William Singleton couldn’t hold it any longer.

He tried to use the bathroom in a restaurant in East Harlem after attending a funeral for his aunt, but it was out of order, so he darted across the street to relieve himself. A police officer who happened to be outside the restaurant followed him and stood over his shoulder while he peed. Then, the officer handed him a ticket for public urination.

“If I could have held it, I would have held it. But obviously I couldn’t hold it,” Singleton said. “I wasn’t going to piss my pants.”

The NYPD has drastically ramped up its use of public urination tickets under the administration of Mayor Eric Adams, who has advocated for more enforcement of low-level offenses to address perceptions of disorder in the city. The department issued almost five times

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