Colorado cops frustrated they can’t just bust everyone they catch with marijuana
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 at 4:23 pm | By: Radical Russ
DENVER (CBS4) ? A marijuana investigation turned out to be just a big waste of time for a Colorado sheriff’s department but the sheriff says he’s working with the best information he’s allowed to use.
Summit County Sheriff John Minor says the problem is a lack of clear state rules on medical marijuana. The bust that went wrong used up several days of police work, but he says it was the best they could do with the information they had available. It turned out the growing operation was legal.
“We follow the law, but when the law is so ambiguous, it’s difficult,” Minor said. “Six or seven out of the last 10 in the last 6 months have all been legitimate operations.”
It’s been a perfect storm for law enforcement. Growers don’t have to register with the state, so officers don’t know what they are investigating until after they obtain a search warrant.
I think this story could’ve just begun and ended with “A marijuana investigation turned out to be just a big waste of time.” When at least 60% of your criminal investigations aren’t criminals, you know you’ve got a big problem. It used to be so easy for police: see marijuana, bust people, end of story. Now they have to go through the trouble of determining whether that grower is lawfully providing medicine for sick people, or breaking the law by providing it to healthy people.
It’s funny to me how Colorado police are freaking out about the explosion of dispensaries in Colorado, the inability to bust the plethora of Colorado grows because so many are legal, and the massive increase in registered medical marijuana cardholders. So, in essence, your problems are businessmen who used to sell pot now want to do so legally, people that grow pot now want to do so legally, and people who use pot now want to do so legally. In what other public policy arena aside from marijuana are law enforcement frustrated by more people who want to obey the law?
Maybe the people of Colorado can convince their law enforcement that the problem isn’t that the limited legalization of marijuana for medical purposes creates gray areas in the law that non-medical users can exploit with impunity. The problem is that medical marijuana is too limited to protect the majority of marijuana consumers who simply want to enjoy marijuana legally and not go to jail. The problem isn’t that medical marijuana wastes police resources, it’s that busting people for marijuana wastes police resources.
In every state, including Colorado, while briefing the state legislature on reasons why they need to legalize marijuana, they were informed they would be able to reduce the number of Law Enforcement agents they employ state wide and they would save money.
The fact that Law Enforcement, specifically this county sheriff’s office, don’t have enough real crime to investigate. If they can afford to waste that much time and effort on legal drug grows, and move forward with doing the exact same thing repeatedly, then it’s obvious they have too many people working in the sheriff’s office. I think the citizens would be better served with less law enforcement officers and more money in their coffers to use on more important issues as dictated by the county.
Things are beginning to really heat up in Colorado. In Colorado Springs, where I live, the city council has decided to shut down all the dispensaries. All they need is someone to complain and they’ll take action on the dispensary. I think I smell a lawsuit coming.