Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito (left) is moving forward with a controversial plan to decriminalize such offenses as urinating in public — part of an effort to rollback on criminal offenses used by police to stop and detain suspects under the “broken windows” approach of Police Commissioner Bill Bratton. Critics have charged that the murder rate and other crimes are already up under Mayor Bill de Blasio due to the tensions with police and new policies against stop and frisk maneuvers.
Mark-Viverito appears to believe that criminalizing urination is only a pretext for police stops or a minor offense for the city. Most citizens are likely to disagree. First, there are the health issues of human waste in the street. Second, there are the economic issues of a major tourism location that will now treat urination as a minor matter subject to a summons, which is unlikely to be honored. Finally, given the large number of homeless people and drinkers in New York, the decriminalization of this offense could trigger a urine tsunami as Mark-Viverito removes the threat of arrest.
Mark-Viverito also wants to decriminalize public consumption of alcohol and jumping subway turnstiles. Those are likely to also result in behavorial changes that are inimical for the city. The subway jumping is particularly troubling for a city struggling with its budget issues. If people are seen as walking away when caught, it is likely to encourage greater numbers of jumpers with both budgetary and safety implications for the system. Yet, there is an argument to make on this crime and, in my view, it is a closer question than the public urination decriminalization effort of Mark-Viverito.
The other decriminalized offenses of riding a bike on a sidewalk, failure to obey a park sign, or being in a park after dark are more debatable issues.
I am honestly mystified why politicians like Mark-Viverito would see public urination as something for decriminalization with such obvious negative implications for the city. As many on this blog know, I have been a long advocate for decriminalization of many offenses and a critic of the over-criminalization of America. However, these two offenses seem legitimately criminal. Turnstile jumping is a form of theft that, in the aggregate, costs the city greatly. It also involves people leaping over turnstiles in crowded lines or spaces. Public urination is particularly costs for a city that needs to maintain a tourism base and creates unhealthy walking areas for citizens.
The New York Post was its usual subtle self on its view of the change:
What do you think?
Source: New York Post
Gosh nobody has suggested that part of the problem is a lack of facilities for the down and out. A humane society would not make it so urinating in the street is the only alternative. It is possible to build and maintain self-cleaning public toilets (San Francisco and Portland OR have done this.) This simple and inexpensive act would greatly reduce the use of streets as a place to urinate and even deficate. Instead there is cry after cry in these blog responses to use police power to deal with behavior that obviously should not be criminal.
However, just decriminalizing without providing a solution to the problem is pretty idiotic.
Karen S
Just imagine what the effect of decriminalizing these actions would be. You think you saw a lot of used condoms and discarded needles before, wait until all efforts to suppress this conduct are lifted and you will witness a tidal wave. The bleeding-heart-do-gooders falsely believe that if only these people had access to a roof over their heads and an opportunity to work, they would gladly jump at the chance to take them. The sad truth is that most street people are drug/alcohol addicts and/or mentally ill, who will usually shun the opportunity of a stable home and will steadfastly refuse to work. The laws are created to protect the rest of society from being pulled into their death spiral.
Nick – you are completely right.
Policies that combat Broken Window Syndrome and proactive policing actually work and make cities safer for everyone. Liberal polices that break down those system make those neighborhoods less safe for the very people they say they are trying to help. As is typical.
So what I’m trying to say is that when the city stopped cracking down on the homeless, making them stay at shelters and keeping them off the street, they descended en masse, pooping and peeing and using drugs and leaving condoms and needles all over the place.
Cause. Effect.
So since that doesn’t work, either, we need a different approach.
Argh. Auto correct! “Crime wave” not “crime way”.
Obviously the loss of proactive policing has accompanied a crime way. That’s why they developed proactive policing. That’s why the DA Marilyn Mosby sent a letter to her police requiring and directing them to act aggressively against the drug dealers on the very corner where Freddie Gray was arrested.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/blog/bs-md-ci-mosby-email-20150609-story.html#page=1
Also, human waste presents a public health concern. Obviously. Here in Liberal Mecca So Cal, we have a great many homeless people drawn by the weather. A great many are drug addicts and/or mentally ill. There are many homeless people living in the neighborhood where my husband has his shop. He had to remove his hose bib because they were pooping in his driveway and then pushing their butts up against the hose bib to wash off. So when he or one of his guys went to use the spigot there would be feces all over it. So he took the whole thing off. The building would stink of urine. Condoms would be in the street or the back of work trucks. Once a prostitute and her pimp dragged a couch to the curb and she would service customers right there all night. He called the cops again and again but their hands were tied. It’s a sanctuary city for the homeless. He called the city and was told they take a compassionate view on the homeless. He called the shelters who would send representatives out to plead with them to come with them to get a roof over their heads, but every single one of them turned them down. It’s so hard to get the mentally ill or drug addicts help. And there are serious safety concerns at many shelters. It’s a mess. He had to walk all the secretaries out to their cars because it was getting so dangerous. After the prostitute started actually having sex on the couch by the street for a few weeks, the police were finally permitted to roust everyone else. They’ve slowly trickled back, but it’s not as bad yet.
One of my previous jobs was also in a high density homeless area. Homeless guys with sores from being meth addicts would approach me every time I got out of my car, but no one was aggressive.
Anyone who does not believe that homeless can be a danger need to investigate their local homeless shelter. A great many of them are considered unsafe, and have high crime and drug use. The homeless people who are not a danger are prey for those who are. It’s especially tragic when a family becomes homeless, because it is so dangerous on the streets.
The only thing that I would support is making public urination not a sex crime. It bothers me that people who get caught urinating on the street have to register as sex offenders. Clearly it’s a crime, but not a sex crime.
I do not know any other way to stop pubic urination than to make it criminal. If there’s another way, I would be sincerely interested to hear about it. Obviously, a summon would not work for the homeless people.
Nick
@11:47 am. Well said. You nailed it.
I see that all have opinios unfetterred by FACTS. Before one has an opinion I wish that we would get some statistics on how many people were arrested and jailed for these offenses. As for crimes, these are slight ones unlike DUI and other crimes. Then we need to know how many prisoners in jail are there for such crimes and the length and cost of such incarceration. Is there excess space in the jails? How much ,money does that bring in? In short it is time to ask some questions and be informed before any person gets to have an opinion, but since most of the posts are from conservatives who want to lock up any person they hate, this will be a vain hope
Airhead bimbos like this, totally out of touch and lacking any clue as to how these very laws have succeeded in creating a safer, cleaner and more hospitable NYC, will surely descend the city back to the crime-ridden days, before Giuliani. Instead of having dimwits, like this, set policy, why not have experts, who grasp the true consequences of this turnaround in criminalization, weigh in on the expected consequences? JT’s assertion that decriminalizing the riding of bikes on the city’s sidewalks is debatable? Why is that? Ever see just how jam packed and crowded the NYC sidewalks are with pedestrians? Why, pray tell, is that not just as much of a safety issue, along with public urination? Real world experience tells one that it is.
I’m amazed that people don’t understand what this is all about. This is an anti-Giuliani move. Giuliani took back this great city from the thugs who controlled it under “progressive” mayors like Dinkins. My family lived a 2 hour drive from NYC. Back in the 80’s and early 90’s I would not take my wife and children to NYC. It was dangerous and depraved. We always took our kids to big cities. But not NYC back then. We would go to Boston instead. By the mid-late 90’s Rudy cleaned up the city. It is PROVEN that if you let stuff like this pissing be OK, then the city becomes a thunderdome. The “Broken Window approach worked. We then started taking our kids to NYC when we visited family out east. it’s incredible to me just how much recent history people either don’t know, or ignore. DiBlasio is Dinkins on steroids.
What’s next? Sexual Activity with anyone out in the public squares, or subways? Good idea for this “Crappy, Overrated City”—Mayor DeBias-O, has done such a wonderful job or making this place even MORE dangerous with his and Bloomberg’s stupidity.
By all means turn the city streets into a urinal. At least do the decent thing and give them a nice urinal target to aim at. If you’re going to make it ‘legal’ to jump the turnstile then you should consider removing them altogether before someone gets hurt and sues the city.
Poop map of San Francisco. Step carefully
http://www.inman.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Poop-map.png
The US is the most criminalized country in the world. This stems from the spineless politicians who should war on this and war on that resulting in hundreds of thousands of lives ruined and people being incarcerated sometimes for their entire lives. There are crimes and then there are offenses. It seems that the knee jerk reaction in the US is to stop the problem with the big stick regardless of the problem. If someone urinates in public to the extent that it can be viewed as a crime then they can surely be charged with any number of crimes. For the most part it is an embarrassment to the country not the urinator.
I love her idea! I think they decriminalize taking a “No. 2” in public, too. Then they could call New York, The Big Crapple!
Dog finds nice fire hydrant. Now I got to go. 2 cups of coffee in, 5 cups out. Same place. Time to catch a subway downtown to WTC. Fair beater express its called. Ride for free.
Unbelievable. Jerks like this will do everything they can to restore those wonderful days of pre-Rudy NYC. Maybe idiots like this woman just do not believe stories about NYC in, e.g., 1980.
How about a group of characters go around and urinate in front of her door, or her car, or where kids in her neighborhood play. Then the police can come, give the urinaters tickets, and leave.
I’m sure those tickets will get paid, eh?
People don’t urinate in public unless there is no other choice or unless they are so destitute they simply don’t care. There is not need to criminalize this. This is something that can be dealt with on a case by case basis: a homeless person can be dealt with in any number of ways, a guy out drinking can be dealt with under intoxication laws, some one who is caught too far from a toilet and pops into an alley can be fined or given a warning.
The authorities should save the criminalization of people for criminals. This is one of the shames of America, the criminalization at the drop of a pin instead of dealing with the problem.
In my humble opinion, Turley has left the beam here by a mile.
Regarding turnstile jumping there should be an initial fine that cannot be avoided that will simply make this not worth the jump. Criminalizing this is also over kill. The point seems to be catching them. If you catch someone and they get fined $50.00 then they are likely not to do it again. Making them a criminal is absurd. You don’t get a criminal record for speeding.
Leave the laws the way they are and keep cities safe and sanitary. What is wrong with transporting these folks to a land of new opportunity to get themselves healthy and start new lives? How about Texas, Florida or even Mexico?
San Francisco has a bunch of these people needing to activate their pleas for hope. Consider the success story of Australia. Drugs might not have so much appeal if people have to earn the money to pay for those drugs the old fashioned way, i.e., earning it. Grumble!!!
San Francisco appears to have started cleaning up some of the encampments on the streets and parks of people who refuse to move into the shelters.
Instead of working on training cops to be less violent the rest of us will now have to deal with an even dirty and more dangerous city. But then who care certainly not the mayor or the City Council.
Walking down a side walk with bikes speeding by is already a problem not that there is no downside it can only get worse public urination isn’t just a tidiness issue it’s a public health issue. The City has stopped cleaning the sidewalks and streets and now this.
Thanks to the Mayor and his superficial bunch of Council members, those of us who can’t afford the $100 million pent houses in the sky will just deal.
It all depends on a number of things. I guess that Rickers Island is rather crowded, so this makes some sense Now if there are vacant cells there, then maybe not so much. The real question is how much of a difference these changes will make in people behavior. I hardly think that the homeless will now do more pissing in the street, or that Wall Street bankers will join them.