Obama Denounces Baggy Pants Crackdown

NOVEMBER 4--Memo to Riviera Beach, Florida's elected officials: Senator Barack Obama believes that your city's legal crackdown on baggy pants is a 'waste of time,' though he does suggest that 'brothers should pull up their pants.'

Obama's pants stance was just elicited by an MTV interviewer, who asked the Democratic presidential nominee a viewer's question about criminalizing the popular street fashion. The query was apparently prompted by a controversial new law targeting droopy drawers in Riviera Beach, where cops have made 17 arrests since they began enforcing ordinance 12-3043 in mid-August.

While the crackdown on baggy pants offenders has significantly slowed in recent weeks, cops have just nabbed their first repeat offenders, records show. After busting a dozen men during the first two weeks they enforced the ordinance, cops nabbed only five offenders in the following seven-week period ending October 20, according to police reports.

The five arrestees are seen here in Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office mug shots. Included among that quintet were prior boxer short exposers Kenneth Smith and Ronald Deloach, who are pictured, left to right, in the second row of booking photos.

Another arrestee, Kelvin Collington, seemed puzzled when police stopped him for allegedly exposing 'approximately five-six inches of his multi-colored boxer style undergarment.' As recalled by Officer J. Campbell, Collington (who is seen in the upper left mug shot) remarked, 'What the fuck are you stopping me for, I ain't did shit.'

After telling MTV that 'brothers should pull up their pants,' Obama noted, 'You are walking by your mother, your grandmother, your underwear is showing. What's wrong with that? Come on.' He added, 'Some people might not want to see your underwear--I'm one of them.' (6 pages)