Fort Lauderdale, FL Public Conduct: Aggressive Panhandling (2026)

Sec. 16-71 defines disorderly conduct as any act that tends to create public danger, alarm, disorder or nuisance, and it lists eight specific ways a person commits the offense knowingly. Subsection (b)(3) is the panhandling clause: it is unlawful to go about begging or panhandling, or to stand, loiter, or stroll about any place in the city waiting or seeking to obtain money or other valuable thing from others by trick or fraud, or to aid or assist another person in violating this section. The same section also criminalizes fighting or violent behavior, addressing fighting words or threats including to a police officer, trespass, and hindering or annoying passersby on a street, sidewalk or crosswalk, so a panhandling charge sits alongside these more overtly aggressive behaviors under one umbrella offense.

The ordinance carves out an express exception for peaceful picketing, public speaking, or other constitutionally protected speech that does not otherwise break the law, at subsection (d). The city commission separately noted in subsection (e) that a police officer can be the victim of any offense charged under this section, which covers the fighting-words and threats clauses that officers most often invoke on patrol. S. Sec. 011, is flagged as a related state law that police can charge alongside or instead of the city ordinance.