I know state and local laws may differ but I was wondering what kind of sentence a man (I doubt a woman could pull it off) who willingly pees on a police officer would get? Say someone pees on a police vehicle stopped at a light, then continues peeing on the officer’s lower pant area as s/he exits the vehicle.
Is it assault? One could argue it causes a mental trauma, if not physical harm (urine is sterile).
Or is it just annoying civil disobedience? One could argue it is peaceful and does not endanger anyone, by most definitions?
ps: I read a NYT article about an AIDS-infected homeless man who got a 15 year sentence for repeatedly trying to infect others (by spitting, biting) and the officer was his latest victim (nobody ever got infected iirc). I hope that’s what prompted this question in my mind
It would likely qualify as assault under most state laws.
Also battery, which is variously defined as an unwanted touching with the intention of bringing about harm or offense. “But I didn’t touch him!” Not a free pass. There are cases in which an “extension” of a person can serve as a proxy for flesh to flesh contact (the anecdote I remember was a case about the desegregation period when, in an attempt to keep a black dude from crashing the whites-only buffet, someone wrenched away the plate the black guy was holding, and the court found that even though he touched only the plate, it was effectively the same as touching the hand holding the plate for purposes of evaluating battery).
Public urination is also a criminal offense in many or all jurisdictions.
As is interfering with a peace officer in the proper performance of his duties.
I can say without fear of being wrong that if you piss on me during the course of my duties you will be charged with aggrevated assault. Assault because you’re fucking peeing on me and aggrevated assault because it is always upgraded when the assault is against a police officer. Not because I am aggrevated. Even though I would be quite aggrevated.
I doubt you’d get very far with that activity. If I were a cop and I saw what you were trying to do to me, I would pepper spray your wang, hoping against all hope that a bunch of the spray found it’s way into your pee-hole.
Public urination, indecent exposure, and assault on a police officer. That’s what an inebriated guy got charged with for peeing on a Cleveland cop from a second-floor balcony a few years ago, IIRC.
If you were HIV, it could also be considered assault with a deadly weapon. If your HIV-infected pee found it’s way into the cop’s body through an open sore, that would be attempted murder.
I knew a woman who made good money working in a prison. When I heard she quit, I asked her why. She told me she couldn’t handle it when people threw shit at you. It took me a while to realize that she meant “threw shit at you” and not “threw shit at you”.
It’s both under the common law definition (assault=basically menacing, battery=unwelcome touching). But some states by statute have used “assault” to refer to what might have been called at common law a battery, i.e., something involving touching. The penalty is still not a small one so it’s really just nomenclature.