Defenders of dress codes like to give the impression that their codes are based on science. Many, like the Union Station Mall, claim that their profiles of potential gang members come straight from local law enforcement and the FBI. But if there are such profiles, the FBI is not aware of it.

Ken Neu, acting section director of the Violent Crime and Major Offenders Division at FBI headquarters, says that he is not aware that the FBI has published profiles for public dissemination. "If they are saying they got this information from the FBI, they probably mean that we may have taught a class or a symposium for local law enforcement," says Neu.

Gang members who wish to advertise their affiliation do so in incredibly specific ways, and it would be next to impossible to compile a general profile that is relevant in every region, says Neu. And, as others have pointed out, gangster fashion goes through brief cycles -- once gang members invent a style, it is quickly adopted by the mainstream, and the actual gang members move on to a new innovation, starting the cycle all over again.

Teenage boys are the group most often stopped for dress code violations in malls, but Neu warns, "It's important not to confuse gang activity with juvenile delinquency. They are not the same thing. While there are often a few juveniles affiliated with a gang, the vast majority of gang members in the United States are not juveniles."

Still, the danger from actual gang members is real, says Neu. "If you know you have two rival gangs in the neighborhood, you don't want them to re-enact "West Side Story" in the middle of your mall."

But it is really only the gang members themselves, and specialized law enforcement units assigned to keep track of them, who are most fluent in the code of the street. They may certainly react in a violent way to a rival gang's signature styles, but those signs often are so subtle that they can be decoded only by other gangsters. In this way, dress codes may only speed up the gangster fashion cycle. Ban bandanas, and they'll start tilting caps; ban caps and they'll start pushing up sleeves and pant legs -- the sartorial possibilities are endless, and the end of the cycle is nowhere in sight.

Which may be one reason that, while malls like Union Station and others are busy kicking out shoppers for "gang-related" clothing, some other urban malls take it for granted that their customers will not only dress like gangsters, but will also actually be gangsters. A Nexis search for mall dress codes over the past decade turned up several stories of malls, many located in areas with a fairly high level of gang activity, who have given up trying to police clothing and have gone back to simply policing conduct -- even in response to actual gang violence in their mall.

In 1994, after a gang-related shooting at a mall in Fort Worth, Texas, the owners of several Tarrant County malls considered adopting an anti-gang dress code, but at least one director of public safety at those malls said that they dropped the code after five months, because it was impossible to distinguish between teens emulating gangster fashion, and actual gang members.

Interestingly, the confusion of mall managers, who insist that they are trying to protect patrons and profits, appears to be something that rapper Nelly understands. So far, he has refused to take part in the protest against Union Station. Through his publicist, Jane Higgins, he has said that he does not consider his treatment at the hands of Union Station security to have been racially motivated.

This equanimity has angered those who protested Nelly's eviction from the mall -- so much so that some have even called for a boycott of his music. Sheffield does not personally support the Nelly boycott, though he does feel that, as a role model for African-American youth, Nelly should stand up for their right to wear the fashions that he inspires.

"He was kicked out of the mall for his choice of apparel," says Sheffield, "a kind of apparel that kids will choose to emulate because they see him wearing it, and may have to suffer the same consequences. He has a responsibility, if he is encouraging this kind of dress, to stand up against this policy."

But responsibility is the crux of the whole argument -- the responsibility of the mall to protect its patrons and tenants; the responsibility of the protesters and their lawyers to protect the Constitution and its tenets.

It's possible that the best way to minimize the security risk and maximize the rights of customers and the profits of the malls is to ignore clothes and focus on conduct. Such a policy has been successful -- not just for malls in areas far from gang territory, but for some in the middle of it.

For example, after rival gang members opened fire on each other in a West Covina, Calif., shopping mall in 1992, representatives from various nearby malls told the L.A. Times that it didn't make sense to ban known gang members from their malls after the incident -- unless they were explicitly seen engaging in criminal activity.

"If they're walking through the mall -- just that alone is not going to cause us to bother them," said Glendale Police Sgt. Matt Wojnarowski, who worked in the police substation at the Glendale Galleria. "They need to buy clothes, too."

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