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# Laws don’t apply to only those who can pay the fines
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/laws-dont-apply-to-only-those-who-can-pay-the-fines/
- Published: 2004-01-20T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T23:03:25.000Z
- Author: David Pisarra
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import, Homeless

I borrowed a friend’s dog to go for a walk yesterday. Walking a dog is a great form of relaxation for me. It allows me to stroll, pause temporarily on a very frequent basis and learn a few lessons. I used to have a standard dachshund, 25 pounds of fur, energy and personality that taught me about responsibility, love, being in the moment and the joys of running on the beach with your shoes off.

I bring this up because it reminded me how much I loved having a dog, but also how there are responsibilities involved in ownership. The city of Santa Monica Municipal Code §4.04.170 — licensing of dogs — won’t let a dog play in the park unless it has a license and City Hall charges for that license. This is a rational law I suppose. It guarantees that all resident dogs have their shots, that dogs can be identified should they be lost, and provides income to offset the costs of police officers who patrol the parks, the parks themselves, the animal shelter and the staff who work there.

The law also requires that I must have in my possession, and visible to a police officer, material to remove any solid substances left by any dog in my care and control, or I am guilty of an infraction and shall be fined not less that $50\. That is Santa Monica Municipal code §4.04.385 — material to remove dog feces. Failure to clean up after your pup is covered in § 4.04.370 — dogs to be controlled so as not to commit nuisances: “No person having the right and ability to prevent the same, shall knowingly, carelessly, or negligently permit any dog to commit any nuisance upon any public property, including, but not limited to, public parks, streets, sidewalks, parkways, gutters and drains, or any improved private property other than that of the owner of said dog or person who has consented thereto. Any person violating this section shall be guilty of an infraction, which shall be punishable by a fine of not less than $100 per violation.”

Frankly, I think the fine for not cleaning up after your dog should be about the cost to replace my shoes. Somewhere between $150 and $300\. If you have a dog, you have responsibilities.

But my real problem with the municipal code is that it, like so many other laws on the books, punishes the wrong behavior and is not enforced fairly. The current municipal code does punish those who do not clean up after their dogs, but they also punish those who are simply not carrying visible materials to clean up afterwards. That strikes me as a patently unfair law.

One of the joys of little dogs is little messes. The way I handled the situation was to go to the 99¢ store and buy a box of sandwich bags. They made the perfect receptacle for my clean up chores. Every jacket and most of my pants had little plastic bags stuffed in them and you could not see them. If you just looked at me yet I would be guilty of an infraction.

The good news is that this municipal code, like most of them, are not enforced. How do I know that the laws are not enforced you may ask? I’m sure the police chief would jump at the assertion that laws are going unenforced, but all it takes is one look at the parks and littering laws, and then the general condition of the streets and it becomes quite clear that many laws are going ignored.

For example the Municipal Code Section 7.48.020 litter in public places reads: (a) No person shall throw or deposit litter in or upon any street, alley, parkway, sidewalk or other public place within the city except in public receptacles or in authorized private receptacles for collection. (b) Any person violating this section shall be guilty of an infraction, which shall be punishable by a fine not exceeding $250, or a misdemeanor, which shall be punishable by a fine not exceeding $1,000 per violation, or by imprisonment in the county jail for a period not exceeding six months, or by both such fine and imprisonment Now a quick trip down any street in the city of Santa Monica will clearly show a huge amount of litter, cigarette butts, bottles of beer, and other assorted trash collecting in the gutters. Clearly the police department is not enforcing the no littering codes. There are codes that require an owner to maintain their property in litter free condition, but the streets are covered in cigarette butts, spit from pedestrians and broken beer bottles from the homeless drunks in the parks.

On a positive note, the parking enforcers almost never miss an opportunity to write a ticket. You can’t be two minutes past a cut-off and the traffic officers are on the job to ticket your obviously morally delinquent, socially hazardous behavior of parking your car. Feel free to spit your way down Main Street, relieve yourself all you want in the alleys, (so long as you don’t have a home), smoke your heart out and drop the butts in the gutter. Just don’t be parked where the city decides you shouldn’t be.

Perhaps the reason the parking is enforced and the spitting isn’t, is the quality of the criminal. A car owner has enough assets to be taken by the city, a homeless guy who spits has nothing. A resident who oversleeps by five minutes can afford a $47 parking ticket, but a drunk in the park can’t afford the fine, so why bother writing his ticket?

I think that the parking laws and dog laws, should both be enforced. I also think that the Santa Monica Police Department should be diligent in parking enforcement as they are in that business. I’d rather the city make sure that dog owners clean up after their pets, that a spitter have to pay a fine, and that the cigarette tossers pony up some cash. I don’t think that only those who can afford the fines should be targeted for enforcement.

I’m sick of seeing the remnants of someone else’s flu on the sidewalk. I don’t care to wade through the spit covered filters of someone’s cigarette. I think we should have city as clean as it is beautiful. Justice is supposed to be blind, which means that all laws apply equally. It doesn’t mean that we ignore the infractions that are done by the homeless, and enforce the ones against those who can help pay for our new civic buildings. (David Pisarra is a partner in the Santa Monica law firm of Pisarra & Grist, he welcomes questions, and (310) 664-9969 or e-mailed at).

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 20, 2004.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/012004.pdf?ref=smdp.com)