Lake Charles, LA Public Conduct: Public Urination (2026)

1, added by Ordinance No. 10334, Section 10, on December 21, 1994, is a single-sentence prohibition: it is unlawful for any person to urinate on the streets, in the gutters, on the sidewalks, or in alleys, driveways, or other places near the streets, alleys, sidewalks, or other places of public resort. The section sits in Article I of Chapter 13, the city's general offenses article, alongside the peeping-tom prohibition in Section 13-20 and the public-passage obstruction rule in Section 13-19, and like those neighboring sections it carries no standalone fine schedule of its own.

1 does not specify a penalty, a violation defaults to the general penalty provision, Section 1-8 of the Code of Ordinances, which governs punishment for Code violations that do not state their own fine or jail term. The ordinance does not define places of public resort, leaving the phrase to its ordinary meaning of any place where the public regularly gathers, such as parks, parking lots, alleys behind commercial buildings, and building entrances open to pedestrian traffic. Lake Charles Police Department officers enforce the section on sight or on complaint, typically issuing a municipal citation returnable to Lake Charles City Court rather than making a custodial arrest, consistent with how the neighboring general-offenses sections in Article I are handled.