photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

A Lawrence Police Department patrol vehicle is pictured June 28, 2022.

A man was arrested early Wednesday morning for allegedly exposing himself and urinating as police were talking to him about a reported fight in a bar’s parking lot.

He was one of three men arrested in the past 24 hours arrested on suspicion of indecent exposure or lewd conduct.

Lawrence police officers were called just before 2 a.m. to the West Coast Saloon, 2222 Iowa St., for a report of a fight involving two men and a woman. When officers arrived, all three people were still in the parking lot arguing but no longer physically fighting, according to police.

Investigating officers intended to issue notices to appear in court for disorderly conduct and to release all three, but at that point, one of the involved people, a 53-year-old man, declared that he had to go to the bathroom and demanded to be taken to jail so he could relieve himself, police said.

After being told that he was not being taken into custody, the man attempted to enter a locked patrol vehicle while insisting he be taken to jail. After once again being told he wasn’t being arrested, police said the man exposed his penis and began urinating on the ground. Officers then arrested him and took him to jail on suspicion of disorderly conduct and indecent exposure. The man, Sergio Guadalupe Hernandez Baez, also had warrants for failures to appear in a DUI case and a driving while a habitual violator case.

The other two individuals, a 42-year-old woman and a 37-year-old man, were issued notices to appear in court and released. No weapons were involved in the fight, and only minor injuries were reported, police said.

In another incident of allegedly lewd conduct, a man was arrested at the McDonald’s in the 1300 block of West Sixth Street shortly before 10 p.m. Tuesday after multiple witnesses reported seeing him reaching into his shorts and “performing a sexual act on himself,” according to Sgt. Drew Fennelly with the Lawrence Police Department.

The suspect, Richard Allen Sitlington, 48, had previously been trespassed from the property, Fennelly said, and was arrested on allegations of lewd and lascivious acts and trespassing, as well as interference for providing officers with a fictitious name.

In an earlier incident Tuesday, a 40-year-old resident of the Lawrence Community Shelter was arrested shortly before 3 p.m. on suspicion of lewd and lascivious conduct in the 1800 block of Naismith Drive, but details about that incident weren’t immediately available Wednesday.