Happy St. Patrick's Day: You Won't Be Arrested for Public Urination in NYC

For those us not planning on hitting up a shitty bar in Manhattan, drinking to excess in the streets, and adorning our faces with shamrock temporary tattoos, March 17 marks a distressing day. Regardless, St. Patrick's Day is upon us—and for those who are celebrating, the New York police department and the Manhattan district attorney's office have some good news.

Earlier this month the two agencies announced a joint initiative to ease the penalty for "quality of life violations" in Manhattan. Infractions for low-level "crimes" like public consumption of alcohol, public urination, and riding a bike on the sidewalk will no longer be subject to arrest. According to a press release from the district attorney's office, the initiative "will enable the NYPD to devote its resources to investigating serious crimes, while further reducing the backlog of cases in Criminal Court. The issuance of summonses instead of arrests is expected to result in the diversion of approximately 10,000 arrests that would be prosecuted in Manhattan Criminal Court."

While this is a win for everyone who was planning on forgoing the bathroom line at the bar and peeing on the curb tonight, this change in policy also marks a small effort away from "broken windows" policing, or the theory that harsh penalties against minor crimes would prevent larger ones.

"This is a positive step," Michael Sisitzky, a policy counsel at the NYCLU, told Broadly. However, Sisitzky emphasized that the scope of the change is narrow. "Usually a police officer will only make an arrest for a low-level violation when someone has an outstanding warrant, so this policy only affects those people."

There's also a troublingly vague clause appended to the district attorney's announcement: "Should an NYPD officer determine that the public is best served by arresting an individual who would ordinarily receive a criminal summons, that officer will still have the option to do so."

Summonses aren't much of a reprieve from arrest, either. According to the NYCLU, "the majority of summonses still require an appearance in New York City Criminal Court." (The exception being people who receive summonses for public urination and drinking in public. They have the option of pleading guilty and sending a check by mail to cover the fine.) And historically, it has not been the mostly white, drunken revelers of St. Paddy's who have been subject to the enforcement of quality of life violations, but people of color who are systematically targeted. Data from the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) shows that 81 percent of people who received summons for petty infractions were black and Hispanic.

Sisitzky added that since the policy is only in affect in Manhattan, it ignores the outer boroughs, where a policy like this could positively impact people of color the most. In 2014, the New York Daily News reported that in East Harlem North, a precinct with a population that is 90 percent black and Hispanic, there were 18 summonses per 100 residents. Areas in the Bronx, which is 98 percent black and Hispanic, had similarly high rates of summonses for minor infractions.

"We support full summons court reform," Siszky said. The NYCLU is currently urging for the passage of the Criminal Justice Reform Act, which would in part help divert the millions of people who receive summonses each year for quality of life violations that could barely be considered crimes, away from the criminal justice system.

"Put simply, public consumption of alcohol, littering, public urination, unreasonable noise, and most parks offenses are not criminal acts," the NYCLU states. "No New Yorker should ever spend time in jail for carrying an open container or for being present in a park after closing hours."