It’s The Law, Man

Wasting police time; wasting taxpayer dollars

There aren’t many issues that Americans agree on in this era of divisive politics. The country has been fractured by innumerable partisan confrontations from foreign wars to immigration to birth control. And yet a clear majority of people in the United States do consistently agree on one issue: legalization of marijuana.

Not medical marijuana either. Smoking dope, man.

When the White House created its website Change.Org it asked the public to vote on the “Top 10 Ideas for Change in America.” The result? The call to “legalize the medicinal and recreational use of marijuana” placed #1 in the 2010 Change.org online vote.

Number one.

Not only that, it finished #1 in Barack Obama’s first-ever online Town Hall vote; and it finished #1 in the White House’s 2009 ‘Citizens Briefing Book.’

A bunch of lefties and dopers, right?

How about CNN? Not exactly a left-of-center organization. They say on their website that,

“In a major turnaround from past decades, a majority of Americans support legalizing marijuana, according to a new poll. Fifty-five percent of those questioned nationally said marijuana should be made legal, with 44% disagreeing.”

So, if this is true then why is Florida still so tough on possession of small amounts of marijuana and why are the police in the Keys so aggressive about finding and arresting people, potentially ruining their lives, for possession of fewer than 20 grams? That’s .7 of an ounce.

Misdemeanor marijuana possession in Florida subjects a defendant to up to one year in jail and a $1,000 fine. Offenders can even lose their driver’s license for up to two years. All for doing something that a majority of Americans favor.

Every week the local papers carry stories about local deputies pulling over people and arresting them for misdemeanor marijuana possession or drug paraphernalia. The latter could be pipes, rolling papers, or just about anything the cops deem to be drug paraphernalia.

Local woman ensnared

Take the unfortunate case of Key West local Vicki Boguszewski. Driving late at night just over a week ago after delivering boxes to new apartment on Big Coppitt, she was pulled over by Officer Alexander Rodriquez, Jr. for driving at a “high rate of speed” on North Roosevelt. What would you would guess? 60 mph? 80 mph? 100 mph? Nope. Forty-five miles an hour.

Anyone who has driven on the newly completed North Roosevelt knows that no one — no one –drives at the posted limit of 25 mph. On a recent trip The Blue Paper observed that all the traffic routinely moves at 35 or 40 miles an hour or even faster and no drivers are being arrested. So describing 45 mph as a “high rate of speed” is ludicrous.

Nevertheless, when Boguszewski lowered the window, Rodriguez noted in his report that he “began to notice an odor of what I recognized as marijuana.” After asking her if she had anything illegal with her and her denial, he called in the K-9 dog and another police car. Now there are four police in three cars on the scene for what was a traffic stop for a minor infraction.

“At that moment my heart was racing so hard because I was afraid they might tase me or something even worse,” Boguszewski said in a phone interview. “I was so scared.”

The dog, Cyress, “positively alerted” to the smell of marijuana and the cops searched the car, finding what Rodriguez described as a glass pipe with “residue in it that tested positive for marijuana.” Asked about the pipe Boguszewski described it as a glass bowl. For some reason this made Officer Rodriguez “irate” and he cuffed Boguszewski, put her in his squad car, and took her to the police station.

“He started yelling at me that this wasn’t just a piece of glass, it’s a pipe,” Boguszewski said. “It was completely ridiculous. I bought it on Duval Street. Three male officers, a woman officer and a dog and me. What did they think was going to happen.”

In the meantime, because her car was parked illegally (where Rodriguez had pulled her over), it was towed by Arnold Towing, costing Vicki $200 to get it out of hock. The police easily could have pulled it off the road. Later she had to pay another $360 to bond out after spending time in a holding cell. It will also cost her legal fees, court costs, and, potentially, time away from her job.

So what was Boguszewski charged with? Possession of drug paraphernalia that “had been used and is used to ingest/inhale a controlled substance (marijuana).” Was she the one using or had been using the pipe for drugs? How much marijuana? 20 grams? 1000 grams? The police didn’t and don’t know.

What this story illustrates is the amount of time and money that local police departments spend on misdemeanor infractions such as the possession of small amounts of marijuana. In New York City, statistics show that in 2012 the NYPD made 39,218 low-level possession arrests. The report assumed police spent an average of 2.5 man-hours on such arrests, amounting to 98,045 hours in 2012. The recent arrest of Boguszewski took four hours.

The Drug Policy Alliance and the Marijuana Arrest Research Project looked at the criminal justice system costs of New York City’s marijuana possession arrests. The question was: How much have New York taxpayers been paying to make these arrests? Answer:  “75 million a year.” In 2010, New York City spent $75 million or more arresting and jailing mostly young people simply for possessing small amounts of marijuana. From 1997 through 2010, the NYPD made 536,000 arrests for marijuana possession. This has cost taxpayers in New York $500 million to over $1 billion.

While there are no such studies in the Keys, Kimberly Sloan who formerly worked for the Public Defender’s office in Key West and was the president of the local chapter of the ACLU said that,

“These arrests cost the taxpayers an incredible amount of money. The ACLU released a study in 2010 that it cost the state of Florida $239 million to keep marijuana illegal. Probably 20 percent of the people in the jail are there on a marijuana charge so 20 percent of the cases go through the public defenders’ office, and the same thing for the state attorney’s office. Then you have to cycle these cases through a court, paying bailiffs and other court officers.

“So if those cases weren’t there you’d free up court time, free up public defenders and state attorneys and jail space.”

Would legalization help?

Marijuana prohibition now costs state and federal government as much as $20 billion a year, an economist told The Huffington Post — and legalization efforts are only just beginning to chip away at that.

“That number comes from Jeffrey Miron, a senior lecturer at Harvard University who in 2010 studied the likely impacts of drug legalization, finding that about $8.7 billion would be saved on law enforcement and another $8.7 billion would be generated from taxes on marijuana. Accounting for inflation, that would add up to about $20 billion now, he said.

“As Miron acknowledges, his number is sort of a thought experiment, a suggestion of what would happen if marijuana was legalized on every level of government. Despite a recent Pew Research poll finding that 52 percent of Americans support marijuana legalization, politicians seem to only just now be warming up to that proposition.”

Critics of lax police enforcement will counter that it is their duty to enforce the law. Of course it is. It’s also their duty to enforce laws against littering, jaywalking, letting dogs run free, taking glass bottles to Sombrero Beach – all misdemeanors.

While civil libertarians and marijuana supporters work on changing the law in Florida, a very conservative state, perhaps the local constabulary might make a policy decision to save everyone – taxpayers and law breakers – a good deal of money and pain by spending more time chasing the real bad guys and less time worrying about minor infractions.