Palm Desert, CA Public Conduct: Loitering Rules (2026)

Palm Desert's loitering rules are written for its parks and recreation areas, not for streets generally. Section 11.01.080 opens with "Within the limits of any public park or recreation area of the city, no person shall," and subsection (R) adds "remain, stay or loiter therein between the hours of eleven p.m. and dawn of the following day." Two exceptions are printed: attending a gathering or meeting for which a permit has been issued or which the city department of community services sponsors or conducts, and lawfully lodging, camping or otherwise remaining overnight at a place especially designated and provided for that purpose. If camping is involved, the chief of police must have cleared the place for it. It works alongside the park curfew in § 11.01.020.

The second rule, § 11.01.100, targets obstruction. No person can assemble, collect or gather together in any walk, driveway, passageway or pathway in a park, or in other places set apart for the travel of persons or vehicles through a park or recreation area, or occupy the same so that free passage by persons or vehicles is obstructed in any unreasonable manner. The test is unreasonable obstruction, so a brief pause on a path is not the target; blocking passage is.

Related conduct rules sit in the same section. Subsection (L) bars riotous, offensive, threatening or indecent conduct or abusive, threatening, profane or indecent language, subsection (M) bars unreasonable disturbance of any picnic, meeting, service, concert, exercise or exhibition, and subsection (H) bars camping or lodging at any time except at a designated place. Overnight sleeping, defined as sleeping between sunset and sunrise, is a defined term in § 11.01.010.

Enforcement runs through § 11.01.050. The city manager, director of public works, their designees and park attendants can eject and expel any violator, and a peace officer can eject instead of arresting or citing. An ejected person who refuses to leave, or who returns to the same park, recreation area or building during that calendar day without permission, commits a further violation. Chapter 11.01 does not apply to public officers, employees or peace officers acting within the scope of public business (§ 11.01.040).