Sometimes a bad guy’s choice of wardrobe will work against him — much to the pleasure of law enforcement. A few cases in point: Wanda, an insurance company data processor, leaves work at 5 p.m. and as she walks toward her car a young teen runs up behind her. The kid points at her purse saying, "I need that!"

Wanda screams as the kid snatches her purse and takes off running. As the purse snatcher reaches a fence at the edge of the parking lot he has trouble climbing the fence because his "low slung" pants keep tripping him up.

With Wanda’s screams in the background, the kid decides he needs to get away more than he needs the purse, so he drops the purse, hikes up his pants and vaults over the fence. Wanda gets her purse back with nothing missing.

In another case a woman is walking on the second floor of a shopping mall when a teen runs up behind her, grabs her purse and heads for the escalator. As he runs down the moving staircase his sagging pants and floppy sneakers (no laces) trip him up and he rolls, head over heels, down the last dozen steps.

The purse is recovered by a mall security officer and the perp is captured and arrested by an off-duty cop who witnessed the whole incident.

In yet another case, a teen with a gun tries to vault over the counter of a Subway shop, but his baggy pants wouldn’t let him. He comes crashing down on the tile floor.

Running to get away from pursuing deputies, the kid tries to vault a wire fence but his loose pants got hung up on the top wire. He hangs there helplessly until deputies cut him loose and carted him off to jail.

I tell my kids not to wear baggy pants, even if they seem "stylish" by today’s standards. The fad began as imitations of beltless, baggy pants worn by prison inmates. Some kids thought that look was "cool." If these would-be street thugs want to wear imitation prison pants — that’s fine. It makes them easy to catch. But when we catch ‘em, they’ll get to wear the real thing.