Saint Paul, MN Public Conduct: Loitering Rules (2026)

Saint Paul Legislative Code § 280.06, carried over from the 1956 Code § 438.06, prohibits loitering about the streets after midnight combined with lying in wait or concealment, or consorting with thieves, prostitutes, or other "questionable characters." It sits in Chapter 280 (Certain Miscellaneous Misdemeanors) alongside companion offenses such as § 280.01 lurking with intent to commit mischief or theft, § 280.05 trespassing, and § 280.07 sleeping or hiding in box cars and barns, the drafters treated late-night loitering as one strand of a broader nuisance-and-suspicious-conduct chapter rather than a stand-alone anti-vagrancy law.

A separate and more narrowly drawn provision, § 272.03 in Chapter 272 (Solicitation to Vice), bars loitering or lurking "with intent to solicit for the purpose of prostitution, distributing illegal narcotics or any other act prohibited by law," and §§ 272.04–272.05 list factual circumstances, repeated beckoning to passersby, acting as a lookout, furtive exchanges of currency, officers may use to prove that intent. Chapter 280 has no penalty clause of its own, so a § 280.06 violation defaults to the citywide general penalty at § 1.05: a misdemeanor punishable by up to a $1,000 fine, 90 days in jail, or both.

Saint Paul police make these stops, and prosecution runs through the city attorney's office in Ramsey County District Court. Because the operative language, "lie in wait or concealment" and "consort with thieves, prostitutes or other questionable characters", is vague by modern standards, officers in practice tend to pair a § 280.06 stop with an articulable companion offense such as trespassing (§ 280.05) or the vice-loitering statute rather than charge it alone.