Aldermen, Fritchey in Favor of Ticketing for Small Pot Busts

By Chuck Sudo in News on Oct 27, 2011 10:00PM

We know County Board President Toni Preckwinkle is in favor of decriminalizing marijuana, having gone so far as to suggest to Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy he authorize only ticketing for minor pot busts.

McCarthy has also expressed reservations with the drug laws currently on the books, but stopped short of heeding Preckwinkle's advice. In Chicago the disparity between arrests for marijuana and prosecutions for pot is huge. In 2010, Chicago Police made 23,970 pot arrests last year; only ten percent of those cases went to trial. (See the work of the Reader's Mick Dumke and Ben Joravsky for the hard numbers. 1, 2)

Today three aldermen - Danny Solis (25th), Walter Burnett (27th), and Ariel Reboyras (30th) - and Cook County Commissioner John Fritchey joined the chorus and called for Chicago and other towns in Cook County to ticket people found to be holding 10 grams or less of marijuana. Reboyras said the move wasn't an endorsement for people to start smoking up.

“What we’re asking is the police to make the right decision when someone has 10 grams or less in their possession — simply write them a ticket and let them go. That police officer will stay working on his beat.”

Solis is proposing the ordinance calling for a $200 fine for holding less than 10 grams of pot. Burnett, who pointed out the arrests disproportionately affect minorities, offered some personal reference for his support of the measure proposed by Solis.

"I had the opportunity to go to Lollapalooza, Pitchfork, and I think I got contact high being at all those events," Burnett said. "Police there, everything. It wasn't predominantly African American, and guess what? No one got arrested at those events. If that was an African American event, the jails would probably be filled up. I think it's almost a discrimination issue."