Marman, a junior college transfer at New Mexico, was arrested June 15 after allegedly refusing to pull his pants up. Marman, expected to contribute this fall at New Mexico, was wearing his pants low, exposing his boxer shorts. He was in San Francisco attending the funeral of a friend, and was returning to school when he was told by a US Airways employee that he had to pull up his pants after San Francisco police received a call of someone exposing himself outside a US Airways gate.
Marman refused to pull up his pants, and boarded the plane.
“There was a passenger on board the aircraft that had boarded the aircraft with his pants down around his knees showing his briefs, his underwear,” said San Francisco Police Sgt. Michael Rodriguez. “One of the flight attendants on that aircraft was offended by the fact that she could see the outline of his private area.”
“At that point, he was asked to leave the plane,” another police representative told The San Francisco Chronicle. “It took 15-20 minutes of talking to get him to leave the plane, and he was arrested for trespassing.”
Marman allegedly resisted officers as he was being led away, and was arrested on charges of suspicion of trespassing, battery and resisting arrest — and was being held on $11,000 bail.
In an interview from jail, Marman told a reporter that he tried to pull up his pants at the request of the airline representatives, but that he was carrying two big bags and had trouble pulling up his ill-fitting pants. The line was also moving fast, inhibiting his ability to comply with repeated requests.
“The pajama bottoms were loose and they didn’t fit well,” Marman admitted, “but they weren’t hanging below the knees [as the airline reps claim] and only the top of my underwear was showing.”
By the time he got to his seat, he said, he had pulled his pants all the way up. But then it was too late in the eyes of the pilot and the crew.
“I took my seat and pulled up my pants, but a flight attendant came and told me to step off the plane,” Marman said. “I told her I did nothing wrong, ‘I committed no crime. I did nothing wrong. I paid my ticket. Why are you asking me to get off the plane?’ I refused to do that.”
Marman said things escalated when the pilot asked him to get off the plane.
“The pilot [spoke] to me in an belligerent tone,” Marman said. “He was talking down to me when he asked me to leave.”
After he was coaxed off the plane by a plainclothes detective, he said he was rushed by police, arrested and taken to jail. Despite the fact the pilot made what is called a “citizen’s arrest” because Marmon boarded the plane and was therefore considered tresspassing, Marman counters that he doesn’t believe he tresspassed because the ticket rep accepted his ticket and let him board the plane.
Marman’s mother, Donna Doyle, was angry that her son was arrested for what she believes was a petty issue. She theorized to the Chronicle that her son was targeted at the airport “because of the way he looks — young black man with dreads and baggy pants. But he’s a good kid trying to make it, and he’s going through a lot. And then this happens.”
Valerie Wunder, a spokeswoman for US Airways, said the airline’s dress code forbids “indecent exposure or inappropriate attire.”
This episode took place not long after Republican Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill banning students from wearing sagging pants. Mainstream America has had just about enough of taking in this eye pollution and is taking steps to outlaw the fashion faux pas.
–terry shropshire
