DIFFERING MINDS

Officially, Montreal Police Are Still Coming Down Hard On The City's
Tokers. But As Hour Finds Out, The Beat Cop Reality Is Very Different.

In Montreal, the official police line is simple. Possession of marijuana -
whether it's one, five or 200 grams - is a criminal offence, and offenders
will get charged accordingly.

"The [decriminalization] law hasn't passed, so for us it's the same deal as
it has always been," said Guy Coupal of the Montreal police. "It's like
when the province changed the 'right on reds' law. Before, it was an
infraction. The next day it wasn't. The people who did it before got tickets."

But talk to a experienced beat cop, as Hour did this week, and you'll get
another story entirely, one that is far more nuanced and (dare we say it) a
little more realistic than the official hard-and-fast police edict on
marijuana.

"Julie" (not her real name) has been working the streets for the past two
years in a northern part of the city. (She didn't want us to print which
part "because there are so few women in the district," she says.) She says
the decision whether or not to charge someone with simple possession isn't
up to police policy, but rather individual officer discretion. And you'd be
surprised to know that many police officers - including Julie herself -
want to see the drug not only decriminalized, but made legal altogether.

Why? Often it's a matter of time, since an arrest means as much as two
hours of paperwork for the officers - "Two hours where we're not on the
job," Julie says.

Apart from this, though, is a sense of reality among police officers that
has yet to make it to the top brass: Busting people for simple possession
simply isn't worth it. "In general, if we catch an adult smoking a joint,
we could care less. It doesn't really bother us. Where it starts being a
problem is when children are involved.

"It depends a lot on the attitude of the person," she continues. "If the
person we stop has an arrogant attitude, we'll do the two hours of
paperwork and make an arrest. But usually if we see a youth who has no
criminal record, it's a nice kid, we'll give them a break and throw his or
her pot away... Most of the time we don't charge young people [16- to
17-year-olds] anymore. It's rare. We know that we spend two hours doing up
the dossier, and when it goes to court the prosecutor has nothing. Usually,
we'll just take the drugs, have them destroyed or, so that the person
doesn't think I'm keeping them for myself, I throw them in a canal or the
river."

Even the question of how much pot, exactly, is deemed simple possession is
debatable. Though the official police rule is less than 30 grams, Julie say
she has let people go with little more than a warning even though they've
had nearly 50 grams of pot on them. "We've even caught people with between
30 and 50 grams, and they didn't have a lot of money on them, no pager, no
way to weigh it, and we call in and [the drug section] says there's no way
we could get a trafficking charge.

"It's not difficult to get drugs in Montreal. Berri metro, St-Denis Square,
the Tam-Tams. These days, people aren't shy about selling... We know that
there are a ton of dealers at Berri metro. St-Denis Square is the same, and
everyone knows that. Police know it, and they hassle them from time to
time, but the reality is police get a lot of calls and we can't always take
care of the small dealers. We focus on the bigger players. Hassling smaller
players isn't a waste of time, but..."

Judging from what Julie says, it seems the Montreal police - the ones we
see on the street every day, that is - practice far more harm-reduction
techniques than their bosses are willing to admit. In fact, Julie's boss
would probably have a fit if they heard one of their own say the following:
"[Pot] should be legal. We could control the product and what's in it, and
make sure people aren't smoking garbage. I make an arrest [for possession],
there's two hours we're not on the job. What's the point?"