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Lifting Saggy Pants Miraculously Solves All of Flint's Problems

You know Flint, Michigan? The place so decimated by job losses that it's sort of become synonymous with Rust Belt poverty? Well, fear not!  ...

You know Flint, Michigan? The place so decimated by job losses that it's sort of become synonymous with Rust Belt poverty?

Well, fear not!  The city has just solved all its problems by requiring its residents to wear their pants a few inches higher. From the Detroit Free Press :

Flint residents now have to watch their butts because Police Chief David Dicks is on the lookout.

Dicks, who took over the department last month on an interim basis, announced that his officers would start arresting people wearing saggy pants that expose skivvies, boxer shorts or bare bottoms.

"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."

On June 27, the chief issued a departmental memorandum telling officers: "This immoral self expression goes beyond freedom of expression."

The crime, he says, is disorderly conduct or indecent exposure, both misdemeanors punishable by 93 days to a year in jail and/or fines up to $500.

The city has even developed a highly scientific method for determining exactly how much you're harming society with your saggy jeans:

Pants pulled completely below the buttocks with underwear showing is disorderly conduct; saggy pants with skin of the buttocks showing is indecent exposure, and saggy pants, not completely below the buttocks, with underwear exposed results in a warning.

Seriously, doesn't the city of Flint -- and its police force -- have slightly bigger fish to fry?

Zach Patton -- Executive Editor. Zach joined GOVERNING as a staff writer in 2004. He received the 2011 Jesse H. Neal Award for Outstanding Journalism
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