Doc Montgomery held up a bullet proof vest at the podium the day the City Council voted to repeal a law that allowed the Shreveport Police Department to target and jail black men disproportionately.

The Council voted 6-1 to abolish a sagging pants law that banned people from wearing pants below the waist line 2007. Black men made up 96 percent of the 726 arrests for sagging in Shreveport since the law passed 2007, according to SPD data.

A total of 699 black men were arrested for sagging as compared to the 12 white men that were arrested for sagging since the law passed more than a decade ago.

Last month, City Councilwoman LeVette Fuller proposed to abolish the law. The proposal gained national attention.

Debate about the law evolved from an incident in which a black man died after an SPD officer attempted to stop him because his pants were below waist line. The community has been expressing rage and distrust in SPD, the coroner and the District Attorney's office for months after 31-year-old Anthony Childs died in an officer-involved shooting.

Officer Traveion Brooks attempted to stop Childs in February for sagging but Childs ran. Brooks then chased Childs and fired eight shots. Three of Brooks' bullets hit Childs. At some point during the confrontation, Childs shot one bullet into his own chest, according to the coroner. That was the shot that reportedly killed him.

“The blood is on our hands,” Montgomery said at the City Council meeting Tuesday during public comment.

Montgomery told The Times he's a Caddo Parish Public Defender who taught political science to college students.

"Any problem the city has is our problem," Montgomery said. "People think the government is this otherworldly body we can't touch but we are the government. The City Council represents the people."

"I lost my brother. My nieces and nephew lost their father because of his pants. His pants were sagging. This officer chased him through a field because his pants were at a certain length," Anthony Childs' sister, Tyren Pucker, said before the Council voted to abolish the law.

Pucker gave Fuller a tearful hug and thanked her in the lobby of Government Plaza after the meeting. She also spoke with The Times saying abolishing the law is a step in the right direction. She said she still wants her brother's death investigation to be re-opened.

"He's not a thug like they've made him out to be," Pucker said.

Councilman James Green was a City Council member when the sagging ordinance passed. He expressed shame at having helped pass an ordinance that was enforced for an unintended purpose. Councilman James Flurry was the lone council member who voted against abolishing the law. He said he listened to the voters who told him to vote against abolishing the ordinance.

There is still some question as to whether SPD took anyone into custody solely for sagging pants, which would contradict the ordinance. The now-abolished law said people could be issued a summons for violating the ordinance, but were not supposed to be arrested or fully searched for violating the sagging pants ordinance.

According to ordinance 50-167 sponsored by Calvin Lester in 2007, violators of the law can be cited and summoned to court, but the legislation was passed with an amendment. The amendment specified that violation of the law "shall itself not be grounds for an arrest or for a full search of the persons cited."

Last month, The Shreveport Times sent the SPD a public records request asking whether any individual had been arrested, meaning taken into custody, solely for sagging pants. The SPD replied with an invoice, charging The Times more than $400 for an answer.

The department would have to scour 726 reports to find out whether anyone was unjustly arrested. The Times did not pay the invoice and could not confirm whether mistakes were made.

Police Chief Ben Raymond wrote The Times an e-mail saying he couldn't guarantee mistakes weren't made.

"We cannot respond with complete accuracy because each individual report would have to be reviewed to determine if anybody had been booked into jail solely for violation of the ordinance regarding 'wearing pants below the waistline," Raymond said. "If anybody were booked for violation of that specific ordinance alone, that would have been a mistake. I cannot guarantee mistakes were not made without reviewing each report."

Raymond also said he couldn't state whether individuals were fully searched for sagging pants.

"Similarly, I cannot accurately state whether individuals were 'fully searched' based on the ordinance alone, although I can say that the ordinance specifically prohibits a search simply for violation of that ordinance," Raymond wrote.

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