Policing gangsta fashion

Lawyers representing the fired security guards say that when they sent black and white customers into the restaurant, all of them dressed in apparel that violated the dress code, only the African-Americans were asked to leave. "We sent investigators in there, Caucasians, dressed in violation of the code, and nobody bothered them," attorney Robert Adshead told the Philadephia Inquirer. "One sat under the sign that said what you couldn't wear, and he was waited on the whole night."

The claim by Union Station Mall management, and the operators of other malls across the country, that they enforce dress codes without regard to age or race, could be difficult to defend. "Whenever you build a profile on a person's appearance, rather than their actions, you are in slippery territory," says the ACLU's Lieberman. "If your profile of appearance is skewed towards a cultural or a racial group, then that is racial profiling."

But if the appearance of patrons is designed to imitate gang-bangers, and gang activity is what the mall seeks to eliminate, crisp debate quickly devolves into subjective sparring. Not only does the definition of "gang-related" clothing appear to differ from mall to mall, the willingness of management to talk about dress codes varies wildly. Some malls claim to have no rules but refuse to confirm the lack of rules. Some mall representatives say they don't know if they have rules and don't know how to find out if they do or not. Many malls have rules but refuse to describe them.

Told of the list of attire prohibited at Union Station Mall, Monica Davis, marketing manager for the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., says, "Holy cow, we don't have anything like that here!" There are some rules, she says -- minors under the age of 15 must be accompanied by an adult on Friday and Saturday nights -- but the only item of clothing banned in the mall are masks, which are prohibited by a Bloomington city ordinance. "We react or respond to conduct, not dress," says Davis, though she admits that gang violence in the mall and the outlying community is rarely a problem. "You can tell the rappers that they are welcome to come here."

Managers at a handful of other malls were not as forthcoming as Davis. For the most part, they were uncomfortable explicitly stating policies on dress and how their security staffs identify potentially disruptive customers. For comparison, I called about a dozen malls across the country, randomly selected for geography (both coasts and the Midwest), location (urban and suburban), the affluence of the surrounding community (I also looked to see if their flagship stores were say, Saks and Neiman Marcus, or J.C. Penney and Sears) and their proximity to areas with frequent reported gang activity.

At the Beverly Center, an upscale mall located in Beverly Hills, a spokewoman expressed shock at the inclusiveness of the Union Station dress code. She said that she had never heard of anything like that at the Beverly Center, but she passed me on to public relations. Public relations refused to comment without first obtaining permission from the marketing department (who later passed me back to public relations). So there aren't any publicly posted guidelines for conduct or dress? I asked. "I can't comment on that."

Eventually, I was allowed to speak with Mary Beth Bartlett, the head of Beverly Center security, who told me that the only dress code at Beverly Center is that shoes and shirts must be worn at all times. "Everything else is welcome," she said. "We react specifically to behavior, not dress, and we absolutely do not profile our customers based on their clothing."

The security guard at Tanforan Plaza in San Bruno, a suburb outside San Francisco (whose flagship stores are J.C. Penney, Target and Sears) also expressed shock at the wide range of the Union Station policy. At Tanforan there is an anti-gang policy, but it is more limited: You can't congregate in groups larger than three, and you can't "show off your colors," which the guard defined as having a red or blue bandana, or a colored belt that hangs off the pants.

"But we won't just stop anyone," she said. "They have to look gang related." How does one know if a patron is gang related? "We know," she said. "The gangs in San Bruno have been here forever. We're very familiar with them." You mean you recognize their faces? Yes, she said. When I asked for her name, however, she said she couldn't give it to me.

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