In response to this writing idea on this community which says we should write anything we feel like, I would like to write about an event that happened close to my office today.
It was in the morning when we started hearing people shouting, as though there was a riot. I got up and walked out to find people gathered and shouting at some policemen whose van was parked nearby. People were shouting and blocking them from moving the vehicle. When I asked those around what was happening, they told me that the police were trying to arrest a lady whom they claimed was indecently dressed. However, the people refused to allow the policemen to take the lady away because, according to them, her dressing wasn’t bad enough to be termed indecent.
The situation lasted for quite a while before the policemen gave up. They let the lady go, and the crowd then cleared the road for them to drive off.
There is a law in my state that permits the police to arrest people who are indecently dressed on the street. When the law was first passed, it stirred a lot of controversy because of the difficulty in defining who is truly indecently dressed and who is simply following modern fashion trends. Fashion these days has taken a whole new dimension compared to what we used to know back then.
The government of my state didn’t bother to properly put things in order regarding the acceptability of the law by citizens or to establish clear and accurate methods of identifying who is indecently dressed. This has led to incidents like the one that happened near my office today.
I saw the lady who was initially held by the policemen after she was released. Honestly, her dressing wasn’t bad, it’s just that her shirt (top) exposed too much of her cleavage. That was the reason the police held her and labeled her as indecently dressed. If people had not been present, she would have been taken to the police station and would have had to bail herself out with a huge sum of money.
If the law is not stopped or properly reviewed, it’s going to escalate one day.
Thanks