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."