{"id":22824,"date":"2021-06-18T16:20:31","date_gmt":"2021-06-18T21:20:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/?p=22824"},"modified":"2021-06-21T12:37:46","modified_gmt":"2021-06-21T17:37:46","slug":"little-rock-police-took-hundreds-into-custody-for-marijuana-possession-in-2019-contradicting-chiefs-statements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2021\/06\/18\/little-rock-police-took-hundreds-into-custody-for-marijuana-possession-in-2019-contradicting-chiefs-statements\/","title":{"rendered":"Little Rock police took hundreds into custody for marijuana possession in 2019, contradicting chief"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Little Rock Police Chief Keith Humphrey at a press conference in 2020 (Credit: Brian Chilson)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On May 18, the Little Rock Board of Directors approved <\/span>a city ordinance<\/span><\/a> that designated misdemeanor marijuana offenses the lowest priority for law enforcement. At the meeting, Little Rock Police Chief Keith Humphrey told the city board that the ordinance would not have a material impact on the police department because it has already adopted an unofficial policy of deprioritizing marijuana offenses.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I want to establish here to the directors and to the citizens is the Little Rock Police Department has not arrested anyone physically for the sole purpose of small amounts of marijuana in several years,\u201d <\/span>Humphrey said<\/span><\/a>. The department has long had a practice of \u201ccite and release\u201d for minor marijuana offenses, he said, meaning offenders are given a ticket and a court summons but not held in the Pulaski County jail.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, publicly available information contradicts the chief\u2019s claim. According to data retrieved from the FBI\u2019s <\/span>Crime Data Explorer<\/span><\/a> by the Arkansas Nonprofit News Network, the lowest-level marijuana offenders were given a citation in fewer than half of arrests in Little Rock in 2019. Most arrests seem to have resulted in offenders being physically apprehended by an officer and taken to jail, even in the absence of other crimes.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2019, 322 out of 833 marjuana arrests in Little Rock were for possession alone, involved less than one ounce of marijuana, and did not involve any other type of drug or other criminal offense. Every arrest in the FBI dataset is labeled as one of three types: a citation, an apprehension on a warrant, or an \u201con view\u201d arrest. An \u201con view\u201d arrest means the officer found probable cause to apprehend the person without a warrant. Only about 39% of these 322 lowest-level marijuana possession arrests resulted in a citation. In about 11%, a warrant was involved. The majority, just over 50%, were \u201con view\u201d arrests.<\/span><\/p>\n

The data also reveals vast racial disparities in Little Rock\u2019s enforcement of marijuana laws: In 85% of the lowest-level arrests, the offender was Black. The offender was white in just 11% of arrests. Little Rock\u2019s population is 43% Black and 46% non-Hispanic white, according to 2019 U.S. Census figures. That means a Black resident of the city was eight times more likely than a white resident to be arrested for a minor marijuana offense, even though research indicates <\/span>white and Black Americans in general use marijuana at similar rates<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Eric Barnes, a spokesman for the department, said it wasn\u2019t clear if officers always record the arrest type correctly when they fill out police reports.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of muddy,\u201d Barnes said. \u201cIt depends on how that officer checks fields in the report, and did they check it right. So it\u2019s kind of a hard topic for us to be able to say, \u2018Hey, that may not be 100 percent good data,\u2019 because when you have 500-something employees checking these boxes, there\u2019s unfortunately room for error.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Officers may be confused about which box to check partly because offenders who receive a citation for marijuana possession are in fact briefly taken into police custody. Barnes said police are required under state law to take any marijuana offender to the county jail to be photographed and fingerprinted, after which the person is released with a citation. The difference, he said, is that people who receive a citation are released immediately afterward, whereas people arrested \u201con view\u201d are typically left in jail for some period of time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Asked whether the lowest-level marijuana offenders marked as \u201con view\u201d arrests in 2019 did in fact spend time in jail, Barnes said the department could not \u201cgive a solid answer.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The police department did not respond to follow-up questions from the Arkansas Nonprofit News Network about the accuracy of Chief Humphrey\u2019s public statement or the department\u2019s level of confidence in the accuracy of its own data.<\/span><\/p>\n

The data in the FBI\u2019s file is drawn from local law enforcement reports. The Little Rock Police Department sends its arrest data on a monthly basis to the Arkansas Crime Information Center, a state agency, which then sends the data on to the FBI. The FBI annually publishes a file compiling crime data from thousands of local agencies across the U.S. As of June 18, the most recent publicly available annual file was for 2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ken Richardson, the city director who sponsored the recent ordinance, has been pushing the board to adopt such a policy for years. (Two earlier attempts failed, in 2018 and 2019.) Richardson said both Humphrey and his predecessor, Kenton Buckner, told him there were few if any people being jailed for marijuana possession alone in Little Rock. But the department has produced few solid numbers in response to his questions, he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re really secretive about telling us [the breakdown], or they\u2019ll tell us \u2018That\u2019s not the only reason [offenders] are in the county jail,\u2019 \u201d Richardson said. \u201cThey always say there\u2019s accompanying charges.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

A February memo<\/a> sent to city board members by City Manager Bruce Moore said the police department could not determine how often a marijuana offense is accompanied by another offense. \u201cThere is no way of telling whether the marijuana possession charge is the only charge in the arrest,\" it says.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the publicly available FBI data file does contain this information. The Arkansas Nonprofit News Network filtered the 736 marijuana possession arrests recorded in the 2019 FBI file to remove any associated with an additional criminal offense. About half, 369, were associated with no other crime, with the exception of a drug paraphernalia offense in some cases.<\/span><\/p>\n

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