Police Chief Puts Ban on Ogling Women

1910

Ft. Wayne Chief of Police Orders Arrest of All Offenders

FT. WAYNE, Ind. -- Chief of Police W. F. Borgman has issued a stringent order against ogling women and audibly commenting on them on the streets by young idlers of the city. Borgman declares that this practice has reached alarming proportions. The police are to arrest all offenders.

—Indianapolis Star, Indianapolis, Jan. 8, 1910, p. 9.


1936

Anti-Ogling Ordinance Goes Goo-Goo

LOS ANGELES, March 18. -- It sounds simple enough, to come up with an anti-ogling ordinance to shield the women of this city from the ogling eyes of men, but one such proposed law collapsed tonight due to a technicality.

The ordinance as proposed would have made it a crime for "two or more men or boys 14 years of age or over to ogle women in public places," but it was revealed to have no provision for protecting men and boys from women who also might ogle.

A legal opinion from City Attorney Ray Chesebro declared the law to be "rank discrimination," and added that it would be hard to enforce, and there would be "the virtual impossibility of getting a jury of men who have not themselves ogled at one time or another."

The city council dropped the law. It had been designed as the cornerstone of a set of municipal "blue laws," offered by Councilman G. Vernon Bennett, in an effort to make Los Angeles "a fit place to live in."

The language defining legal ogling went like this: "To view with amorous or inviting glance." The city attorney's opinion said that an anti-ogling law would not be illegal in itself, were it not discriminatory. "Ogling is ogling. If it is reprehensible for men and boys, it is also reprehensible for the female. There should be no sex in an anti-ogling law."

Other difficulties were noted. The city attorney's opinion raised the question, "Who is to judge when ogling is indecent? A policeman who does not himself ogle, may make arrests readily. One who ogles may be more tolerant." There was also this practical difficulty in enforcement: What if a man gets a bug in his eye? If he ogling or simply digging out the bug?

Despite this setback, Councilman Bennett intends to carry on his campaign to render Los Angeles more moral.

—Written 2007 from original article of 1936.