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If bumpiing a foot is soliciting sex, we are all in peril.

You do realize it was more than "bumping a foot," right?

I have no doubt that if the officer's testimony is correct, he was soliciting sex. The problem is, does making interactive, non-obscene overtures for soliciting sex fit the definition of "disorderly conduct" if one doesn't actually engage in the act?

609.72 DISORDERLY CONDUCT Subdivision 1. Crime.
Whoever does any of the following in a public or private place, including on a school bus, knowing, or having reasonable grounds to know that it will, or will tend to, alarm, anger or disturb others or provoke an assault or breach of the peace, is guilty of disorderly conduct, which is a misdemeanor:

[...]
(3) Engages in offensive, obscene, abusive, boisterous, or noisy conduct or in offensive, obscene, or abusive language tending reasonably to arouse alarm, anger, or resentment in others.

A person does not violate this section if the person's disorderly conduct was caused by an epileptic seizure.

Do the gestures he made tend reasonably to arouse alarm, anger, or resentment in others?

And what was the intent of Senator Craig's peeping? Was his intent to intrude upon or interfere with the privacy of the officer--or was he merely checking him out(facially, for example)? If it wasn't to try to check out intimate parts, then I think that perhaps one could argue that the state "peeping" statute doesn't truly apply.

609.746 INTERFERENCE WITH PRIVACY. Subdivision 1. Surreptitious intrusion; observation device.

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(c) A person is guilty of a gross misdemeanor who: (1) surreptitiously gazes, stares, or peeps in the window or other aperture of a sleeping room in a hotel, as defined in section 327.70, subdivision 3, a tanning booth, or other place where a reasonable person would have an expectation of privacy and has exposed or is likely to expose their intimate parts, as defined in section 609.341, subdivision 5, or the clothing covering the immediate area of the intimate parts; and (2) does so with intent to intrude upon or interfere with the privacy of the occupant.

The Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled that police surveillance cameras in camera stalls violated privacy only if there were doors on the stalls...and a Court of Appeals ruling said that urinals didn't need doors because partitions provide privacy based on the way urinals are used. Further, "...a reasonable person when using a public restroom has an expectation of privacy in that place shielded from public view by partitions and his body..." so it seems to me that the whole body would be considered protected as long as there's a door, based on the court ruling if not the actual wording of the statute, unless, of course, we get into whether they meant "partition" to include the stall walls or just the urinal partitions they were speaking of in that case...

One thing that this illustrates is that it appears it would be legal for police to videotape the officer's side of the stall (from a camera placed on the inside of his stall door so it would not be visible from the outside.) There would be no disputing what "really" happened, then. Right?

But these are just my own musings and I am not a lawyer. And for that, I am grateful. :-)