Then, the officer handed him a ticket for public urination. The spike in public urination summonses follows a shift away from enforcement for quality of life offenses like public urination when Bill de Blasio was mayor. Elected officials argued that criminal summonses were too harsh for these minor infractions and disproportionately affected low-income neighborhoods. In 2015, officials handed out more than 19,000 criminal summonses for public urination, according to data released at the time. Civil summonses went up during that time period, accounting for 86% of public urination tickets in fiscal year 2025, police data shows.