Florence County, SC Public Conduct: Public Urination (2026)

Chapter 22, Article IV, Disorderly Conduct, makes it unlawful to engage in ten listed acts, including urination, in a public place or public gathering, or within hearing distance of a school or church, when the person knows or has reasonable grounds to know the act will tend to promote or provoke a disturbance, danger, alarm, disorder, fight, brawl or nuisance. Subsection (10) is the shortest and most direct of the list: it simply bars urinating in a public area or in view of others, with no requirement that the act also cause a disturbance or that anyone actually witness it beyond it occurring in view of others.

It sits alongside other public-order clauses in the same section, such as bans on obscene language or gestures, appearing publicly intoxicated in a loud or boisterous condition, using fighting words, and disturbing public meetings, all of which the Florence County Sheriff's Office enforces countywide in the unincorporated area. Because it is grouped with disorderly conduct rather than a separate sanitation or nuisance chapter, a public urination citation is prosecuted the same way as any other Sec. 22-51 violation, through the county's criminal enforcement process rather than the code official's civil abatement track used for nuisance and structure violations.