Over Half the Drug Arrests in Genesee County for Minor Pot Possession

While Michigan is likely to become one of the next states to legalize a full-scale recreational pot market in 2016, the latest statistics from the Michigan State Police indicates that arrests for possession of this substance are increasing.

In fact, the data shows that between 2008 and 2014 arrests for pot possession shot up around 17 percent, while arrests for other crimes diminished by about the same rate – 15 percent.

In Flint, the latest statistics translate into an utter embarrassment. Nearly 56 percent of all the total drug arrests in Genesee County in 2014 were for minor pot possession. That means without the area’s 1,224 arrests for marijuana possession, the local police could have focused their efforts on combating the reported 6,657 violent crimes that took place last year. Furthermore, pot possession made up over 8 percent of the city’s total arrests in 2014.

Considering Flint supposedly decriminalized the possession of marijuana back in 2012, police still appear to be hell bent on enforcing “state law” rather than adhering to the local ordinance. Before Police Chief James Tolbert took over in 2013, Chief Alvern said the city’s decriminalization vote was meaningless and that “we’re still going to enforce the laws as we’ve been enforcing them."

Apparently, the voice of nearly 60 percent of the voters is meaningless to the public servants, who seem to have to forgotten that taxpaying citizens pay them to enforce laws, not make them up.