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Thursday, December 07, 2006
Murders Soar As Police Pursue Pot Smokers
Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
A guest article by Michael Earl Patton.
Cincinnati City Council’s major crime-fighting initiative this year has been to “enhance” the penalties for possession of small quantities of marijuana. Critics have said that this is a diversion from the real problems of the city, and with the soaring number of murders already at last year’s total, it appears that the critics are right.
In the 6-month report given to council recently, the police stated that there had been 2,330 arrests using the new ordinance. Of these, 1063 have resulted in conviction so far, with hundreds of cases still pending. If all of the convictions resulted in a 30-day jail sentence, then that means 31,890 jail-bed days. Divide by 185 (since the actual period is a little over 6 months) and one gets a little over 172 jail beds.
In other words, it looks like the Cincinnati marijuana ordinance, by itself, may be using up 172 of the jail beds in the county. If one multiplies the 31,890 jail-bed days by the cost to keep prisoners, which is about $55 per person per day, then one gets an expenditure of about $1.75 million.
It is also interesting to note that the police report that the total amount of marijuana seized was 15,894.94 grams, for an average of a little under 7 grams per arrest. How much is 7 grams in everyday terms? Well, a penny weighs about 2-1/2 grams, so this is less than the weight of 3 pennies. And 7 grams is the average weight, which means that many people—probably most—were arrested for possessing less than this.
With the recent budget cutbacks proposed so that the city can hire more police officers, one has to ask if this is the best use of resources. Robert R. Ryan, a Republican who lobbies for reform of the drug laws, says, “If if had spent his much money and written such a report I would be fired or seriously reprimanded.”
A video of the police report is also available on YouTube.
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07 Dec 2006 at 06:04 am | #
MEP:
You have not mentioned the guns. In the video linked (and also in our recent interview with Leslie Ghiz), they mention the guns. Thomas says that 37 guns have been taken off the street because of this initiative.
Ghiz said that such was the whole point—using the ordinance to give officers the right to search.
So, that’s arguably $1.75 million to get 37 guns off the street—which I mention since you have compared this to the homicide rate—or, on average, $47,000 per gun seized for half-a-year.
07 Dec 2006 at 07:25 am | #
Talk about screwed up values! Let’s worry about 420 when we have kids walking around w/ automatics and semiautomatics that some of the police are afraid of- but lets be concerned with enough weed that weighs 3-4 pennies worth.
You can smell Communtiy Values all over this one! Give it a break and spend more time on the murders-
Hey the Raiders are in town this weekend- bringing Raider Nation. Anyone think we can not only win the football game but the murder # as well? Move over Oakland- Here we come!
07 Dec 2006 at 09:14 am | #
Here’s a question:
According to a presentation by an ATF agent yesterday (at a regional anti-gang summit), Columbus is the only Ohio police jurisdiction to trace ownership of every seized gun, and document each seized gun in a national database that can be used to help solve murder cases. Tracing guns to the point of manufacture helps identify the people who sell guns to criminals.
So here’s my question: Why isn’t Cincinnati tracing every gun and using this database? If we are investing this much in searching for guns, we should take the steps necessary to prevent future murders and solve past crimes.
--pk---
07 Dec 2006 at 10:04 am | #
In response to the Dean (#1) and komarek (#3):
The police already had the right to search someone if they found marijuana, since it was illegal before. The claim that the new law is really about guns is false.
But let’s say it’s true. Then out of 2,330 people searched the police found just 37 guns? That’s 1 gun for every 63 people searched. Doesn’t sound like the pot smokers are a bunch of “dangerous criminals.” And as komarek pointed out, if we were really concerned about violent crime, we would at least be tracing the guns that the police do seize.
Of course, there are a lot of things we don’t know from this report:
1. The neighborhoods where these arrests were made.
2. What led police to arrest/search for marijuana in the first place.
3. If those who were found with guns would have been searched anyways based on criteria other than marijuana possession.
4. How many of those guns seized were actually legal (just because the police arrest you doesn’t mean you are guilty).
I am concerned because this and other laws seem designed more to harass or intimidate than to solve actual problems. Then the question becomes what groups are such laws targeting? And as 3CDC is “exempt” from the vacant building ordinace, are certain groups “exempt” from this law?
07 Dec 2006 at 11:09 am | #
Is there any basis to the numbers you have used here or did they just come off the top of your head? I didnt see any mention of an average 30 day jail stay for conviction in the report.
07 Dec 2006 at 11:37 am | #
The insinuation that the “soaring” murder rate is caused by this ordinance is ridiculous. It’s up only marginally from last year.
07 Dec 2006 at 12:07 pm | #
"And as 3CDC is “exempt” from the vacant building ordinace, are certain groups “exempt” from this law?”
From the Dean’s interview with L. Ghiz, I would assume so.
As for the number of arrests, remember that the police & sheriff’s dept have stepped up arrests in general, too.
07 Dec 2006 at 01:40 pm | #
Great points MEP, they sure are playing the numbers in their favor, but ask for some different numbers and you get a different picture. They have pretty much come out and said they are targeting “certain” people. Not college kids or the 50 people that came out to speak against the marijuana ordinance.
Ghiz said none of the people who complained have come back to her saying they had a problem and got arrested etc. If they did get arrested, I’m sure they would go back since she’s such a good listener. In one ear and out the other.
These council people will do whatever is on their agenda and pay lip service to the public. No matter how many people speak out against something, council claims to know what the rest of the public wants. That means the people that matter like their political donors, people that don’t even live in the city.
This is all part of the 3CDC gentrification agaenda!
07 Dec 2006 at 02:50 pm | #
In response to formerly f (#5):
When the bill was passed, council said that they needed 30 days jail time for those convicted. I said “may be using up to 172 beds.” Of course it is possible that they are being released early as Simon Leis and Joe Deters keep complaining about. On the other hand, hundreds of cases are still pending, and the police are presumably still arresting. And a second conviction means 6 months jail time.
In response to RK (#6):
Last year’s number of murders was also extremely high. I didn’t say that last year’s number was acceptable and now that the number looks like it will be exceeded that that is unacceptable. The numbers are very high with respect to the historical numbers. Keep in mind, too, that Cincinnati’s population has been declining since about 1960, so the rate would be climbing even if the number of murders were to stay constant.
This was supposed to be at least part of the solution to the soaring murder rate. It isn’t.
In response to Quirn (#7):
You bring up a good point. With the sheriff’s department patroling in OTR and City West, does the 2,330 number arrested include only those arrested by the Cincinnati Police Department, or do they include Hamilton County Sheriff numbers, too? I’ll ask Cecil Thomas.
07 Dec 2006 at 03:08 pm | #
You cannot have all those pot smokers walking around in search of cookies or something else to munch on. Zero tolerance is the answer. Lock up all the weed smokers and you won’t have room left for the corporate thieves that daily scheme to rob the treasury that serves us all. (some better than others) If the giveaways were directed to people in need through jobs programs and human development that give someone downtrodden a little hope and possibly a new direction in life. Instead we piss away $42 +++ Million and 40 years of revenue to fix a leaky fountain and spread bullshit all over it hoping it will act as fertilizer. If we stop the corporate freebees we might be able to have a positive impact on the crime rate, through education not incarceration. Quid pro quo is what our elections have become and under the current system we have no hope.
07 Dec 2006 at 03:23 pm | #
MEP:
I appreciate the thoughtful way you are looking at these issues. Re: the jail, people forget that “dangerous criminals” mostly go to prison, not the local jail. You have pointed out before that the major group in jail are those awaiting trial, and that trial delays are swelling our jail system, not “dangerous criminals.”
Moreover, the courts locally are highly resistant to diverting offenders to treatment. People could get real treatment for their addictions or mental health problems instead of cooling their heels at the Justice Center. Local jail administration knows that many prisoners could be better handled by treatment than incarceration.
You are right about the police not needing any additional tools to search citizens. Courts will always support searches by police officers who have good reason to suspect they are in personal danger.
Frankly, the marijuana thing is a quality of life issue to me. When I see a group of kids rolling blunts in the park or on the library steps, it affects my use of the park and my feeling of safety at the library. I want that conduct to stop. But do I expect the kids to get jail time? In most cases, it’s not justified.
My point earlier was that any “guns off the street” policy, including this fake “safe streets” measure, will not seriously reduce the number of guns in the hands of street criminals. Police officers should not be encouraged to hassle citizens. They need to be encouraged to do the follow-up work as well. They need to be encouraged to conduct themselves decently, do the right job, and do the whole job.
--pk---
07 Dec 2006 at 03:54 pm | #
So it is safe to assume you are just guessing using the 30 day figure. Given the prison overcrowding problem I find it doubtful that city council is getting what they want in regards to sentence length (no one else is. Seems to me you used the numbers for shock value with nothing to back them up to fit with your preconceived agenda to show this law is wrong.
You are correct that it “may” be costing up to 172 beds but you would also be correct in saying that it “may” be costing almost nothing because you don’t have any numbers on how many people are actually serving jail time.
I would think further research will show that your numbers are way off on the amount of time people are spending in prison and the cost to the taxpayers.
Alarmist rhetoric strikes again
07 Dec 2006 at 08:05 pm | #
how many pissed off stoner cons does it take to assemble IED’s?
http://www.counterpunch.org/lind12062006.html
07 Dec 2006 at 09:27 pm | #
In response to formerly f (#12):
Gee, I take council at their word when they say a tiny amount of marijuana is worth 30 days in jail, and now you accuse me of using alarmist rhetoric.
If council doesn’t want me to use their rhetoric, then they shouldn’t say anything.
Instead, they talk about how dangerous marijuana users are to the city. They talk about how criminals are not serving their full sentences because the jail is overcrowded. They talk about the need for a new jail. They talk about the need for temporary jail—the “tent jail”—to house prisoners until the new jail can be built. There sure is a goal of having more people serve more time.
And yet we know that most people in jail today are just waiting for their court date because they cannot afford bail. The Vera Institute reported that 81% of the jail beds were taken up by people waiting for their court date in 2004 (p. 18). A figure they released at one of the task force meetings was that the average wait for a court date was 24 days. This is consistent with what I observed by selecting various individuals currently in jail, using http://www.hcso.org (click on “View/Search Inmate Information"). That alone indicates that large numbers of jail beds are being taken up by people arrested for possession of tiny amounts of marijuana, regardless of any actual sentence.
As for a detailed statistical analysis, that is virtually impossible using the current system. What we need is something like the COMPSTAT system used in New York City. This subject came up time and again during the jail task force meetings. The data had to be gone through by hand to come up with the numbers that are in the reports.
There are at least four dozen law-enforcement agencies in Hamilton County, from Cincinnati Police, to Hamilton County Sheriff, to U.C. Police (yes, they can arrest people and send them to jail, too), to Glendale, to Columbia Township, to U.S. Marshalls, and on and on and on. Does anyone really believe that they all work well together? Look at the turf battles between the Sheriff and CPD about patroling OTR. Hamilton County could greatly improve its public safety by an overhaul of its balkanized police departments.
If the city wants to clamp down on drug crimes, they should start at the cocaine trafficking. That’s where the real money is. It’s not the pot dealers who shoot each other—it’s the cocaine dealers.
I’m glad though, formerly f, that you recognize that the numbers look alarming. But they are not just rhetoric. In sum: 1. council wants jail time, 2. council is willing to spend millions to make certain that arrestees get more jail time, 3. there are currently long waits in jail even before court date, 4. my estimate did not include the hundreds still waiting for a court date, 5. the police are still arresting people for possession of small amounts of marijuana, and those will hit the system when the people of point 4 get their court date, 6. the numbers may not include any arrests by the Sheriff’s department, or by U.C. police for that matter, and 7. because the ordinance is so new, no one has yet been convicted of a second offense, which could mean 6 months in jail instead of just 30 days.
07 Dec 2006 at 09:29 pm | #
Keep up the information exchange Patton - it is greatly appreciated.
You keep writing, I’ll keep reading
08 Dec 2006 at 08:17 am | #
Let’s forget about the weed smokers and how about making room for the politicians that have lied, cheated, and stolen from the county? I think that there would be an interesting jail diversity mix!!!
08 Dec 2006 at 10:41 am | #
you used councils rhetoric not their results. how many times has joe deters come out and said he wants the death penalty in a case and not gotten it? do you judge him based on the times he says he wanted it or the times he achieved it?
i will submit that there is no way on earth your numbers are close to true given the jail overcrowding.
yes your rhetoric was alarmist for no reason. get some facts and write a real article
08 Dec 2006 at 03:09 pm | #
I take it that Deters wants the death penalty every time he says it. If he doesn’t get it, it’s not because he doesn’t want it.
Council has said this should be the policy, it doesn’t matter if it is completely unrealistic or not. It is still the way they say it should be. This policy is crap and Patton is just doing the math based on what the policy says it should be.
They meant for this law to be applied in an unequal way and they even have the nerve to publicly say it. Shame on them!
08 Dec 2006 at 10:20 pm | #
Response to formerly f (#17):
Alarmist: “We are filled with felons ... We don’t have any space for felons.” Prosecutor Joe Deters on the Bill Cunningham show, July 14. Mr. Deters has made similar comments repeatedly—this one I recorded.
Alarmist: The Voorhis Associates Study, which based its recommendation for a new jail purely on arrest records and not on actual convictions. In New York City, only one-fourth of felony arrests result in actual indictments (source: Downsizing Prisons by Michael Jacobson, p. 119. Mr. Jacobson was the Commissioner of Correction under Mayor Giuliani.) This flaw was pointed out many times, and yet there has not been a correction.
Alarmist: The supposed link between pot smokers and violent crime.
I use the data that are available. If the data are imperfect, then the authorities should provide more accurate data. I have said many times that the call for a new jail is based on lousy data. I am merely using their own data to call attention to a certain situation. You are apparently insisting that I do not do any analysis because the publicly available data could be better. I agree, they could be better, but I’m not holding my breath for better data.
I have also said that the so-called jail over-crowding situation is due to people waiting for court dates. These are people who cannot afford bail. I’ll really go out on a limb here, but I suspect that the people who are arrested for possession of small amounts of marijuana are often people who cannot afford bail. I don’t think the police are aggresively searching the people in Hyde Park and Oakley for marijuana. If one serves time before sentencing one is still serving time. If one is processed and released, one still has to come back for the court date. The whole point of the ordinance was to send people to jail, not fine them. We did that before, and council said that that was not good enough.
I have heard of people who served jail time under this ordinance. Perhaps there is unequal enforcement—that only low-income inner city residents serve jail time. Well, I’ll make another wild prediction if that is the case and say that the ACLU would be very interested.
I also note that you have said nothing about arresting someone for such miniscule amounts of marijuana while the murder rate soars. Or do you think that this is a wise use of police resources?
09 Dec 2006 at 11:18 am | #
More alarmist rhetoric:
The 6-month report states: “486 cases have been adjudicated through the system not resulting in a conviction. This is usually due to a plea bargain arrangement where the defendant pled guilty to a more serious charge.”
This is alarmist because it doesn’t state what the more serious charges could be. Assault? Armed robbery? (We have heard about how the pot smokers are dangerous.) And what’s this about plea bargains where the accused plead guilty to a more serious charge? Why should they do that unless they were under the threat of jail time for marijuana possession?
Not given, as I have pointed out before in other contexts, is the number of defendants who were found “not guilty” or where the charges were dismissed. For some reason those data are very hard to come by.
10 Dec 2006 at 07:23 pm | #
I e-mailed this just a few minutes ago:
Subject: How to create crime faster than we can build jails
Letter to the editors of the Enquirer,
Patricia Gallagher Newberry had a guest editorial recently, “The killings we don’t hear about,” lamenting the fact that the typical victim of drug war-related murders doesn’t get the ink that innocent bystanders get. Then I noticed that most of the on-line commenters about her editorial said that most murder victims don’t deserve the ink simply because they’re criminals.
Today brings us the Enquirer’s editorial board’s opinion, “Enforced or not, it’s still the law,” expressing equanimity if not glee at creating a huge new class of criminals, smokers.
As the bumper sticker about the war on terror says, “We’re creating enemies faster than we can kill them.”
Here in Cincinnati, the bumper sticker might be toned down to, “We’re creating criminals faster than we can jail them.” But, how long before we have a universal policy of one bumper sticker that fits all?
11 Dec 2006 at 10:52 am | #
that is an absurd argument. you cant pretend like things are happening in a certain way when you have no proof or reason to beleive that they are. He overinflated the numbers to make the situation look worse than it is. He could have argued that if city council had their way such and such woudl have happened. instead he acted like it “may” have already happend
better data are available. though time consuming you could gather who has been imprisioned for how long based on just the drug charge but you choose not to do it. the problem isnt the data it is your laziness. why go get the facts when you cna make up an argument
no i dont but i also dont beleive in pulling supposed numbers with no basis in fact to make an argument against it. my problem isnt with your argument but it is with the way you make it based in ZERO fact
11 Dec 2006 at 12:32 pm | #
maybe formerly f should supply real numbers. Will the real ass slapper slither in to save us?
Show us what you got ff or take your argument back to city council which is where you came from. If you disagree with MEP’s numbers provide verifiable date and we will listen.
11 Dec 2006 at 02:22 pm | #
"Murders Soar As Police Pursue Pot Smokers”
Murders are soaring BECAUSE police are pursuing pot smokers. Drugs are not causing the murders; the War on Drugs is causing the murders.
11 Dec 2006 at 04:59 pm | #
"that is an absurd argument. you cant pretend like things are happening in a certain way when you have no proof or reason to beleive that they are.”
That’s what council did in order to give us a stupid policy that makes them look “tough” on crime, but their really just dopes on crime.
“He overinflated the numbers to make the situation look worse than it is.”
“i also dont beleive in pulling supposed numbers with no basis in fact to make an argument against it.”
How do you know? If you have better data then please share. MEP was honest about how he arrived at his figures. Now why don’t you do the same? Or are you the one that’s lazy?
11 Dec 2006 at 08:52 pm | #
In response to formerly f (#22):
Please take a look at the motion which required the report. It requires that the police report back to council on the “number of convictions that resulted in jail time for marijuana possession of 100 grams.” The 6-month report IS about jail for pot smokers.
As for “pulling” the numbers, I explained before that that is extremely time-consuming. Even for the county’s Voorhis Associates jail study, they had to do a statistical sampling. And they had a budget of over $200,000. Further, as I stated above, they based their analysis on arrests, not convictions as I did. If I had based it on arrests the numbers would have more than doubled. Since I ignore the cases that were still pending, I may have been actually a little conservative in the effect of this law.
I have gone to the Justice Center before and have the paper record pulled. (It was for a case where the police officer decided not to go to a judge to get a warrent, so he wrote his own. I have a copy of it in my file.) It is time-consuming. Keep in mind that only lawyers have full access to the on-line records at the court clerk’s website.
12 Dec 2006 at 01:25 pm | #
I just read this article about our “criminal Justice System.” An interesting view of how things work.
http://www.counterpunch.com/roberts12122006.html
12 Dec 2006 at 08:37 pm | #
In response to anon (#27):
That was a great article. The author is Paul Craig Roberts, who was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. Not exactly a typical liberal. He obviously is very worried about our Constitutional rights being shredded.
I have seen a defense attorney buckle under here in Cincinnati. He told me that if he didn’t play along, then all of his clients in the future would get hammered. Once I was waiting for a juvenile case when the prosecution told the key defense witness (a Catholic nun) that the hearing was over and that she could go home, when it hadn’t even started. She bumped into me in the hall and wondered why I was still there.
It is because of things like this (see also the story at the bottom of comment #26) that I am so passionate about the subject.
Either all of us have the rights listed in the Constitution, or none of us do.