Bossier City, LA Public Conduct: Public Urination (2026)

Section 38-180 sits in Chapter 38, Article IV, Division 1 of the Code of Ordinances, the same division that criminalizes disorderly conduct, obscenity, and keeping a disorderly place. The city added the urination and defecation offense by Ordinance No. 159-2017 on December 5, 2017. The prohibition covers a broad list of locations: streets, gutters, sidewalks, alleys, driveways, and any other place near a street, alley, sidewalk, or place of public resort, so it reaches parking lots, riverfront walkways, and casino-district sidewalks along the Louisiana Boardwalk as well as ordinary residential streets.

There is no private-property carve-out and no permit or license process; the act itself, wherever it occurs in a covered location, is the violation. Enforcement is criminal rather than civil: the Bossier City Police Department issues the citation, and the matter is heard in Bossier City Court alongside the code's other Chapter 38 public-conduct offenses, including disturbing the peace under § 38-284 and spitting in public places under § 38-282, which carries a lighter $100 fine by comparison. Unlike the disorderly-place and obscenity sections nearby, § 38-180 requires no proof of intent to offend, only that the act occurred in a covered public location, making it a strict, single-element offense.

Because the ordinance sits in the criminal code chapter rather than the health and sanitation chapter, code enforcement and health officials play no role, only sworn police officers.