Last Dec. 5, Zeke Flatten, a former police officer now working in the cannabis industry, was driving south through northern California’s Sonoma County on US-101 when he was pulled over by Rohnert Park police. The officers, wearing green military-style fatigues without badges, insignia, or nametags, told Flatten they were with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, […]
A study by researchers at Washington State University has found evidence of “demonstrable and persistent benefit” to police departments’ effectiveness in Washington and Colorado since the states voted to legalize cannabis in 2012. Researchers used monthly FBI data to investigate crime clearance rates for the states from 2010 to 2015; crimes are normally considered “cleared” […]
A headline in The Week magazine recently spooked a lot of dog lovers. “Illinois police claim if marijuana is legalized, they’ll have to kill their police dogs,” it said. No, not really. It turns out the scare was the product of misinterpretation and hyperbole. Here’s what happened. Though the original article says nothing about euthanizing […]
Most people want to interact with the police for as short a time as possible. But it’s hard to walk away from a police officer who calls you over to him if you don’t know exactly what power they have over you. In this post, we’re going to talk about what your rights are when […]
The Supreme Judicial Court said on Wednesday July 9, 2014 that because voters decriminalized small amounts of marijuana in 2008, police officers in Massachusetts can no longer rely on the odor of marijuana to justify searching a person’s car. In two unanimous rulings, the state’s highest court said they had already decided in 2011 that […]
From Colorado and Washington state to California and Hawaii, police are being sued by people who want their marijuana back after prosecutors chose not to charge them or they were acquitted. In some cases, the one-time suspects are asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars to replace dead plants. Some police in medical marijuana states […]
The Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) in Colorado is pushing for the Denver Police Department to lift the ban on off-duty marijuana use. This news comes after Police Chief Robert White announced that there is some questionable alcohol use going on in the department. Following a number of alcohol-related officer arrests this year, White ordered that […]