MAYOR BACKS FINES FOR POSSESSION OF POT

Mayor Daley on Tuesday embraced a police sergeant's scheme to raise money
for the city budget by ticketing people caught with small amounts of
marijuana, but opponents are already taking shots at the controversial
plan. Daley emphasized that most charges involving small amounts of pot are
thrown out in the state court system in Chicago.

"If 99 percent of the cases are all thrown out and you have a police
officer going, why? Why do we arrest the individual, seize the marijuana,
[go] to court and they're all thrown out? It costs you a lot of money for
police officers to go to court.

"It's decriminalized now," the mayor added. "Sometimes a fine is worse than
being thrown out of court."

Afterward, a mayoral spokesman would only say the proposal by Wentworth
District Sgt. Tom Donegan is "under review."

Fraternal Order of Police president Mark Donahue acknowledged too many
cases involving small quantities of marijuana are "pitched at the initial
hearing." But FOP members stand to lose thousands of dollars in court
overtime if the city starts ticketing marijuana users instead of jailing
them, he said.

Also, "it's an issue of moral or societal acceptance whether to do that,"
Donahue said.

The Drug Policy Alliance, which calls for an end to criminalizing marijuana
possession and is backed by billionaire financier-philanthropist George
Soros, was not ready to endorse the proposal either. "If they charge the
same as a parking ticket, I think that's OK," said Ethan Nadelmann,
executive director of the alliance.

But fines could create an incentive for officers to become more aggressive
in busting pot smokers, which happened in Australia when fines were
substituted for potential jail time, Nadelmann said. And fines ranging from
$250 for 10 grams of pot to $1,000 for 20 to 30 grams -- which Donegan
recommended in his proposal to top Chicago Police brass last week -- would
place a huge burden on the young and poor likely to get hit with most of
the tickets, Nadelmann added.

States and cities have taken widely different approaches to dealing with
marijuana possession. Ohio has one of the more lenient laws: a $100 fine
with no jail time for possession of up to 100 grams of pot. That law was
enacted in the 1980s.

In September 2003, 58 percent of Seattle voters approved an initiative
relaxing enforcement against adults possessing 40 grams of marijuana or
less for personal use. The initiative instructed police to make pot arrests
their lowest law-enforcement priority. Marijuana prosecutions have
plummeted, officials say.

But in New York, arrests for petty pot possession have soared in the last
decade, part of a crackdown on quality-of-life offenses. Arrests jumped
from a few thousand a year in the early 1990s under Mayor David Dinkins to
tens of thousands a year under current Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Nadelmann
said. In Chicago, Donegan said he came up with his proposal to fine people
caught with less than 30 grams of pot because he was frustrated at seeing
his cases get dismissed.

He reviewed court records from last year that showed 94 percent of the
6,954 marijuana cases involving less than 2.5 grams were dismissed; 81
percent of the 6,945 cases involving 2.5 grams to 10 grams, and 52 percent
of the 1,261 cases involving 10 to 30 grams.

A city can adopt its own ordinance setting out fines for marijuana
possession, like Darien does in DuPage County. In Darien, officers can
either write a ticket or make a misdemeanor arrest under state law. Donegan
estimated Chicago could have collected at least $5 million in fines last
year under his proposal.

"I have had a lot of positive response from other officers because they are
tired of the revolving door at the courts and would like to see more done
with their arrests."

Prosecutors who have worked in misdemeanor courts in Cook County said
marijuana cases most often fall apart because an officer does not show up
at the initial appearance or a state police lab technician does not show up
at trial. "Most misdemeanor assistant state's attorneys have a difficult
time justifying requiring a police officer and a lab tech to appear in
court for the better part of an afternoon for $12 worth of weed. It just
doesn't make sense," said one former misdemeanor prosecutor.

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MOST MISDEMEANOR CASES DISMISSED

The feds, State Police, Chicago Police and other law-enforcement agencies
can make misdemeanor arrests for small amounts of pot in Chicago. If a
Chicago cop makes a bust for less than 30 grams of marijuana -- a
misdemeanor under state law -- the case is usually prosecuted by an
assistant state's attorney. The suspect must first appear in one of the
five misdemeanor courts attached to Chicago's five area headquarters. Most
of the cases are dismissed because an officer does not appear in court to
testify about the arrest or a lab technician fails to show up to verify
that the seized grassy substance was, in fact, marijuana, sources
say. Federal prosecutors rarely take such cases to court in Chicago.
Sentencing guidelines carry a misdemeanor sentence of up to six months in
prison, or probation, for possession of less than 250 grams of marijuana.
But prosecutors rarely take a case involving less than 100 kilograms --
100,000 grams -- of marijuana. Possession of 100 kilos of cocaine, a
felony, carries a minimum sentence of five years in prison.