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For the past four years, any time local police seized cannabis in a criminal investigation, they’ve been required to care for it, either by keeping the plants alive or by returning the marijuana in a usable form to the owner. That’s no longer the case.

On January 23, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that requiring police to store marijuana in evidence is in violation of federal law. The court issued its opinion in the case of the People v. Robert Crouse.

Crouse, a medical marijuana patient, was arrested on May 5, 2011, on charges of cultivation and possession of marijuana after police seized 55 marijuana plants and about 2.9 kilograms of marijuana product from his home. He was charged with a felony count of cultivating more than thirty marijuana plants. Crouse asserted that he was in lawful possession of the cannabis for medical purposes, and a jury acquitted him of marijuana-related drug crimes.

It’s early evening in a parking lot outside a DoubleTree in northeast Denver. At the north end of the lot is a 1987 Winnebago with seven people inside, gathered around a table covered with cannabis products: a concentrate pen, a dab rig, some bud flower and edibles. Once most of the group has gotten loaded, the seven are going to spend the rest of the night at the hotel, with a bunch of cops.

They’re all volunteers in a “green lab,” part of a training program that Understanding Legal Marijuana LLC puts on for law enforcement officials covering all things related to the cannabis industry, including products, culture and how to look for impairment during a roadside sobriety test. This session is also an opportunity for cops to talk openly with cannabis users in an atmosphere far less stressful than a traffic stop.

Police lights flashed outside Churchill’s Pub in Little Haiti, Miami this past weekend during the Vote Yes Marijuana Fest, but no one seemed to mind. The officers had been hired to work the event. There were no plans to rough up any of the participants of the festivities, which included a 2:30 a.m. blunt-rolling contest.

“The police understand,” organizer Oski Gonzalez said. “They don’t want to keep hassling people because of some marijuana. They want to be out looking for some real criminals.”

Note left by Kentucky deputies after confiscating marijuana plants from corn field.

After confiscating about 254 marijuana plants found nestled in a corn field last week, deputies in Grayson County, Kentucky, left the growers a note: Thanks for the weed!

In addition to thanking the still-unknown culprits for the nearly $600,000 worth of marijuana, deputies began to taunt the growers on social media with the hashtag #WeGotYoWeed.

Legalization troubles some cops.

Excerpted from the newsletter WeedWeek. Get your free and confidential subscription at WeedWeek.net.

LA Weekly asked cops why they oppose the Adult Use Marijuana Act (AUMA) California’s REC ballot initiative. “This is not a law-enforcement jihad or Reefer Madness,” Ken Corney, Ventura’s police chief and president of the California Police Chiefs Association said. “Proposition 64 isn’t about green, leafy marijuana that people smoke at home or pass across the aisle at a concert. It’s a for-profit play to bring the commercialization of marijuana to California.”

The piece continues: “[Corney] subscribes to the theory, so far unproven, that the proposition’s biggest financial backer, Holmby Hills tech billionaire Sean Parker, is in it to open the door to Big Marijuana profits for rich folks like himself.”

The group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition endorsed AUMA.

Three Santa Ana, Calif. cops who were caught on video last year snacking and mocking an amputee (“I was about to kick her in her fucking nub”) during a dispensary raid are no longer with the department. The Orange County District Attorney’s Office has filed petty theft charges against the three officers.

The three had argued that they believed police had already disabled all of the cameras and therefore “had a reasonable expectation that their conversations and actions were no longer being recorded.”

Art Way, Colorado state director for Drug Policy Alliance writes:

Those with vested interest in the devaluation of black life and the criminalization of black                            communities need the drug war for political cover. Those who want to end state sanctioned                        murders should consider joining forces to end the drug war. 

This is a war waged to keep the black, brown and poor disenfranchised all while using their bodies as commodities for a prison industrial complex similar to the human commodification witnessed during slavery. ( H/T Word on the Tree )

A small but growing number of Canadian RCMP officers (the equivalent of FBI agents) are getting their MED reimbursed by the government.

In the Philippines, imprisoned drug lords have raised a $21 million reward for whoever kills the country’s new president Rodrigo Duterte. For his part, Duterte offers bounties of $1 million for drug lords killed and $600,000 for drug lords captured. According to his administration, 75 percent of the drugs in the country were manufactured inside its largest prison.

Industry hub Pueblo, Colo. has seen quite a few drug busts.

A Pennsylvania man has been charged with abuse of a corpse after blending weed with brain embalming fluid.

The marijuana legalization initiative that will be on the November ballot in California is a disappointment to many in the cannabis decriminalization movement. California NORML, the granddaddy of political pot groups, has not fully endorsed it.

These critics say that Proposition 64, which will allow Californians 21 and older to possess up to one ounce of marijuana, is about as conservative as it could be without defeating the very purpose of legalization, which is allowing folks to enjoy weed without fear of arrest.

A recent study confirmed that marijuana-related arrests are up in Nebraska counties near the Colorado border.

Representatives of law-enforcement agencies in such areas frequently complain about the resources required to stop the flow of cannabis over the border.

However, the study’s authors can’t say definitively whether the increasing number of busts is due to more marijuana coming into the state or a greater emphasis on stopping it.

Taser.
A police body camera by Taser.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti unveiled plans today to outfit the LAPD with 7,000 body cameras, making L.A. the first major city to take that step. But before the cameras hit the streets, the department has to come up with a policy on when and how they will be used. And that could be tricky.
The L.A. Police Protective League, the union that represents LAPD officers, is broadly supportive of body cameras. But they want to make sure that officers can review the videos before writing up their reports.
Not so fast, says the ACLU, which calls the proposed policy “ridiculous”. More at The Informer blog.

Flickr/IntelFreePress..

It looks like there’s finally an official plan in place for the purchase of some more body cameras for hundreds of local law enforcement officers.
Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson announced this afternoon that her office plans to dole out $1 million to the Houston Police Department and $900,000 to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office for the purchase of hundreds of body cameras, which will be worn by officers while they’re on duty. The money will come from assets the office has seized during criminal investigations, Anderson said.

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