Dearborn Heights, MI Public Conduct: Loitering Rules (2026)

City Code § 20-162(a) defines loitering broadly as remaining idle in essentially one location, including spending time idly, being dilatory, lingering, staying, sauntering, delaying, standing around, or "hanging around," and defines a "public place" to include not just streets and parks but the front or immediate area of any store, shop, restaurant or tavern. Section 20-162(b) then sets three ways the conduct becomes unlawful: obstructing a public street, highway, sidewalk or building by hindering the free passage of vehicles or pedestrians after a police officer has told the person to move on; committing an act on a public street, sidewalk or building that obstructs free use of property or interferes with a lawfully conducted business fronting that space, again after being told to move on; or obstructing the entrance to a business establishment without lawful purpose and against the express wishes of the owner, lessee, managing agent, or person in charge.

The move-on requirement in the first two clauses means an officer's warning is a necessary trigger before those forms of loitering become a violation, while blocking a business entrance against the owner's wishes does not require a prior warning. The code's own state-law reference ties this section to Michigan's disorderly-persons statute, MCL 750.167, for certain loiterers.