NYC Decriminalizes Pissing in Public
NY Post – New Yorkers should prepare for a loud, smelly summer.
As of Tuesday, scofflaws who commit certain quality-of-life violations — including urinating, boozing or blasting loud music in public — will get little more than a slap on the wrist.
The change is the result of the City Council’s controversial Criminal Justice Reform Act, which allows law breakers who’ve been cited for those and other low-level offenses to face justice in administrative hearings rather than in criminal court. …
Anyone on probation or parole caught violating the same laws will still receive a criminal summons. The same is true for anyone with two prior arrests, cops said.
But cops will not be able to write the criminal summons until they get a supervisor’s permission.
Officers will also have to back off of repeat offenders — at first. A person must rack up three civil summonses before they’ll get a criminal one for breaking the law a fourth time.
To me the most surprising part of this story is the use of the word “controversial” to describe the Reform Act. To me, controversial implies there are impassioned arguments being made on both sides. Gun ownership is controversial. Legalizing marijuana is controversial. Until now I didn’t realize there was a strong case being made by pro-pissing in the streets advocates fighting for the rights of smelly bums to whip their dicks out in public without being hassled by The Man.
I mean, I guess of all my fellow citizens I hate to see get caught up in gears of government bureaucracy, street pissers have been low on my list. I’ve been more worried about people who have to pull building permits. Small business owners dealing with regulations. Self-employeds who are forced to lose a day’s pay serving jury duty. When really I should have had more compassion for guys who have to sit around in a courtroom all morning just because the world is their urinal. My bad.
So well done, New York City Council. That’s how you answer a question no one asked. Sure, you’ve made it so a cop has to know a serial pisser’s entire criminal history and get an executive order from the President before he can arrest a guy who’s peeing on a subway platform. But at least said perp can get in and out of a clerk’s hearing and back doing what he loves in less time now. As Pericles of Athens so famously said, “All things good of this earth flow into the City because of the City’s greatness.” And there’s nothing like more piss flowing in your city streets to turn it into a utopia.