Pubdate: Thu, 19 Aug 2010
Source: Stranger, The (Seattle, WA)
Copyright: 2010 The Stranger
Contact:  http://www.thestranger.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2241
Author: Dominic Holden
Cited: ACLU of Washington http://www.aclu-wa.org/issues/drug-policy
Cited: Hempfest http://hempfest.org/drupal/node

POT PARADOX

Seattle Is at the Vanguard of Legalizing Pot, So Why Are Arrest 
Levels Worse Than Ever?

These Are the Worst of Times

If you thought pot legalization in Seattle had already arrived-think 
again. Despite voters making pot possession the lowest 
law-enforcement priority in 2003, Seattle police are arresting more 
people on low-level marijuana charges this year than any year in the 
last decade.

Between January 1 and June 30, Seattle police have arrested 172 
people for marijuana possession, according to records obtained from 
the Seattle City Attorney's Office. While that's not a lot compared 
to, say, New York City, that's far more than double the rate of 
arrests at the midpoint of last year, when cops had arrested 62 
people (there were 120 arrests all year in 2009). And that's more 
than triple the rate in 2004, the year after Initiative 75 passed, 
when police had arrested 47 people for pot possession by this point 
in the year.

More striking, the number of people arrested just for pot-as opposed 
to, for instance, a suspect being stopped for burglary and having pot 
on them-is astronomically higher now.

This year, 147 people have been referred to prosecutors with pot as 
the only charge, according to records from the Seattle Police 
Department (SPD) and the city attorney's office. That is a fivefold 
increase in the number of pot-only cases (last year, only 28 of the 
120 arrests were referred for prosecution with pot as the only 
charge). In other words, pot-only arrests rose from 23 percent to 85 percent.

This is a drastic shift toward busting people solely for pot.

It doesn't take much provocation for police to make an arrest, 
according to SPD records. In one case, according to SPD documents 
obtained by The Stranger in July, an officer spotted a car driving 
"erratically." When stopped, the driver told officers that the 
"passenger was having a seizure." Medics who arrived to treat the 
patient "located marijuana in his jeans pocket." Officers seized the 
marijuana as evidence and referred the man-the man who was having a 
seizure-to be prosecuted for misdemeanor pot possession.

In another case, officers responded to a 911 call that people were 
smoking pot in a parked car. Officers promptly responded, arresting 
four people and referring them for prosecution.

And in another case, two people were sitting in Freeway Park when 
officers approached. The suspects freely "admitted to smoking 
marijuana but were surprised that they had been stopped because it 
was supposed to be the lowest priority for police," SPD records say. 
Officers found the pair had a pipe with nothing more than "residue in 
it." The case was referred to prosecutors.

Assistant Chief Jim Pugel insists police are complying not only with 
the letter of the law, which isn't binding because state law takes 
precedent, but also with the spirit of the city law passed by voters. 
"I don't want the perception that we are looking for bud-we are not," 
he says. "In most cases, we are inadvertently coming across it."

But Alison Holcomb, drug policy director for the ACLU of Washington, 
questions whether it's even worth the time and effort police are 
expending. "Even if police are stumbling across marijuana 
secondarily, it's still a waste of their time to process the 
paperwork for the marijuana offense," she says. "It's a waste of tax 
dollars to submit that marijuana for testing."

Pugel says, "The vast majority of people stopped for marijuana are 
engaging in suspicious, unusual, or criminal behavior." However, 
police seem to be actively pursuing very ordinary behavior for 
marijuana-not anything unusual or dangerous. After years of largely 
ignoring pot smoking at the Northwest Folklife festival, police 
officers changed their approach in 2010. They made 31 arrests at the 
event this year, referring all of those cases for prosecution, and 
none of them were combined with another charge, according to the city 
attorney's records.

So why the change?

Most notably, Seattle has a new police chief, John Diaz. "Marijuana 
is our lowest priority," Diaz told reporters at a press conference in 
June, "but we are not going to stop making arrests. We are a nation 
of laws. If voters want to legalize marijuana, that would be up to 
them and the legislature."

But Diaz-who was appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the city 
council this summer, but who has been the interim police chief ever 
since Gil Kerlikowske left the department in May 2009-has plenty of 
authority, too. "Certainly, Chief Diaz can remind the police force 
that Seattle residents don't wish for their officers to be spending 
time on marijuana law enforcement and that they have more pressing 
priorities for use of their public-safety dollars," Holcomb says.

Indeed, police have been pleading for more money in lean budget 
years, saying that they don't have the staffing resources to expand 
community policing and to crack down on street disorder in nighttime 
hot spots, and that they are too burdened to quickly respond to 911 
calls. Stopping people for smoking a joint, filing it as evidence, 
pursuing testing on small bags of pot, filling out reports, and 
seeking prosecution for low-level pot crimes seem to pale as 
priorities when compared to the public-safety needs that SPD insists 
it doesn't have the resources to handle.

These Are the Best of Times

All those pot cases from this year that you just read about? None of 
them will be prosecuted.

City Attorney Pete Holmes, who took office in January, refuses to 
slap a misdemeanor conviction on any of those people. It was a 
campaign promise-a promise that helped him win the election with 64 
percent of the vote-that he refuses to budge on. And he's no wild 
card at City Hall: The mayor wants to legalize marijuana outright.

That doesn't spare the people the humiliation of arrest, but it's an 
improvement that bodes well for the cultural shift toward 
legalization. (The police don't care: In another report, they write 
that officers saw people rolling a marijuana cigarette in Cal 
Anderson Park and they referred the case for prosecution "despite 
'the city attorney's refusal to prosecute.'")

In fact, marijuana will probably be decriminalized in Washington 
State within the next decade. Consider the radical shifts afar and underfoot:

In Massachusetts, voters came out in 2008 to cream conservatives and 
pass a law that made possessing less than an ounce of pot punishable 
by a $100 fine instead of warranting an arrest and criminal 
conviction. In California this year, an initiative is on the ballot 
to eliminate penalties for possession completely (and then allow 
jurisdictions to tax and regulate it). A poll conducted in late July 
by Public Policy Polling shows the measure passing with 52 percent in 
favor and only 36 percent opposed. Nationally, an Angus Reid Public 
Opinion poll also in July showed 52 percent support for outright 
marijuana legalization.

On the back of this newspaper, there are about a dozen ads for pot. 
They promote clinics that allow sick people to connect with 
physicians who have some expertise in medical marijuana; the docs 
meet a patient and issue them authorization under state law to use 
and grow marijuana, and some services even offer a live pot plant. 
About a dozen states have gentle pot laws on the books and aboveboard 
businesses dispensing pot, and the Obama administration has largely 
turned a blind eye.

And this weekend in Seattle at Myrtle Edwards Park is Hempfest, which 
is-no contest-the biggest pot event on earth. Over 200,000 people are 
expected to blow through the gates.

By all accounts, eyes are on Washington State to decriminalize 
marijuana-polling numbers show support creeping up year by year.

So how do proponents reconcile the latest crackdown with a state 
standing on the threshold of major reform? "I see increased 
enforcement corresponding directly to progress," says Holcomb. "It 
shouldn't surprise us that opponents would state their case more 
forcefully through advocacy or enforcement on the ground level."
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake