Council to Vote on Urination Bill

Pittsburgh city council Tuesday will take a final vote on a bill that would create a public urination and defecation ordinance for the city of Pittsburgh. Some had tried to link the measure to the G20 but City Councilman Bruce Krauss says that is not the case. He says he and other council members launched a review of public safety ordinances and practices before the G20 was announced. He says police told him that they were hesitant to write public urination tickets because they city did not have an ordinance prohibiting the act. Instead police had to write citations using a state lewdness and disorderly conduct law. Officers say judges were reluctant to find people guilty on either charge.
Kraus says judges felt the act did not fit the definition of disorderly conduct and a lewdness verdict could result in a perpetrator having to register as a sex offender for the rest of his or her life. Krauss says while he does not condone public urination, he does not want to saddle a college student with that burden for such an act.
Krauss says when offices spent 4 months cracking down on public urination on the Southside they wrote 300 citations. Krauss says it is accepted in the public safety community that when you do such a “saturation effort” you catch about 10% of the perpetrators.
Krauss says the defecation piece was added because most laws in other cities have that act included in the law. He says he has also heard stories of public defecation on the Southside.
The measure was passed unanimously out of committee last week.