Pubdate: Fri, 18 Jul 2014
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2014 The Washington Post Company
Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/mUgeOPdZ
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491
Authors: Peter Hermann and Keith L. Alexander
Page: B1

POT SUSPECTS' ARRESTS HAVE BAD TIMING

Hours Before Relaxed D.C. Law Took Effect, Immediate Predicaments 
Included a Jail Stay, Criminal Citations

A man arrested for allegedly smoking marijuana on a street in 
Northwest Washington. Two people caught in a suspected drug deal near 
Lincoln Heights in Northeast. A man questioned by police about the 
scent of burnt pot. A former federal government official allegedly 
smoking a joint as he drove through Chinatown.

The five are among those who were arrested hours before the 
District's new drug law took effect midnight Thursday, making 
possession of one ounce or less of marijuana subject to a civil 
penalty instead of a crime. They were in various predicaments, from 
allegedly smoking dope to perhaps selling it, and some went to jail 
for the night while others were in handcuffs a few hours and then 
released with criminal citations, neither of which might happen under 
the revisions.

Each case's circumstances are unique, and it was difficult to discern 
from initial arrest reports whether any of the suspects would have 
been spared arrest had their encounter with police occurred Thursday 
instead of Wednesday. D.C. police are reviewing the reports, and 
spokeswoman Gwendolyn Crump said that some cases "may not meet the 
criteria for an arrest under the new law."

For instance, on Wednesday night, Loic Johonson, 19, was arrested as 
he visited a friend's house on K Street in Northwest. Officers 
driving past the apartment building said they smelled a "strong odor 
of burnt marijuana."

Officers approached Johonson, who was holding a hand-rolled 
cigarette, according to court records. Johonson kicked the officer in 
the shoulder and chest, police said, and he was arrested after a 
scuffle and charged with possession of less than an ounce of 
marijuana and assaulting an officer. Under the new law, police are 
not allowed to use the odor of marijuana as a pretext to stop 
someone, and Johonson's attorney, Patrice Sulton, said that could cut 
down on confrontations, which in this case ended with her client in 
far more serious trouble than a drug charge.

"This illustrates why this law was passed to reduce such contact," 
said Sulton, who testified before the D.C. Council in support of the 
new law. If the incident happened four hours later, she said, "my 
client would not have been here." Johonson spent the night in the 
D.C. jail and was released pending a July 28 hearing.

Also Wednesday, two people who police said in a report were seen 
conducting a "hand-to-hand" drug transaction on Benning Road in 
Northeast were arrested. Joyce Ann Robinson, 57, and Corey Stephen 
Davis, 28, were charged with possession and possession with intent to 
distribute. But the initial police report makes no mention of money 
being exchanged, and the new law allows a person to give someone else 
small amounts of the drug as long as there is no sale.

About 5:30 p.m., police said they responded to Kennedy Street in 
Northwest for a report of a large group of people selling and smoking 
marijuana. John Patrick Payne, 31, of Northeast was seen holding a 
"white hand-rolled cigarette" to his mouth while standing on a 
sidewalk, according to the police report. Police said that Payne told 
the officer he had a "marijuana card," presumably for legal medical 
marijuana. The officer told him that "it was still illegal to smoke 
on public space." Also, the new law deems it an offense that can lead 
to an arrest regardless of the amount.

About 9:45 p.m. Wednesday, a police officer said he spotted a driver 
smoking marijuana on Seventh Street in Northwest, near Verizon 
Center. Galen Joseph Reser, 65, was arrested and charged with 
criminal possession of marijuana. The Chevy Chase resident, who in 
1989 was nominated by President George H.W. Bush and confirmed by the 
U.S. Senate to serve as assistant secretary for governmental affairs 
at the U.S. Department of Transportation, declined to comment.

Authorities said information was not immediately available on the 
number of civil citations issued in the District on Thursday, the 
first day that a minor pot bust could draw a $25 ticket instead of a 
criminal arrest with penalties of up to 180 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Proponents of the law as well as those skeptical of it said it could 
take up to a year to judge its effectiveness on erasing racial 
disparities in arrest rates, shown in several studies examining the 
District and other large cities. One civil rights group found that 
nine of 10 people arrested in the District on simple drug possession 
charges were black. The concern is that the arrests leave permanent 
scars on otherwise clean slates, which can impede college and 
employment opportunities.

The cases did nothing to quell the concerns of the law's opponents. 
Delroy Burton, the president of the D.C. police union, has called the 
new law too vague and confusing for officers. He said that Reser, the 
former government official, would have been arrested regardless of 
the new law because the alleged infraction occurred in a public place 
and was witnessed by an officer.

Burton said the arrest of Reser, who is white, shows that studies 
noting racial disparities are flawed. "It's about where you use 
marijuana, not who uses marijuana," he said. D.C. police have also 
complained about the studies, saying they fail to consider the 
complexities of urban policing in high-crime areas.

But D.C. Council member Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), one of the 
legislation's sponsors, said police are upset because they no longer 
have "a tool for detaining people, such as using the smell of pot to 
clear a crowded corner."

Wells, who chairs the Public Safety Committee, said that Reser could 
have been given a civil citation on the drug charge but would have 
faced arrest for allegedly smoking marijuana in the car, an offense 
that under the new law is now merged with rules banning open 
containers of alcohol in vehicles. But that carries a less-severe 
penalty than does criminal marijuana possession.

Arthur B. Spitzer, the legal director for the Washington chapter of 
the American Civil Liberties Union, which conducted one of the arrest 
studies, said he hoped that D.C. police "take into account not only 
the literal language of the new law but the reason the council passed 
it: to try and do away with this extreme racial disparity."

The law, he said, is to stop police from "continuing to arrest people 
in certain neighborhoods they wouldn't be arresting in other neighborhoods."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom