A woman was on the beach with her friends when police received a complaint about their swimsuits. The woman demanded to know what law had been broken as they handcuffed her and led her to their patrol car. Do you see anything wrong with the swimsuit?
Sam Panda, a professional aerialist, was in South Carolina enjoying the sun and sand when cops arrived and arrested her. According to Sam, they did this because another woman didn’t like the way she looked in her swimsuit. A shocking video of the incident shows two police officers handcuffing Sam at Myrtle Beach after a caller reported her swimsuit to the authorities.
“A woman called the cops on me because of my bikini,” she wrote on Facebook when she shared a video of the incident. “That’s how this all started. Some Karen decided that my body was offensive to her and showed her child that her body could one day lead to her arrest.”
Sam insisted on seeing the law that indicated she couldn’t wear a bikini on the beach, and one of the cops promised to show her the regulation when they got back to their patrol car. “Why is it illegal to wear a bikini on the beach?” a man asked off camera, as Sam added, “I literally wear this every day.”
But when they arrived at the car, the officer read aloud an ordinance, which said that “it shall be unlawful for anyone to appear in the nude” on public beaches. “I’m not nude!” Sam protested. The officer responded that she was wearing a thong, which Sam insisted isn’t nudity. “You put me in handcuffs for being in a thong!” she said, begging the officer to release her.
The city of Myrtle Beach does, in fact, forbid thongs on the beach, despite the fact that the nudity statute read by the cops doesn’t appear to apply to Sam’s thong bikini. Section 14-83 of the city’s municipal code, passed in 1993, reads:
The word “buttocks” specifically disallows wearing thongs. People who broke the ordinance were initially given a warning to cover up before cops would issue a ticket, according to NBC affiliate WMBF. The City Council revised the policy in 2009, removing the need for warnings. “There’s been a law the last 16 years against thongs — period,” then-Mayor John Rhodes said at the time. “Is it a good thing? A bad thing? Well, it’s the law.”
