Virginia - Marijuana Decriminalization And Harrisonburg

Shandar

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Among the figures and tables published in the community-based corrections plan just adopted by the city and county were arrest totals in Harrisonburg, broken down into broad offense categories. The biggest-ticket item classified under "Group A" crimes — generally on the more serious end of the criminal spectrum — is drug arrests. In 2013, the Harrisonburg Police Department reported 403 arrests on drug offenses, about 32 percent of all Group A arrests reported in the city. Over the five year period between 2009-13, drug offenses accounted for 31 percent of all arrests for Group A crimes. (Raw data on p. 6 of this document.)

Any drug-related arrest, including misdemeanor possession of marijuana, counts as a Group A arrest, right there beside arson and murder. And a closer look at HPD arrest data shows that quite a few of these Group A drug arrests seem to be violations of good old Virginia Code 18.2-250.1, the unlawful possession statute.

Back to 2013, when the HPD reported 403 Group A drug arrests. Data requested by Old South High shows the HPD made 208 arrests for misdemeanor marijuana possession that year — or 52 percent of all reported 2013 drug arrests. (When you throw in arrests for sale, possession with intent, or "manufacture" of marijuana, the total 2013 number of marijuana arrests in Harrisonburg climbs to 256, or 64 percent of the reported drug arrests.) On average, between 2009-13, arrests for misdemeanor possession of marijuana amounted to 50 percent of all reported Group A drug offenses in Harrisonburg.

All of this makes the marijuana decriminalization bill that will come before the General Assembly next month a potentially interesting and significant one for Harrisonburg. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria), would demote possession of marijuana from a misdemeanor to a "civil penalty of no more than $100 payable to the Literary Fund."

Ebbin's bill also loosens things up a bit for with regard to sale and possession with intent: e.g. sale of less than an ounce would become a Class 3 misdemeanor, and between an ounce and a pound would be a Class 1 misdemeanor (right now, selling a pound could earn you a felony charge).

This seems like a generally positive bill for people like me — and very probably you, dear reader — who think it's high time to ease up on cannabis policy. It also seems like it's one with potentially significant impact on the HPD, which has been making between 150-200 criminal arrests for misdemeanor marijuana possession per year over the past five years. (Note however, that through early November of 2014, the department was on pace to up that figure to nearly 250 misdemeanor possession arrests this year.)

After multiple requests for comment, the HPD eventually sent a statement by email, which read, in part:

The police department is not going to take a public stance on this. Our job as law enforcement is to enforce the laws that legislation puts in place. We do not want to be in the business of being politicians.

The HPD hasn't responded yet to follow-up questions about how decriminalization could affect things from a purely operational standpoint — i.e., average amount of officer time invested in a criminal arrest vs. civil summons; I'll add to this post if and when I hear from them.

In any case, if Ebbin's bill as written now becomes law, a crime that appears to account for about half of all drug arrests in Harrisonburg, or nearly 9 percent of all criminal arrests period in Harrisonburg in 2013 (that's also counting all the DUI and loitering and trespassing and etc. stuff reported as Group B crimes) would suddenly no longer be a crime. That's remarkable.

**Caveat: The methods and systems used to track and report crime and arrest data — big surprise here — don't lend themselves to easy cut/dried analysis. If several charges stem from a single arrest, it is usually reported to the state police as a single entry by the most serious charge incurred. That means that the total arrests for drug offenses shown here could somewhat underrepresent the actual total, in situations where someone arrested for drug possession is subsequently hit with some sort of weapons charge or something deemed more serious. (According to the Virginia State Police dude in charge of crime reporting, this sort of undercounting routinely does happen for DUI arrests, for example, when subsequent searches of a vehicle turn up something meriting the UI driver a more serious criminal charge. The degree to which this fudges up the proportion of marijuana arrests relative to total drug arrests is unclear, though likely not huge. But let the record reflect, there's potentially a bit of fuzziness to the math.

** Other FWIW comment: My reporting here made no attempt to connect the large number of marijuana arrests in Harrisonburg to another thing that's been getting lots of airtime on this blog: the jail population. All you recreational tokers out there can rest assured that Sheriff Bryan Hutcheson tells Old South High he can practically guarantee "there are no inmates being held here on any given day for misdemeanor marijuana charges only." Don't rush to inferences about what marijuana decriminalization, in and of itself, could mean for reducing the inmate population.

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News Moderator: Shandar @ 420 MAGAZINE ®
Source: Old South High | Life, Love and Loss in Harrisonburg, Virginia
Author: Andrew Jenner
Contact: highfive@oldsouthhigh.com
Website: Marijuana decriminalization and Harrisonburg
 
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