St. Martinville won’t criminalize fashion

Ken Grissom

St. Martinville — With some prompting from citizens in the audience, the City Council Monday night agreed to take a more wholistic approach to the spectacle of “slabbing” — sagging pants — than neighboring cities like New Iberia and Breaux Bridge.

Exhorted by resident Lisa Lee Gardner to “consider adopting a campaign instead of an ordinance,” councilmen embraced the idea of working with the city’s merchants and civic clubs to persuade and even shame young males into hiking up their pants rather than write them up for it.

Monday’s council meeting was also a public hearing for a proposed ordinance that would impose criminal penalties on persons who deliberately expose their underwear or normally covered body parts in public.

Already off the table were monetary fines and the concept, a feature of Breaux Bridge’s anti-sagging ordinance, of sticking parents and guardians with penalties for their charges’ fashion faux pas. But despite serous misgivings on the part of Mayor Thomas Nelson, the St. Martinville City Council was considering giving low-riders ticketed by police community service.

“Are we really so out of touch with our young people that we have to send armed law enforcement officers to tell them what we expect of them in the way they dress?” Gardner demanded.

She suggested instead an education campaign asking merchants to post signs, an example of which she furnished, adding sagging pants to the familiar litany of intolerable attire — no shirt, no shoes, no service.

Councilmen also agreed to ask organizations like the New Comers, Knights of Peter Claver and the Chamber of Commerce to take up the cause.

“We don’t need more laws, we need people of morality and principals,” said Councilman Dennis Paul Williams.