Portage Park Officially The 'Portlandia' Of Chicago After Getting The Most Pot Tickets
By Jon Graef in News on Aug 10, 2013 7:30PM
Portage Park may as well put a bird on everything, since the city's Northwest side neighborhood had the most pot possession tickets out of any other place in Chicago, according to DNAInfo Chicago. A review of public records showed Portage Park had about 12 percent of the city's tickets, which is part of Chicago's nascent experiment with pot decriminalization.
Chicago police may now write tickets, instead of make arrests, to people found holding 15 grams of marijuana or less ranging in price from $250 to $500.
Once an officer writes the ticket, they'll seize the stash for testing. If it's proven to be cannabis, the officer signs an affidavit, and the person who had the pot receives a fine in the mail. They then have seven days to pay the fine or request a hearing in administrative court.
Of 540 the pot tickets during an eight month period, 64 were written in Portage Park.
The neighborhoods with the next amount of pot tickets includes Austin, where police wrote 30 of them; North Lawndale, where 28 tickets were written; and Roseland, which saw 21 tickets written.
These neighborhoods are significant because they are black. 27th Ward Alderman Walter Burnett has pointed out that pot arrests disproportionately affect minorities. Portage Park aside, the number of pot tickets written for those three neighborhoods -- 79, cumulatively -- shows the same.
Let's look at the number of pot tickets written in that same eight month period around , say, West Town, which includes municipal contact high Wicker Park. DNAInfo Chicago says...three.
Three.
Maybe they're all just used to the smell?
In a neat bit of serendipity, guess where the city's first legal weed clinic opened up?
It's perfect, really.