Public urination citations increase over 50 percent

You may be walking down the Street late one night, looking to relieve yourself. Hoagie Haven is open, but it doesn't have a bathroom. All the clubs have closed, and your dorm is too far away. So you walk down an alley and unzip your pants...

Suddenly, Patrol Officer James Martinez appears and writes you a court summons for public urination. Records in Borough Hall will forever attest to your transgression.

A sample of summonses provided to The Daily Princetonian shows that Martinez has caught at least two University students with their pants down this past September in the manner described above.

Public urination citations have increased continually over the past four years, according to Borough Police records. There have been 103 summonses written so far this year, compared with only 62 for the entire year in 2006, 61 in 2005 and 49 in 2004. Public urination in the Borough can carry a fine of up to $270.

Figures provided to the Borough Council by Lt. Sharon Papp at the town council meeting last Tuesday night put the figure for 2007 even higher. According to those records, police have found 140 people who couldn't find a restroom in time.

"There has been a steadily rising trend" of public urination citations, Lt. David Dudeck said. "If the citizens of the town are complaining that people are going to the bathroom in public, we are going to make sure that stops happening," he said.

Dudeck said that the rising number of urination citations is not due to a spike in the number of urinators but rather an effort by Borough Police to monitor problem areas more carefully.

Catching a urinator is not as straightforward as it might seem, Dudeck added. "We'll put guys on foot patrol and bicycle patrol. The officers will hide in surreptitious locations ... From his hidden location, an officer may see someone urinating. At that point, he will present himself and write a ticket."

High-urination zones include Prospect Avenue near the eating clubs and Nassau Street near the Ivy Inn.

"We were getting complaints from these areas, and what ended up happening is that our sergeant put people out on the streets, and we started finding a lot more of these," Dudeck said.

"When we get complaints from certain areas, our guys will follow those up," he explained. "We will go back to those areas more and more until we make those violators go away."

One University student, who was granted anonymity because he didn't want his name associated with the charges in print, said, "I turned around when I was done, and the policeman was there watching me. I have no idea if he was there the whole time ... it was like a sting operation."

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Tower Club president Jon Fernandez '08 said that he did not think that heightened urination enforcement on the Street would have much of an effect on club life.

"People who are so drunk they're already publicly urinating do not gain admission to the Tower Club," Fernandez said.

Dudeck was careful in his characterization of the police's increased urination awareness.

"I wouldn't say this is a crackdown," Dudeck said, adding, "There wasn't a time when we all sat down in a room and said, 'Let's get those public urinators!' "

The sample of 19 urination summonses provided to the 'Prince' all occurred after 10 p.m., with 11 written between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. Eighteen of the 19 violators were males under 30 years of age, but a 60-year-old man from Trenton urinated outside the Ivy Inn at 11:07 p.m. on Aug. 17.

Of the four people in the sample who publicly urinated after orientation week, two were University students. Dudeck did not say what percentage of the offenders were affiliated with the University.

Based on the sample, Det. Christopher Tash, Martinez and Patrol Officer Sean Cahill appear to be the most frequent urinator nabbers.