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
Public outhouses might get trashed as someone above said. So holes in the sewer lids large enough to take the wee. Poop bags for the other duty. Holes in the bottom of chairs with poop bags ready. Poop bag can nearby.
Keep the poor in NYC though. Do not encourage them to migrate.
This violates equal protection under the law. What about people who are too old/fat/feeble to jump a turnstile? I guess they have to pay, while the young/swift/strong don’t. And public urination is much more easily done by men than women.
My wife has worked for so many manager over the years that she has gotten tired to telling them that ‘we tried that before and it didn’t work.’ Now she waits for the program to fall of its own accord and then mention that it had failed before.
What the CompStat audit reveals about the NYPD
Eterno has a special interest in the outside review of CompStat. He and Eli Silverman, a professor emeritus at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, helped ignite criticism over the way the NYPD compiles its crime data. In 2010, they released the results of a survey in which dozens of retired police officials complained that pressure from department brass prompted widespread statistical manipulation of CompStat data, specifically by downgrading reports of serious crimes to less serious offenses.
The outside audit released this week not only confirmed that such data manipulation takes place but found several weak points in the ways the department tracks and uncovers it.
“A close review of the NYPD’s statistics and analysis demonstrate that the misclassification of reports may have an appreciable effect on certain reported crime rates,” the report said.
http://www.thenewyorkworld.com/2013/07/03/compstat/
When there is an authoritarian NY mayor the NYPD downgrades serious crimes to less serious offenses.
When there is a not-so authoritarian NY mayor the NYPD upgrades less serious offenses into more serious crimes.
It isn’t the actual crime or offense that matters but who does the counting. Operating in this manner the NYPD has perfected the self-licking-ice-cream-cone for ever greater amounts of funding and lesser amounts of citizen oversight.
How convenient.
As a lifelong NY’er who has been around the proverbial block more times than he cares to remember the great majority of people publicly urinating in NYC are either drunk or mentally ill.
Drug/alcohol addiction, needles/condoms littering the ground, people urinating in public are all symptoms of societal decay due to failed social policies which in turn lead to a lack of educational/economic opportunities and/or proper medical facilities available to care for the mentally ill.
Passing more and more laws that criminalize greater and greater amounts of human behavior (whether you agree with it or not) is not a solution. Over criminalization serves to at first hide the symptoms of complex social problems by warehousing “offenders” and then over time the specious “solutions” themselves magnify the problems in a type of perverse feed-back-loop where the cost of criminalization outweighs societies ability to fund the “solutions”.
Helping the mentally ill, poverty stricken and uneducated masses who have all but been abandoned by various local/state/federal entities in inner city ghettos, Indian reservations, mid-west rust belt and Appalachia (etal) is a generational struggle that requires compassion, logic and a plan, not over criminalization which only serves to fill prisons and destroy families.
One of the best things about living where I do. In the back end of nowhere, according to some people here, is the fact that we do NOT have homeless people in our particular area. In the city about 80 miles away. Because the temperature, even in winter is not harsh and there are a lot of wooded areas for them to camp in the homeless are a rampant problem. The city encourages the homeless, to the dismay of many of the residents and to the dismay of the business owners where the bums/homeless/druggies/drunks/criminals hang out all day. It isn’t as if they don’t have somewhere to go. There are multiple organizations who have established shelters, halfway houses and provide all sorts of services to get people back on their feet. Some people do take advantage of the services and improve their lot. Then……There are those hardcore homeless who do NOT want to be improved or who are incapable.
In our area, the winters are too harsh. Sub zero temperatures for weeks at a time and no organized shelters. Miles between houses sometimes. It is HARD to be homeless in an area where you are subject to freezing and where people do NOT give handouts to individuals. Charities. Food Banks. Churches. Sure. But not to the stray bum at the post office or grocery store. Nope.Panhandling is not lucrative here. Like stray dogs, you don’t want to encourage them to hang around. You find a way to get them to a shelter and off of your property. So the bums move on to greener pastures. The truly homeless or mentally ill, do receive assistance and they also move to a place where there are more services and ways to get help and ways to get jobs.
It is good to live in bumfark Egypt.
There is only one small subsidized older motel for some section 8 types. The motel is owned and operated by a German woman who keeps a veeeeery tight reign on her ‘tenants’. She has them doing yard work, cleaning the area and will not stand for any disorderly conduct. Screw up and you are out! We love her.
bam and Karen, We have friends who live in NYC, Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn. Have more friends who live in Ct. and NJ and work in the city. One of them is conservative. The rest are liberal, from average to far left. They ALL say, albeit grudgingly, Giuliani made the city livable. Politicians don’t have to use mass transit, which is where you see the tenor of a big city.
Regarding the homeless. I agree, we need a solution. One of the big problems w/ the mentally ill homeless are the laws regarding commitment. But, even if we change the stupid laws, we need more GOOD facilities. Now, that’s something I would pay for. But, the key to taking back the city is not policing the homeless, it’s policing the hustlers, the snatch and grabs, the auto squeegee cleaners who “clean” your windshield while you’re stopped @ a light and then intimidate to get paid. Strong arm robbery. New York is a liberal city but they elected a tough, Republican mayor in Giuliani, the first Republican mayor since the early 70’s. And that 1970’s Mayor Lindsay was a quite liberal Republican, like Bloomberg. NYC is the toughest city in the US. A pansie can’t run it. We are seeing that clearly w/ DiBlasio,
Progressivism at its finest.
Big Fat Mike:
Did you get a chance to read my post about what public urination and defecation is actually like to experience by small business owners?
And here is another problem with putting up the public faculties. Since they are places to shoot up and service Johns, they attract a tidal wave of the homeless.
I’ve already described what this is like to experience.
If you owned a restaurant you would be filled with dread if they put one of these up next to your restaurant. How many of your customers would be willing to step over used heroin needles and around staggering drunk and high people to get in your door? My husband was unable to meet clients at his shop at all for safety and liability reasons until the homeless were finally (mostly) removed.
Would you be OK if this was by a school, and kids had to walk by needles and crack pipes and hookers servicing their customers? Because I can tell you from experience that is exactly what happens.
The answer is not to enable people to live on the street by making it easier or providing more facilities. The answer is to make it harder to live on the street and easier to live in a shelter or other facility. One thing I would like to see is increased security at shelters, but, boy, is that a tough job to fill. And perhaps have one facility for drug users and another drug free one for families.
And, yes, it is true that SF’s public toilets are now used as impromptu brothels and places to shoot up.
Drug addiction is a sad state to be in. Young people start using drugs “for fun” but no addict I’ve ever seen looks like he or she is having any fun.
bam bam:
“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.”
That’s exactly what happened. The city tried to take a more compassionate approach to our problem of homelessness. Instead of making people get off the street, they seemed to believe all that needed to happen was send reps from the local shelter and people would go there on their own.
The result of that is that when people were literally defecating all over the driveway to my husband’s business and peeing on their trucks, the cops’ hands were tied. They were prohibited from doing anything about it, because it was deemed inhumane. Local businesses really suffered and it was really getting unsafe. It took a prostitute literally having sex on the street for weeks for the cops to be permitted to move them out. I could not take our son to visit Daddy at work because it was too unsafe and God forbid he find a needle.
This is why I tire of Liberal policies. Every time they enact a new one it seems like we all get burned. But they never adjust their approach.
We do need a humane solution to the tides of homeless people here. One of which would include re-opening mental hospitals. But the major source of homelessness is simply drug addiction. Forced rehab does not work. I have no idea what to do with people who have become drug addicts and are on the street. I wish I did. It’s terrible to watch. But offer them a place at a homeless shelter or one of the free rehab centers and they just say no.
Some thread music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64mb_hUOb4g
I thought about the one with the lyrics, “Let your love flow, like a mountain stream”, but that was just too obvious!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
During the NYC Dinkins years, there was a police commissioner nick named “out of town brown”.
Riots, Manheim, rape, robbery, murder, where’s “out of town brown”? In Vegas. What goes on in Vegas, stays in Vegas.
Oh my! Well at least she is worth an Irish Poem!
Give Me A “P”!
An Irish Poem by Squeeky Fromm
There once was a girl named Melissa
Who wanted to let the bums pissa.
But alas, the poor fool
Went and slipped in a pool,
On a sidewalk. Too bad! We will missa!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
So. Big Fat Mike doesn’t think it is a big deal if people piss all over the place.
Lets get a bunch of homeless to pee all over his front door step for months at a time and see how you like the smell and the staining. After months of people using your building as a toilet you will decide it IS a big deal. when your walls begin to crumble from the urine.
Here is one solution 😀 Mildly NSFW
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/29/public-urination-surprise-shower-alley_n_3354271.html
If the solution regarding the homeless is to offer up safe, stable places to reside, and the homeless–either out of mental illness or defiance–refuse to avail themselves to those opportunities, who must pay the price? They often forego chances at rehabilitation, education, housing, medical treatment, etc., yet you expect them to be responsible enough to use public toilets? The public toilets are trashed and vandalized, just as much of public housing is trashed and vandalized. Those who don’t value and appreciate their own lives and health are expected to honor and respect the rights of others? A fantasy world. Opportunities, programs and facilities are offered, only to be rejected and destroyed. A generalization, to be sure, but true.
Evidence of discarded condoms shows that the subjects are listening to the handlers. Now if the condoms are not “used” then they have a problem up there. We certainly need more abortions there. I would have a de Blasio program of free condoms and free abortions. Pee where ya want but poop in the outhouse. Outdoor urinals would be a good thing.
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.
It has been done and has been noted that the homeless and drug users and prostitutes have trashed the facilities. They are a pig sty. Filthy mess with sh*t smeared on the walls and the toilets. Drug paraphernalia strewn everywhere. Disgusting and a health hazard.
Just putting up toilets doesn’t solve the problem when you have some (not all…but many) who are just on the level of animals and have no consideration for anyone else..
Stores, restaurants and other businesses have to keep the homeless from crapping on their premises, outside, on the steps and p*ssing on the entrances to their buildings. The filth. The smell. The disgusting habits. The business owners don’t DARE let them come inside and use the facilities. Who wants to clean up that sh*t! So….they close the restrooms to the public or only to PAYING customers.
You think the poop map in SF may be funny, but I can tell you it isn’t funny when you are trying to walk around piles of steaming excrement or in the part and don’t dare try to step off of a path. They crap right in the street. In the alleys. Under bushes in the public parks. Dog owners at least (mostly) pick up after their pets. These people just crap, spit and piss where ever they feel like and and move on.
Somehow I doubt that decriminalization of public urination will result in more of it.
It seems likely to me that those who can find a bathroom at home, at work, or at a business will use it. Those who cannot are going to go regardless of the law – there is after all a natural law at work here.
I would argue that the best way to deal with pubic urination is to make facilities widely available. As a practical matter widely and easily available facilities would also seem to be far less expensive than incarceration, not to mention requiring smaller, less intrusive government.
I also wonder how much of a threat is public urination?
From family doctor web site we have: “Body fluids such as tears, sweat, saliva, urine and vomit are not thought to carry blood-borne pathogens unless they are visibly contaminated with blood. (However, urine or fecal material may contain bacteria or infectious agents that are not considered blood-borne pathogens.)”
The question is how long do bacteria and other bio hazards remain dangerous after being expelled with urine. Perhaps an interested reader can give us some idea of the treat posed by urine.
@pdxbanana, the public toilets in SF are a mess. They’re supposed to be on timers and open automatically after a certain period but prostitutes and drug users have found ways to not only block them closed, but they seriously trash them so they’re unusable for regular folks who just need a place to relieve. The self-cleaning function just isn’t adequate.