Pubdate: Wed, 05 Jun 2013
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Copyright: 2013 The Associated Press
Contact: http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/send-a-letter/
Website: http://www.dallasnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/117
Author: Suzanne Gamboa, The Associated Press

ACLU: BLACKS ARRESTED FOR POT MORE THAN WHITES

Use About the Same, but Group Cites Profiling in 2010 Figures

WASHINGTON - Black people are arrested for possessing marijuana at a 
higher rate than white people, even though marijuana use by both 
races is about the same, the American Civil Liberties Union said in a 
study released Tuesday. File 2012/Getty ImagesThe guiding principle 
is "use of marijuana is a crime," says Jim Pasco of the National 
Fraternal Order of Police.

The ACLU's analysis of federal crime data found marijuana arrest 
rates for blacks were 3.73 times greater than those for whites 
nationally in 2010. In some counties, the arrest rate was 10 to 30 
times greater for blacks. In two Alabama counties, all those arrested 
for marijuana possession were black, the ACLU said.

About 14 percent of blacks and 12 percent of whites reported in 2010 
that they had used marijuana during the previous year, according to 
data that the ACLU obtained from the National Drug Health Survey, a 
Health and Human Services publication. Among people ages 18-25, use 
was greater among whites.

An overall increase in marijuana possession arrests from 2001 to 2010 
is largely attributable to drastic increases in arrests of blacks, 
the ACLU said.

Blacks were arrested in marijuana cases at a rate of 537 per 100,000 
people nationally in 2001. In 2010, their arrest rate rose to 716 per 
100,000. The number for whites was 191 per 100,000 in 2001, and it 
rose only to 192 per 100,000 in 2010, the ACLU said. Despite the 
disparate rates, far more whites were arrested for marijuana 
possession in 2010 (460,808) than blacks (286,117).

Ezekiel Edwards, lead author of the ACLU study, attributed the 
disparate arrest rates to racial profiling by police seeking to pad 
their arrest numbers with "low-level" arrests in "certain communities 
that they have kind of labeled as problematic."

"While this country moves in some ways in a more progressive 
direction on marijuana policy in a lot of places, in other places, 
people are getting handcuffed, jailed and getting criminal records at 
racially disparate rates all around the country," he said.

Police simply operate from the standpoint that "the use of marijuana 
is a crime," said Jim Pasco, executive director of the National 
Fraternal Order of Police.

"We will try to educate our membership, to the extent the statistics 
are valid, to be aware [that] people other than blacks are smoking 
marijuana and to arrest them too," said Pasco, who had not seen the 
ACLU report.

Arthur Burnett Sr., a retired judge of the Superior Court of the 
District of Columbia, said his 40 years on the bench showed him that 
police concentrate their numbers in black communities. It's easier to 
catch people with marijuana in communities where there are "open-air" 
drug markets, rather than looking in homes or country clubs, he said.
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