Pubdate: Mon, 16 Sep 2013
Source: U.S. News & World Report (US)
Copyright: 2013 U.S. News & World Report
Contact: (202) 955-2685
Website: http://www.usnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/464
Author: Steven Nelson

POLICE MADE ONE MARIJUANA ARREST EVERY 42 SECONDS IN 2012

FBI data: American police made a total of 12,196,959 arrests last
year

Tens of thousands of people smoked marijuana and listened to live
music at the Denver 420 rally at Civic Center Park on April 20, 2013.
Despite lax enforcement in some areas, the pace of U.S. pot busts
remained unchanged from 2011 to 2012.

Residents of two states voted to legalize marijuana in 2012, but
despite an increase in public support for liberalizing drug policy,
American police arrested about the same number of people last year on
pot-related charges as in 2011.

Data released Monday by the Federal Bureau of Investigation show there
were an estimated 1,552,432 arrests for drug-related crimes in 2012 -
a slight uptick from the 1,531,251 drug arrests in 2011. Marijuana
offenses accounted for 48.3 percent of all drug arrests, a slight
reduction from 49.5 percent in 2011, which itself was the highest rate
since before 1995.

Most marijuana-related arrests were for possession of the drug. By
mere possession, there was one marijuana arrest every 48 seconds in
2012. Including arrests for distribution, there was a pot-related
arrest every 42 seconds, the same interval as in 2011.

Advocacy groups that back campaigns to legalize or decriminalize weed
said police should prioritize solving violent crimes - the number of
which bumped upward from 2011 to 2012 - over arresting marijuana users.

According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report data, there were an
estimated 1,214,462 violent crimes reported to police in 2012, a 0.7
percent increase. FBI Director James Comey noted in a statement this
was the first overall increase in violent crime in six years.

Just 40.1 percent of the 84,376 forcible rapes reported to police and
28.1 percent of the 354,520 robberies were solved by law enforcement.
Around 62.5 percent of the 14,827 murder cases were closed, as were
55.8 percent of the 760,739 aggravated assaults.

"As a former prosecuting attorney myself, I believe it is
irresponsible to squander our limited law enforcement resources on
this disastrous public policy failure," said Dan Riffle, Marijuana
Policy Project federal policies director, in a statement. "That is
especially true when so many violent crimes remain unsolved. Every
second spent arresting and prosecuting adults for marijuana is time
that could have been spent preventing and solving real crimes."

The group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, made up of former and
current law-enforcers who want to dampen drug prohibition, said the
same.

"Each one of those arrests is the story of someone who may suffer a
variety of adverse effects from their interaction with the justice
system," said LEAP Executive Director Neill Franklin, a former
Maryland policeman, in a statement. "Commit a murder or a robbery and
the government will still give you a student loan. Get convicted for
smoking a joint and you're likely to lose it."

A poll released in April by the Pew Research Center found 52 percent
of American adults believe marijuana should be legal.

It's possible the national arrest tally for marijuana will be lower in
2013. State and local police enforce most anti-pot laws, and
Washington and Colorado residents, who make up around 4 percent of the
total U.S. population, will enjoy a largely arrest-free year.

The FBI report noted there were 12,196,959 arrests for any reason in
2012, around one every two seconds.
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