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Pissing in Public in Seattle
I’ve been made privy to a rather peculiar rumor about Seattle. According to my sources, Seattle is very tough on public urination. Supposedly if you’re caught pissing out the night’s beer by police, they can and will charge you with public nudity rather than public urination. And the kicker is that you allegedly gain low-level sex offender status for doing so. Which, as far as I know, is something that follows you rather viciously on your permanent record…
Granted, this may be just an urban myth. I heard it from a friend and I’m not sure where he heard it. I mentioned it to somebody else, and they said they’d heard similar as well. That kind of hearsay obviously doesn’t prove much of anything though.
The only thing similar I could find online on the subject was this clip from the Stranger, a “hip” local rag:
1993 - “Public Urination” (Passed 8-0 by city council): This law increased the penalty for peeing in public, so now, rather than issuing a simple citation and sending a urinator on his or her way, the police can charge the offender with a misdemeanor. That means arrests, fines, and possibly even jail time. Critics wonder where homeless people are supposed to “go.”
Speaking of homeless people, that reminds me of another rumor somebody told me: allegedly, Seattle was (or possibly still is) operating deals with other cities and regions where they send us their homeless people, along with some money for our trouble. This person said something about how a place in Florida even went so far as to put a bunch of homeless people on a bus bound for here.
Again, who knows if any of this is true. I’d be curious to hear from other Seattlites (is that even the right word?) if they’ve ever heard either of these rumors, or if they can back up or debunk any of them with cold hard facts. I’m also curious about similar heavy-handed public urination penalties in other cities, if you know anything about them. Much obliged.
February 21st, 2006 at 1:49 am
Ahh spare us from the words “urban myth,” the most over used saying ever in the 90’s. The utter boredom of those two words… And why would that be a peculiar rumor, all you have to do is look it up under the laws and city ordinances of seattle, to find out if it is true. Typical occultist, avoiding the intelligent and logical method to lazy’in with the “mystique” of the urban myth.
And oh yeah, maybe that Seattle “Miracle water” might actually be bottle of public urination, have you ever wondered? Now that would make a great urban myth.
February 21st, 2006 at 2:10 am
Roy, I’d love it if you would look up the city ordinance for me, because I’m so lazy.
February 21st, 2006 at 2:49 am
I think it is simply urban myth that public urination can give you sex offender status unless it can be proven that you were, I sunno, pissing on someone. Here in STL they are trying to pass a law specifically for public urination rather than it being a “lewd and undecent behavior” violation, some people say the penalties would go up for it, some people say they would go down
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/neigh...3B58BFCE862570FF007B63FB?OpenDocument
I think in some cities multiple violations of a lewd/indecent behavior type law can result in being named to a sex offender list, see reference here:
http://www.statenews.com/article.phtml?pk=28143
Urinetown anyone?
February 21st, 2006 at 2:51 am
so in otherwords, yes it appears that in some places public urination can get you on a sex offender list, though only as an unfortunate side effect of a three-strikes type law, not because that was actually the intent of the law (to equate the two) and that in many cities it seems there is a growing trend of separating it out into a separate offense
February 21st, 2006 at 9:49 am
I can’t speak for anywhere else, but here in Massachusetts that very thing happened to a good friend of mine on his first offense. He was in an alley peeing and a cop drove by, shined his spotlight down the alley and arrested my freind. Now he has to register as a sex offender. Not an “urban myth.”
February 21st, 2006 at 9:52 am
I work for a homeless shelter in a rural California county;one of the latest “trends” for dealing with the homeless is to put them on a bus going somewhere else. Our agency has done it several times; we send people back to their home states if they want to go.
Mayor Newsome of SF has a project called “Homeward bound” that does the same thing. Here is a recent article that mentions HB:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article....amp;hw=homeless&sn=009&sc=650
February 21st, 2006 at 11:13 am
Roy, ya you should drink that miracle urine water. It might help.
Take a great big steaming gulp.
February 21st, 2006 at 11:46 am
Hi Tim! I have lived in Seattle all my life, and have never heard any of these rumors, or anything like them at all. I do think public urination is very frowned upon in Seattle, but I don’t think anyone gets a sex offender status for it. That’s a bit silly.
I’m also pretty sure we don’t import homeless people - however Seattle has a long history of being the last stop for those “riding the rails”, and our extremely mild summers and winters have been known to attract large numbers of transient. Perhaps the peak of this was in the early 90’s. A documentary exmaining the “plight” of Seattl’es street kids was produced and aired around the country. Within the next few years Seattle had an explosion in street kids.
February 21st, 2006 at 12:18 pm
[…] d Bound
I wish I was… Got an interesting response to my recent item about homeless people being bussed off. R […]
February 22nd, 2006 at 10:21 pm
Funny, I read that as 1993 - “Public Urination” (Pissed 8-0 by city council)
February 23rd, 2006 at 9:36 pm
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