We’ve all been there. You’re far away from home and your bladder is being squeezed like a ketchup bottle and you’re desperately trying to keep the lid on. You clench, but somehow that just makes the squeezy feeling worse. If you’re lucky, you find a restaurant to slip into. If you’re unlucky, you end up as one of the 94,150 court summonses for public urination that were handed out in New York between January 2011 and July 2014.
It’s easy to read that statistic and think “damn right!” – especially if you don’t know that just three public toilets have been installed in New York City since 2008. Three new public toilets in a city of 8 million people (not counting tourists, who have bladders and bowels too). Three new public toilets to supplement the decrepit existing ones in public parks. Some of those park toilets are now out of service, many are closed for part of the year and only one in five have wheelchair access.
The alternative to public toilets is private ones. That’s a problem – relying on the kindness of strangers is one thing, but relying on the kindness of New York small business owners is something else. In moments of despair, I’ve had to put on that toilet charm – the sweet smile, the “excuse me, I’m so sorry, is it ok if I just…?” I’m one of the lucky ones, though, because if the manager insists that only customers can use the facilities, I have enough money to buy an unwanted drink. Not everyone has that advantage.
Often, bigger corporations don’t care so much about who uses their restrooms, but since when did Starbucks and McDonald’s become the official provider of places to pee? Leaving it to private businesses to adjudicate basic sanitation rights is perverse. Especially when it’s the state that is meting out penalties to those who do pee publicly.
It’s a relief to read that as of 7 March, public urination no longer carries the possibility of a criminal charge in New York. But summonses can still be issued by law enforcement – and they regularly are. Public urination (referred to in the law as “littering – liquids” or “offensive matter in street/public place”) has been the third-most common violation for which summons were issued by the New York police department. And it’s grown – from 25,816 summonses for public urination in 2003 (which accounted for 5% of all charges) to 36,717 in 2013 (which made up 9% of all charges).
The most likely outcome is a guilty verdict as well as a $50 fine. (Which isn’t so bad if you can spare $50 – but if you could spare $50, you could probably also have avoided the fine in the first place by paying for a sandwich + toilet meal deal.) And it’s not just New York. Urinating in public is a crime in every state, although the penalties vary widely. In at least 13 states, urinating in public can land you on the sex offender list. (Two limit registration to those who committed the act in view of a minor.)
An online database publishes the names and addresses of everyone who has had a ticket issued for public urination in New York public parks (it contains thousands of names). This public shaming list is compiled by various city agencies, but I won’t link to it here – if you’re interested in Googling whether some unlucky person you know has been caught out, I’d ask you to pause for a moment. Can you honestly say you’ve never peed in public? If so, you’re in the minority: 71% of men and 36% of women admit to urinating in a bush or tree at least once in their lives.
They’re not all drunk. That database includes the time that the tickets were issued – most violations occurred between 8am and 6pm. No doubt some of those individuals were homeless New Yorkers who struggle with alcoholism. But they don’t have any less of a right to public toilet access – especially seeing as New York’s homeless people have much less luck when left to the mercy of cafe managers.
None of this is to say that public urination is acceptable. I’ve seen more whizzing wangs in the wild than I care to remember – and it’s an especially unpleasant sight when you’re alone late at night. We should be prosecuting individuals who don’t make use of public toilets. But if those public toilets don’t exist, handing out fines and naming names is completely unacceptable.
