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The clothing police

Ocala, Fla., has criminalized wearing low-hanging pants.

The City Council agreed that anyone walking in the city of 50,000 with their pants hanging two inches below the waist should be stopped by police and sentenced to up to six months in jail with a $500 fine, local ABC affiliate WFTV reported.

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Ocala, Fla., has criminalized wearing low-hanging pants.

The City Council agreed that anyone walking in the city of 50,000 with their pants hanging two inches below the waist should be stopped by police and sentenced to up to six months in jail with a $500 fine, local ABC affiliate WFTV reported.

These aren’t the clothing police, but the real police. That was the concern of the city’s mayor and several residents in the WFTV report, who said that the ordinance would lead to profiling and provide police an excuse to continue stopping young men of color.

Lately, police haven’t needed much of an excuse. An officer was just exonerated from a case involving Philadelphia teen Darrin Manning, who underwent surgery at Children’s Hospital after a encounter with Philadelphia police. The officers involved initially reported that one of their reasons for stopping Manning and his friends while on their way to basketball practice in January was too much clothing — the teens were bundled in hats, gloves and scarves on the bitter winter day.

According to 2011 Bureau of Justice Statistics, about 35 percent of police street stops involved non-white people who made up just 19 percent of the total population. More than 40 percent of the stops involved people between the ages of 16 and 24, while that segment made up less than 15 percent of the total population.

Not enough clothing is also an excuse to stop teens throughout the country. From Wildwood, N.J., to Mansfield, La., towns have decided that low-hanging pants are reason enough for a jail sentence.

Proponents argue that the rules have nothing to do with race and everything to do with “decency.” But behind the clothing is a body. A zoot suit, a scarf or a pair of pants aren’t intrinsically indecent — until sailors, police or city council see a young man of color wearing one.

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