Dearborn Heights, MI Special Events & Permits: Parade Permits (2026)

City Code § 32-355 sits in Division 5 of the Uniform Traffic Code, the rights and duties of drivers and others, right after the sections governing funeral processions, and it applies the same basic idea to parades: a procession or parade cannot occupy, march, or proceed along any roadway in the City of Dearborn Heights unless the chief of police has issued a permit for it. The section carves out three exemptions from the permit requirement, forces of the United States Armed Services, the military forces of the state of Michigan, and the city's own police and fire departments, so a National Guard convoy or a Dearborn Heights Fire Department procession does not need the chief's sign-off the way a community festival parade, a school homecoming procession, or a block-party march down a city street does.

The permit also has to line up with 'other regulations set forth in this article,' meaning organizers still have to follow the rest of chapter 32's traffic rules, right-of-way, obedience to signals, and the like, while the parade is under way, not just obtain the permit itself. Because the section sits in the traffic code rather than the classified civil-infraction chapters, a violation is charged as a misdemeanor rather than a municipal civil infraction: holding or marching in an unpermitted parade or procession on a Dearborn Heights roadway is guilty of a misdemeanor under section 32-355(b), the same classification the code gives to more serious traffic offenses like failing to stop for a police signal or driving on a sidewalk, rather than the lighter civil-infraction ticket used for most stopping and parking violations.