Every few years the community becomes tired of seeing young Black brothers with sagging pants. These days pants are sagging even lower and now South Carolina Rep. Wendell Gilliard has had enough and is proposing a new bill to address the issue on a state level. The proposed South Carolina law would fine and even make sagging pants punishable by community service.
The penalty for sagging pants is as follows: $25 for the first offense, $50 for the second, and $75 or six hours of community service, or both, for third and thereafter offenses. Gilliard stated the following to media outlet WCTV: “The pants now are being worn below the knees. If a female was to go around in the same fashion, pants down by their ankles or below the waist, we would see that as indecent exposure.”
Gilliard said he has seen all “creeds and races” with sagging pants and believes that what impacts one race impacts all races.
The story of how sagging pants became popular varies. Some say sagging pants were a signal on a plantation that a slave was being raped by the master. In the 1980s the procedure of taking an inmate’s belts at the L.A. County Jail during the height of gang violence some say led to a gang culture of sagging pants.
But former inmate Fleece Johnson, aka The Booty Warrior, said to him and others in prison it was turn on. One of his favorite targets was young inmates with sagging pants. Johnson explained that these young prisoners’ pants sagging may be a sign of being a true hard gangster thug; but to him and some fellow inmates, it looked sexy. With a look of glee on his face, he stated that he would go to these inmates and say, “Look here. I like ya. I want ya and we can do this the easy way or the hard way.” Some inmates submitted to his threats and the ones that fought back were brutally raped.
People who wear sagging pants in South Carolina should be warned that the Booty Warrior was released from prison Sept. 1, 2015. At the age of 57, his “Risk Assessment Rating” is listed as “low.”
