MORE MARIJUANA CASES SHOULD FALL UNDER ORDINANCE

The Post-Crescent recently ran an Associated Press article entitled
"Chicago mayor says marijuana laws need reforms." The mayor of this
country's third-largest city was proposing an ordinance with fines
instead of criminal prosecution for small amounts of marijuana
possession. Very interesting.

I regularly read The Post-Crescent court reports that describe
criminal offenses and the punishment imposed. Time after time, I see a
substantial number of young people arrested and convicted of marijuana
possession, and almost invariably, they receive a sentence of a
several-hundred-dollar fine and a year's probation.

I wondered if our communities could benefit from the idea that Chicago
is considering. A criminal prosecution eats up limited costly
resources in a system already overburdened: the time of a prosecutor,
a judge, a probation agent, a defense attorney (often at public
expense) and more police time (in court).

It results in the young person losing an opportunity for federal
student aid and possible future employment opportunities, while
gaining the lifelong stigma of being a convicted criminal.

A little research revealed that Milwaukee has had a marijuana
ordinance on its books since 1997. A little more digging and I
discovered that both Outagamie County and the City of Appleton have
marijuana possession ordinances.

Great, I thought, but if so, why am I reading about so many kids being
charged with crimes instead of not making the "news" and simply being
given a ticket?

I made some calls. I spoke with Sgt. Corey Besaw from the Outagamie
County Sheriff's Department; attorney Gene Bartman, head of the
county's public defender office; Stacy Doucette, Appleton assistant
city attorney; Outagamie County Court Commissioner Brian Figy; and
Outagamie County Judge Dennis Luebke.

All five were extremely cordial and knowledgeable. I also tried to
speak to Curtis Borsheim, who handles drug cases in the Outagamie
County District Attorney's office, but couldn't get past the office
manager.

When I asked how it was decided as to whether an individual was given
a ticket or charged with a crime, the D.A.'s office advised that if it
came over charged as a crime, that's the way it was prosecuted. So, it
was up to the individual officer to decide.

I asked Sgt. Besaw what the formal guidelines were as to whether the
officer wrote up a possession as an ordinance or a criminal matter,
and he advised that he didn't believe that there were any formal
guidelines. It was solely up to the officer's discretion.

Hmmm. All this power in one police officer's hand with no policy
guidelines to help make that important decision. Not good.

Figy advised that he saw "by far" more crimes charged than ordinance
violations issued for marijuana possession.

Well, it's not quite as simple as the D.A.'s office described. I
learned that the D.A. will not always charge as the officer wants, but
will sometimes kick a "crime" back for an ordinance violation, based
on a variety of reasons (time/cost being one of them) and will also
enter into deferred prosecutions, where a charge will be dropped
entirely if an offender keeps their nose clean for a period of time.

But why do that instead of simply charging an ordinance and then
hitting the offender with a crime if they re-offend?

It appears that our community has taken a big first step in dealing
with a marijuana situation that has existed for better than five
decades and will not be going away anytime soon.

Perhaps our community would be better served, however, if our elected
officials developed some guidelines or policies to direct our officers
to more uniformly consider and use the ordinance provisions available
to them, and forego making criminals of so many of our decent, but
wayward, children.