Being charged criminally with disorderly conduct in Racine or Kenosha means that you are facing a class B misdemeanor punishable by up to 90 days in jail, a fine up to $1,000, or both. You can, instead, be charged with a disorderly conduct citation or ticket. The decision to charge you with a ticket or a criminal offense is up to the prosecutor and police involved in your case and is dependent on the facts as they interpret them.

If you are facing disorderly conduct charges in Racine or Kenosha, call Grieve Law's criminal defense attorneys for a free case consultation.

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Many different forms of conduct can fall under a disorderly conduct charge. Threatening someone, a shoving match, yelling or arguing, swearing and simply being loud can all fall under a disorderly conduct charge, the list is somewhat limitless.

 

Disorderly Conduct in Racine & Kenosha

A disorderly conduct charge is a sort of a catch-all charge as it is defined as someone who “engaged in violent, abusive, indecent, profane, boisterous, unreasonably loud, or otherwise disorderly conduct.” The ending, otherwise disorderly conduct, is not further explained which is why the charge ends up as a catch-all. Prosecutors often believe that if the police were involved, at the very least, there was “otherwise disorderly conduct”.

Additionally, for a prosecutor to prove their case, they must show that the conduct “tended to cause or provoke a disturbance”. There is language in the jury instructions that whether something tends to cause or provoke a disturbance should be decided based on the circumstances that existed at the time and are based on a typical person, not someone who is more prone to being upset.

Despite the relatively low-level criminal penalties attached to a disorderly conduct charge in Racine or Kenosha, the charge often has a modifier on it to include domestic violence. The domestic violence modifier simply means that the person you were disorderly to or who was disturbed by your conduct was someone that you either currently or have previously lived with or with whom you share children in common. And, as with all criminal charges, it is the prosecutor who is pressing charges against you. Even if your spouse, roommate, father, or whoever is not “pressing charges” that does not mean that the prosecutor will not charge you with the crime and often has no influence as to whether you are charged. This modifier is problematic for a number of reasons, the two most common are 1) being convicted of a criminal domestic violence charge means you are no longer able to legally possess a firearm and 2) simply having that modifier on your record looks bad (there is also an additional “surcharge” or court cost if you are convicted of a domestic violence modifier).