[Fayetteville, Arkansas] Aldermen with a 1-7 vote did not pass an ordinance also proposed by Petty to create a Marijuana Policy Review Panel. The panel would oversee enforcement of an initiative passed in November making prosecution of marijuana offenses a low priority in the city.
Police Chief Greg Tabor spoke against the measure.
“Our enforcement was a low priority then; nothing has changed, other than we do have some discussions to make sure we’re following the law,” Tabor said.
In other words, trust the police chief. He says that before Sensible Fayetteville’s lowest priority initiative passed, enforcement of marijuana laws was a low priority, and today nothing has changed.
From 1998-2007, Fayetteville police booked between 300-400 marijuana arrests per year, or an average of about one per day. If that’s the result of marijuana having been the lowest priority and “nothing has changed”, then you’re still arresting a person a day for marijuana, right Chief Tabor?
Look, Chief, in 2008 the people of Fayetteville voted 2-to-1 to make marijuana offenses the lowest priority. They would not have done that if they felt 1 arrest per day was reasonable. What this panel would have discovered is that, indeed, nothing has changed, despite two-thirds of the voters demanding that change.
