{"id":16062,"date":"2019-08-01T09:51:30","date_gmt":"2019-08-01T13:51:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lcpllutzlivetotell.org\/?p=16062"},"modified":"2019-08-08T12:23:56","modified_gmt":"2019-08-08T16:23:56","slug":"texas-state-police-memo-directs-officers-to-stop-marijuana-possession-arrests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/?p=16062","title":{"rendered":"Texas State Police Memo Directs Officers To Stop Marijuana Possession Arrests"},"content":{"rendered":"

Texas State Police Memo Directs Officers To Stop Marijuana Possession Arrests<\/h1>\n
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August 1, 2019<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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By Marijuana Moment<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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By\u00a0Jolie McCullough<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>The Texas Tribune<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Texas\u2019 largest law enforcement agency is moving away from arresting people for low-level marijuana offenses. It\u2019s the latest development in the\u00a0chaos<\/a>\u00a0that has surrounded\u00a0pot prosecution<\/a>\u00a0after\u00a0state lawmakers legalized hemp<\/a>\u00a0this year.<\/p>\n

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As of July 10, all Texas Department of Public Safety officers have been instructed not to arrest people with a misdemeanor amount of the suspected drug \u2014 less than 4 ounces in possession cases \u2014 if possible, according to\u00a0an interoffice memo<\/a>\u00a0obtained by The Texas Tribune. Instead, they would issue a citation requiring a person to appear in court and face their criminal charges.<\/p>\n

Those issued a citation for misdemeanor charges still face the same penalties if convicted \u2014 up to a year in jail and fine of $4,000.<\/p>\n

\u201cDepartmental personnel are expected to continue enforcing marijuana related offenses,\u201d the memo states. \u201cHowever, effective immediately, personnel will cite and release for any misdemeanor amount of marijuana.\u201d<\/p>\n

The DPS policy change came about a week before Republican state leaders chastised prosecutors who have dropped marijuana cases or put them on hold because of the new law. A spokesperson for Abbott did not immediately respond to questions for this story.<\/p>\n

The memo by Randall Prince, deputy director of law enforcement operations at DPS, was sent out to guide enforcement practices in light of the new hemp bill that passed the Texas Legislature,\u00a0House Bill 1325<\/a>, and was signed into law last month. Prince clarified that HB 1325 does not decriminalize marijuana, writing, \u201cBecause marijuana and hemp come from the same plant, it is difficult to definitively distinguish the two without a laboratory analysis.\u201d<\/p>\n

That difficulty<\/a>\u00a0has led prosecutors across the state to drop hundreds of low-level marijuana cases and stop accepting new ones, since lab testing to differentiate between now-legal hemp and illegal marijuana is not currently available in government crime labs.<\/p>\n

But while prosecutors have said the lack of testing knocks down their ability to prove something is marijuana beyond a reasonable doubt and secure a guilty verdict, the DPS memo stated that officers can still find probable cause \u2014 the legal burden needed to charge someone with a crime. Prince said the possibility that a substance is hemp, not pot, doesn\u2019t outweigh the burden. He added that hemp production in Texas hasn\u2019t yet started, making it \u201cunlikely that any substance encountered now is hemp.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, in Tarrant County, law enforcement has sent some pending felony cases to a private lab that can differentiate between hemp and marijuana. The difference is marked by the level of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, in a cannabis substance. THC is the part of cannabis that gets you high. If it contains less than 0.3% of THC, it\u2019s legal hemp; otherwise, it\u2019s illegal marijuana.<\/p>\n

The first two substances that came back with test results in Tarrant County contained 13% and 15% THC \u2014 making them marijuana, according to a spokesperson for the Tarrant County District Attorney\u2019s Office. The third substance in a marijuana case had 0.2% THC \u2014 which is legal hemp.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s still unclear how much the new policy will impact marijuana prosecutions statewide. DPS did not respond to questions about the memo or how often its officers arrested people on misdemeanor marijuana offenses before the law change. The\u00a0last annual safety report<\/a>\u00a0on the agency\u2019s website, from 2016, says highway patrol troopers conducted about 65,000 criminal arrests \u2014 with no indication of how many were for marijuana or any other drug. In all of Texas in 2016, law enforcement officers arrested about 86,000 people on misdemeanor marijuana charges, according to DPS statistics given to budget officials this year.<\/p>\n

There are also restrictions to the policy directive. Under Texas law, citations in lieu of arrest are only allowed if the suspected crime happens in the same county where the person lives. Marijuana found during traffic stops outside of a suspect\u2019s home county along Texas highways, where DPS troopers often patrol, would still result in arrests.<\/p>\n

And perhaps most restrictive, the memo says DPS regions should first consult with local prosecutors before implementing the new policy of cite and release and \u201cfollow each prosecutors\u2019 direction regarding whether to cite or arrest.\u201d<\/p>\n

A growing number of law enforcement agencies have cite-and-release policies for low-level charges. On the list are departments in Harris, Dallas, Bexar, Travis and Nueces counties. Some counties also offer defendants a diversion program to keep their records clean and keep them out of jail. But law enforcement agencies that employ cite-and-release policies have a court system in place to accept those cases.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a collaborative effort,\u201d said Troy Gay, Austin Police Department\u2019s chief of staff. \u201cIf a court does not have a cite-and-release process set up, there\u2019s no way for any law enforcement in that jurisdiction to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most counties don\u2019t have that process, potentially stopping DPS cite-and-release practices in largest parts of Texas. Gay did not have information on how often people in Austin cited for misdemeanor offenses failed to show up to their court dates, but he said police are arresting people much less. From the first fiscal quarter of 2018 to 2019, the arrest rate for cite-and-release eligible offenses dropped 59%, he said. The Travis County attorney, who handles misdemeanor prosecution, did not immediately respond to questions about cite and release.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This article originally appeared in\u00a0The Texas Tribune<\/a>.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The Texas Tribune<\/a>\u00a0is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans \u2014 and engages with them \u2014 about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Retrieved from: https:\/\/www.marijuanamoment.net\/texas-state-police-memo-directs-officers-to-stop-marijuana-possession-arrests\/?fbclid=IwAR0xrlZno2e8QOVNm0h4IOqFXhoxeQLJz_0TRhLUPnlx7BUTeEP38mUgdXM<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Texas State Police Memo Directs Officers To Stop Marijuana Possession Arrests August 1, 2019 By Marijuana Moment By\u00a0Jolie McCullough,\u00a0The Texas Tribune Texas\u2019 largest law enforcement agency is moving away from arresting people for low-level marijuana offenses. It\u2019s the latest development in the\u00a0chaos\u00a0that has surrounded\u00a0pot prosecution\u00a0after\u00a0state lawmakers legalized hemp\u00a0this year. As …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16063,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cannabis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}