If you get caught peeing in public by a police officer and he gives you an “Indecent Exposure” charge… are you considered a sex offender?
So for peeing in public, you are now a blue dot on “Megan’s Law”. Along with the child molestors, rapists,etc?
Is this true?
It’s true in some cases, depends on the state. I believe the idea is that some people who flash will claim they were just peeing. So to avoid that they just assume if you pee you really wanted to expose yourself.
As someone who considers urination (a) necessary and (b) non-sexual, I don’t get this idea. For one thing, wouldn’t the presence or absence of urine aid officers in determining the intent of the penis-exposer?
If a child were to witness a grown man urinating outdoors without any intent on his part to commit a lewd act, would contemporary Americans consider it a sexual crime? Customary practices regarding nudity in all-male environments (locker rooms, public restrooms) have changed drastically since I was a kid in the 1970s / 1980s, and I would not consider that harmful to either a boy or a girl, but I don’t have my finger on the zeitgeist, and (this is the GQ part) I don’t know how the law addressed it either a generation ago or now.
Related, public open urinals in London.
http://www.urilift.com/references-urilift-england-london.php
I know in NC there was a case of a guy getting caught peeing but he was not labeled a sex offender. Not sure if it was because nobody else was around or if NC does not automatically use the sex offender label.
In my jurisdiction, no, unless you’re unable to convince a cop, prosecutor, judge or jury that you were merely taking a whiz. indecent exposure requires an intent to gratify the sexual desires of the exposer, exposee, or some third party, and is a class B misdemeanor; two convictions for indecent exposure will require the offender to register as a sex offender for ten years. Urinating in public with no intent of sexual gratification will get you a citation for disorderly conduct, a class C misdemeanor, which is basically the same level of offense as a seat belt violation. Disorderly conduct is not a sex offense and doesn’t require sex offender registration.
Yes, if you are doing it through the fence of a school playground at break-time.
Well dang, Jimmy Carter’s brother Billy would be considered a Sex Offender these days. He had a few beers and got off a plane with a full bladder. Took a piss on the runway and got caught.
I’d say it depends on the circumstances, if the guy is at least trying to conceal himself a bit, as in doing it in a corner, against a wall or behind some bushes, or is he doing it openly where anyone looking in his general direction is going to see his genitals.
There was an incident here in Ottawaa few years ago where some guys were photographed peeing in public. According to the news report at the time, I understand that they were doing it with their backs to the crowd, but against a monument in a very public place.
Apparently, he was not charged.
In my opinion, they should have been.
Charged with vandalism or descecrating the National War Memorial or something, but not a sex crime.
Vandalizing a monument is different than using a tree. Ozzy Osbourne got arrested for peeing on the Alamo in San Antonio. That was back in 1982. He was so wasted that he didn’t realize what he was aiming at.
Forgot to add: indecency with a child by exposure is a third degree felony rather than a class B misdemeanor, and a second sex offense conviction after that will require registration for life; still, the statute requires an intent of sexual gratification which merely relieving yourself won’t cut (provided that the officer/prosecutor/judge/jury believes you).
Hell, I stayed near the Alamo a few years back and had no idea what it was until I went up and read the signs and stuff. I didn’t expect it to be so small and right in the middle of the city like that!
http://www.cfcamerica.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=214:lawmakers-public-urination-shouldnt-lead-to-sex-offender-status&catid=3:news&Itemid=96 In some jurisdictions you are put on the sex offender lists and that list does not distinguish you from a molester.
The municipalities for both the department I retired from and the one I work for now part-time have specific ordinances against urinating in public. The report template includes observations that the persons genitals were exposed, the person was in a certain position, the person did not appear to be sexual gratifying him/herself, and the observation of fluid streaming or remaining. (this is a generic explanation of whats on the report form. It’s a little more complex than this).
This is an ordinance violation punishable by a citation with a fine. It’s not a crime and jail time cannot be sentenced. Conviction does not make one a sex offender.
Doing the math I’m confident I’ve nabbed at least 1000 pissers in my career. I shit you not. (shitting in public is a different charge!:D)
YOU MIGHT WANT TO TAKE A CLOSE LOOK
at the cover of the 1971 album by the Who, Who’s Next
Somehow i doubt they just used a squirt gun against the wall to get that look
I have spoken about my friend several times before in other threads that this happened to. It wasn’t permanent, but he was on the list for years and had to have the metal sign in his yard.
Could be worse. There was a fellow in Boston who was labelled a sex offender because his underage girlfriend’s parents pressed charges. (IIRC, there was some discussion whether 16yo Spears’ boyfriend would be charged too - apparently if he was past his 18th birthday when it happened, he could be.)
So, that guy was put on the sex offenders list. Some sicko from Nova Scotia decided to play vigilante, and took a trip to Boston, got a gun. He looked up the names of registered sex offenders, and went knocking on doors. He killed 2 or 3 before the cops closed in and he shot himself.
All for being a bit older than the girlfriend.
This is the “there otta be a law” problem. There are plenty of laws to deal with the problem, but saying “enforce the laws we got” is not good politics. Passing a new law to crack down on the same thing that is already illegal is easier and gets more headlines. Since it takes over a year usually to finish any court case, by the time people realize “hmmm, this isn’t working; it wasn’t a good idea” - they forget who came up with the law and why.
A law that does not distinguish between predators and peers is stupid, but nobody said politicians were smart. The total IQ of a committee is the IQ of the lowest member divided by the number of people on the committee.
I’ve always found the public urination = sex offender thing highly idiotic, not to mention an aggregious overreaction. I don’t really believe that a flash of pubes at even a kid is harmful, since they see their own stuff presumably everytime they go to the bathroom. It’s annoying and gross, but to me, not criminal and certainly not worthy of being a sex crime
Extremely unlikely.
This hysteria appears multiple places on the Internet, but all seem traceable to one source: a Human Rights Watch report. However, as GFactor and I discovered:
[quote]
In the preceding report, I refer to a Human Rights Watch white paper that cites state statutes and claims, “[a]t least 13 states require [sex offender] registration for public urination; of those, two limit registration to those who committed the act in view of a minor.” The report indeed says that. But when fellow SDSAB staff lawyer Bricker and I checked the cites, we concluded that no more than five states’ laws could possibly be construed to require registration for someone convicted of peeing in public, and of those, four require multiple convictions before registration is required. To sum up:
[ol]
[li]Five of the states listed have statutes that might require registration; [/li][li]It’s unlikely even in those states; [/li][li]Four of those states wouldn’t require registration for a first offense – they only require repeat offenders to register. [/li][/quote]
[/ol]
The Staff Report in question.