Marijuana-smoking
Former Seattle Police chief Norm Stamper argues legalizing pot will help end the drug war and reduce racial conflicts between cops and minority communities. (AP image)

Cops say legalizing pot could ease drug war racial divide

BY Chris Sullivan  on November 21, 2012 @ 7:29 am (Updated: 7:56 am - 11/21/12 )

With the legalization of marijuana coming for Washington on December 6, some long-time police officers are looking forward to a potential improvement in relations with community members where fear and mistrust have dominated in the past.

Many long-time cops like former Seattle Police chief Norm Stamper believe the war on drugs has created an unnecessarily combative relationship between officers and citizens, especially the minority communities, where a disproportionate amount of marijuana arrests are made.

"I have come to believe that the war on marijuana has made enemies of otherwise law abiding Americans. Many of them young, black, Latino, many of them poor," Stamper says.

Stamper says legalizing pot could start mending some of those fences and foster new trust because there won't be a perception anymore that officers are simply looking to bust minorities for minor offenses.

"The law and the mass incarceration behind it has set up a real barrier between the police and particularly ethnic minority communities."

Alice Huffman, President of the NAACP in California argues the amount of attention and resources devoted to the war on drugs promotes conflict between cops and the community.

"There's a lack of trust, there's a fear on both parts," she says.

Huffman says legalizing pot should help ease those fears and concerns because officers will no longer be targeting people in those communities specifically for marijuana possession.

Stamper believes that could turn the tide of mistrust.

"We can build an authentic partnership between the police and the community and create a climate of true, not cosmetic public relations versions of community policing. True community policing demands a mutual trust and mutual respect and confidence in local law enforcement," he says.

Chris Sullivan, KIRO Radio Reporter
Chris loves the rush of covering breaking news and works hard to try to make sense of it all while telling stories about real people in extraordinary circumstances.
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Comments (8)


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  • anotherfencewalker wrote...
    Move on..
    November 21, 2012 7:45 am
    Idiotic concept of sorts..Pot was legalized> Not cocaine, heroin, meth, crack, the oxy's and all the other street pills and powders that are still alive and well and for sale at a street corner near you. And by the way, the state has yet to come up with a distribution system for retailing pot. Medical facilities don't count. So until then, you know where the users will still have to get it, right?
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  • malcolmkyle wrote...
    Prohibition endangers public safety
    November 21, 2012 8:59 am
    Prohibition has diverted police resources away from other law enforcement activities, with the result that violent crimes and crimes against property have been higher than they would otherwise have been. To the extent that communities divert law enforcement resources from violent crimes to illegal drug offenses, the risk of punishment for engaging in violent crimes is reduced. Kindly follow the link to a scientific paper that determines empirically the homicide offense rate to changes in the percentage of arrests attributed to drug offenses. The empirical results obtained are consistent with a priori expectations that homicide offense rates are higher in communities that devote a greater percentage of their policing resources to the enforcement of drug laws. http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj14n3/cj14n3-8.pdf The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada recently reviewed 15 studies that evaluated the association between violence and drug law enforcement. "Our findings suggest that increasing drug law enforcement is unlikely to reduce drug market violence. Instead, the existing evidence base suggests that gun violence and high homicide rates may be an inevitable consequence of drug prohibition and that disrupting drug markets can paradoxically increase violence." http://tinyurl.com/c4uyecn Here is Julien Codman's testimony, who was a member of the Massachusetts bar, given before the Senate Hearings of 1926:. "we will produce additional evidence on this point, that it is not appropriate legislation to enforce the eighteenth amendment; that it has done incredible harm instead of good; that as a temperance measure it has been a pitiable failure; that it has failed to prevent drinking; that it has failed to decrease crime; that, as a matter of fact, it has increased both; that it has promoted bootlegging and smuggling to an extent never known before" "We believe that the time has come for definite action, but it is impossible to lay before Congress any one bill which, while clearly within the provisions of the Constitution, will be a panacea for the evils that the Volstead Act has caused. We must not be vain enough to believe, as the prohibitionists do, that the age-old question of the regulation of alcohol can be settled forever by the passage of a single law. With the experience of the Volstead law as a warning, it behooves us to proceed with caution, one step at a time, to climb out of the legislative well into which we have been pushed." http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/HISTORY/e1920/senj1926/codman.htm
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  • Ron_Spins wrote...
    Basically nothing has changed
    November 21, 2012 10:56 am
    Snoop dog types will still drive with blunts , smoking as they go and get arrested "business as usual" no big change to nuthin , man.
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  • jway wrote...
    Waste of our money
    November 21, 2012 11:03 am
    Our government keeps marijuana illegal in order to send kids a message to not do drugs. And while this is a noble cause, 6,000 (mainly young) people start using marijuana every single day in this country. The government's "message" doesn't work. So what? Well, 750,000 people/yr in this country have their lives turned upside down by a marijuana arrest. These arrests are a huge price for society to pay for a message that doesn't work. And taxpayers are forced to fund this $40 Billion/yr message that *doesn't* stop people smoking marijuana. This is taxpayers' money - the government doesn't have any money of its own - this is YOUR money. Isn't there something better we could do with this money?
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  • shark75 wrote...
    Where pot is/was illegal, you go to jail (or at least should)
    November 21, 2012 4:49 pm
    If you're too stupid to figure that out, you're likely stoned. Sorry dummb*sses. As far as all the race k*rap, it was only a matter of time before the two subjects would converge... Political correctness is a cancer thats spreads everywhere.
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  • Snout wrote...
    Legalize burglary, armed robbery, rape, domestic violence, etc
    November 21, 2012 5:51 pm
    and watch that divide crumble like a cookie. It will be racial harmony between the cops and the former crooks.
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  • Ted Bundi wrote...
    When are we going after Caffine?
    November 21, 2012 7:11 pm
    I think we should start pulling people over for caffeine intake. After a "double" shot of espresso, you are find 270.00.
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  • Rangerhawk wrote...
    Golly gee!
    November 21, 2012 10:36 pm
    And with this logic, if we legalize prostitution, it would mend the relationships between Jon's, Ho's, spouses and cops too!
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