DENVER'S VOTER INITIATIVE DOES LITTLE TO CURB MARIJUANA
CITATIONS

More than two years after Denver voters approved a measure making
minor marijuana crimes the city's lowest law-enforcement priority,
city officials continue to prosecute marijuana cases at a steady clip.
Denver city attorneys last year prosecuted 1,696 cases in which
possession of less than an ounce of marijuana was at least one of the
charges.

In 2008, 1,658 cases were prosecuted. In 2006 - the year before the
initiative was approved - prosecutors handled 1,841 marijuana cases.

Police citations for possession of small amounts of marijuana continue
unabated as well. Figures for citations and prosecutions were released
last week at a meeting of the city's Marijuana Policy Review Panel.

The continued enforcement has frustrated some members of the panel,
which was created by the voter initiative to implement the new law.

"Police should not be spending any time arresting and citing people
for marijuana," said Mason Tvert, who runs the pro-marijuana-legalization
group SAFER and is a member of the panel. "Voters do not want them to
issue those citations."

Denver prosecutors, meanwhile, say their hands are tied in the
marijuana cases because they are bound in those cases to follow state
law, not local law.

Vince DiCroce, who is the director of the Denver city attorney's
prosecution section and a panel member, said city attorneys - who
ordinarily prosecute violations of city ordinance - act as special
district attorneys when prosecuting marijuana crimes, which are
charged as violations of separate state law. Because of that, DiCroce
said, prosecutors don't take into account the voter initiative when
pursuing cases.

"The local ordinances don't apply to the state laws," DiCroce
said.

Tvert said the Denver city attorney's office has discretion to stop
prosecuting marijuana cases and force the Denver district attorney's
office to pick up the load.

As much as anything, the Denver prosecutions have highlighted how
little authority the commission actually has to compel law enforcement
officials to change their policies.

The 10-member panel - which includes both marijuana activists and law
enforcement representatives - has passed resolutions before calling on
officials to cease prosecutions or asking Denver judges to reduce the
fines for the most minor marijuana cases. Those recommendations have
been rebuffed.

"It's probably worth admitting to ourselves that we can talk a lot but
we can't accomplish a lot in terms of enforcement," Philip Cherner, a
defense lawyer who sits on the panel, said at the panel meeting last
week.

Councilman Doug Linkhart, another panel member, said the panel would
be better off including all its recommendations and frustrations in a
comprehensive report to the City Council, which might have more
authority to compel changes.

"In a lot of these areas," Linkhart said, "it's not a matter of can or
cannot. It's a matter of will or will not."