Burleson, TX Public Conduct: Aggressive Panhandling (2026)

Section 14-405 of the Burleson Code of Ordinances, titled solicitation, sales, and panhandling in certain locations, is the City of Burleson's rule on asking drivers for money or business from the street. Subsection (a) makes it an offense for a person to stand on or in any manner occupy a roadway, median, traffic island, or public right-of-way in the city for any of four purposes directed at the occupants of a vehicle: to solicit or attempt to solicit for an exchange, to sell or offer for sale any merchandise or service, to distribute or attempt to distribute any object, or to panhandle.

Subsection (b) supplies a defense to prosecution when, at the time of the solicitation, offer, distribution, or panhandle, the vehicle occupants occupied a lawfully parked vehicle. The section prints no similar defense for occupants of a moving vehicle or traffic stopped at an intersection. Subsection (c) fixes the moment of the offense: it occurs when the offer, solicitation, distribution or panhandle is made, regardless of whether a transaction is completed, so no money or goods need change hands. Subsection (d) defines roadway as that portion of a street or highway designed, improved or ordinarily used for vehicular travel, delineated by curbs, edge lines or the edge of pavement as the section describes it.

The history note shows the section was amended by Ord. No. CSO#1133-09-2019 on 10-7-2019. A companion rule in § 14-404 separately bars selling or taking orders on streets, rights-of-way, medians and sidewalks, and § 14-403 limits door-to-door solicitation by hour and day. Together these sections make roadway and median solicitation the most tightly restricted form of street-level asking in the City of Burleson.