indecency. I can’t walk down Quintard naked. My neighbor can’t go to the store wearing her bra — and nothing else above the waist. No sane person’s arguing those ordinances. And I’m not such a virulent ACLUer that I say, what — or who — is next? I don’t see this as the erosion of fashion civil rights.

But the saggy-pants issue is a Pandora’s Box; open it, and what flies out?

Charges of racial profiling.

Accusations of racism and the unfair targeting of a city’s low-income, inner-city youth.

And First Amendment arguments that you may not agree with, but carry significant weight.

Let’s be honest. Thanks to one nationally-televised speech by Barack Obama, it’s now politically correct — no, encouraged — to discuss race, so let’s. The whole idea of banning a style of dress strongly associated with black males and the hip-hop lifestyle cannot help but cause people to believe the city is condemning a segment of our population’s standard of living.

Conform. Do it our way. Or else.

This won’t work.

If cities legitimately want to assist their black communities — to reduce black-on-black crime, to diminish teen pregnancies and drug use, to elevate educational opportunities for those without them — then address the problems head-on. Put energy into tangible remedies, not civic versions of What Not To Wear. Become one of the first Southern cities to substantially address the need for more parental guidance and discipline in the homes of all youth, not just those who listen to hip-hop and sag their britches.

Expecting a young man to change his behavior because the City Council made him hitch up his pants is a foolish premise. Legislated conformity only breeds more rebellion.

Or, think of it this way: If Jacksonville did ban coeds from showing below-the-waist skin, think Jacksonville State’s campus would suddenly become sex-free?

I doubt that would work, either.

Now This is Scary

Is this a Jeopardy category?  Violating the Constitution for $100, Alex?  Please, please, please! do not tell law enforcement in Alabama about this:

From the Chicago Tribune:

Wisconsin court upholds GPS tracking by police

By RYAN J. FOLEY
Associated Press Writer
2:42 PM CDT, May 7, 2009
MADISON, Wis.

Wisconsin police can attach GPS to cars to secretly track anybody’s movements without obtaining search warrants, an appeals court ruled Thursday.

However, the District 4 Court of Appeals said it was “more than a little troubled” by that conclusion and asked Wisconsin lawmakers to regulate GPS use to protect against abuse by police and private individuals.

As the law currently stands, the court said police can mount GPS on cars to track people without violating their constitutional rights — even if the drivers aren’t suspects.

Officers do not need to get warrants beforehand because GPS tracking does not involve a search or a seizure, Judge Paul Lundsten wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel based in Madison.

That means “police are seemingly free to secretly track anyone’s public movements with a GPS device,” he wrote.

One privacy advocate said the decision opened the door for greater government surveillance of citizens. Meanwhile, law enforcement officials called the decision a victory for public safety because tracking devices are an increasingly important tool in investigating criminal behavior.

The ruling came in a 2003 case involving Michael Sveum, a Madison man who was under investigation for stalking. Police got a warrant to put a GPS on his car and secretly attached it while the vehicle was parked in Sveum’s driveway. The device recorded his car’s movements for five weeks before police retrieved it and downloaded the information.

The information suggested Sveum was stalking the woman, who had gone to police earlier with suspicions. Police got a second warrant to search his car and home, found more evidence and arrested him. He was convicted of stalking and sentenced to prison.

Sveum, 41, argued the tracking violated his Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure. He argued the device followed him into areas out of public view, such as his garage.

The court disagreed. The tracking did not violate constitutional protections because the device only gave police information that could have been obtained through visual surveillance, Lundsten wrote.

Even though the device followed Sveum’s car to private places, an officer tracking Sveum could have seen when his car entered or exited a garage, Lundsten reasoned. Attaching the device was not a violation, he wrote, because Sveum’s driveway is a public place.

“We discern no privacy interest protected by the Fourth Amendment that is invaded when police attach a device to the outside of a vehicle, as long as the information obtained is the same as could be gained by the use of other techniques that do not require a warrant,” he wrote.

Although police obtained a warrant in this case, it wasn’t needed, he added.

Larry Dupuis, legal director of the ACLU of Wisconsin, said using GPS to track someone’s car goes beyond observing them in public and should require a warrant.

“The idea that you can go and attach anything you want to somebody else’s property without any court supervision, that’s wrong,” he said. “Without a warrant, they can do this on anybody they want.”

Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen’s office, which argued in favor of the warrantless GPS tracking, praised the ruling but would not elaborate on its use in Wisconsin.

David Banaszynski, president of the Wisconsin Chiefs of Police Association, said his department in the Milwaukee suburb of Shorewood does not use GPS. But other departments might use it to track drug dealers, burglars and stalkers, he said.

A state law already requires the Department of Corrections to track the state’s most dangerous sex offenders using GPS. The author of that law, Rep. Scott Suder, R-Abbotsford, said the decision shows “GPS tracking is an effective means of protecting public safety.”