The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
‘We’re all flying by the seat of our pants’
Police chiefs concerned about legalizing marijuana
Law enforcement officials across the state will be paying close attention to proposed legislation on marijuana legalization.
Connecticut Police Chiefs Association President John Salvatore said while the group has not taken an official stance on proposed bills, there are some reservations among chiefs about permitting marijuana for recreational use.
“That’s largely from what we’re witnessing from other states,” Salvatore said. “This is defi-
nitely a concern for us.”
There are several bills this session, by both Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate that would make recreational use legal in the state. Senate President Martin Looney, D-New Haven, prefiled legislation calling for the legalization and taxation of marijuana, suggesting revenue from marijuana sales should go to the general fund. State Rep. Melissa Ziobron, R-East Haddam, also filed a bill that would make it legal for anyone over 21 to use it.
A 2015 Quinnipiac University Poll found that 63 percent of Connecticut voters support legalization for adults.
Last year, a bill to legalize marijuana, sponsored by Rep. Juan Candelaria, DNew Haven, was killed by the legislature’s Judiciary Committee. When Massachusetts voted to legalize marijuana in November, Candelaria said he was optimistic about the bill passing in 2017.
Salvatore said there are a lot of questions that remain to be answered and problems that have yet to be solved in other states where marijuana is legal. And while he understands the legislation will be propose largely as a benefit for revenue, he hopes that’s not the only thing state legislators focus on. Concerns by law enforcement surrounding the legalization of the drug include enforcing and prosecuting people driving under the influence, because unlike like a Breathalyzer for alcohol, there is no clear way to determine if a person is high on marijuana.
“There’s no way for us to prove that a person was under the influence of marijuana when they’re pulled over, and if it’s legal, then the question is well, how to we prove that in court?”
Salvatore said there are more and more officers in the state being trained as Drug Recognition Experts, but he believes the “human element” to that method can be disputed in court. Law enforcement officials are also conflicted because while use of the drug may be legalized in individual states, Marijuana remains a Schedule I controlled substance under federal law.
“If the FDA says they don’t have enough evidence to accept this as something we can legalize, then maybe we shouldn’t be passing this,” Salvatore said.
Berlin Police Chief Paul Fitzgerald, who is the chairman of the CT Police Chiefs Association legislation committee, said legal use of the drug is still “all very new” and he wants the state to focus more on bettering regulations of medical use, and medical marijuana dispensaries, before trying to push forward recreational use.
Fitzgerald said the main problems are with edibles with strong potency, children getting access, and regulating growing and distributing.
“They can make the juice from marijuana strong, it’s concentrated. I don’t know if we can legislate the potency.” Fitzgerald said. “In some states there are people taking vacant homes and using them for growing, and it’s destroying the property.”
Twenty-six states and the District of Columbia currently have laws legalizing marijuana in some form, including Connecticut, where marijuana use is permitted for medical purposes. Recreational use is legal in 8 states and Washington, D.C. In addition to Connecticut, other New England states considering similar bills this session are Rhode Island Vermont.
The Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association opposed the legalization of marijuana, citing surges in impaired driving, drugged driving fatalities, increasing use of drugs by young people, Fitzgerald said Connecticut chiefs will be looking to their neighbors in Massachusetts as a guide.
“Because we’re so close, if it does happen, we’re going to have to make sure we have similar procedures,” Fitzgerald said. “We will reach out to all the states,”
In January 2014, Colorado became the first state to allow anyone over 21 to grow and use recreational marijuana. Jim Bueermann, president of the Police Foundation in Washington, D.C., said state and law enforcement officials in Colorado said at the time they feared the new law would lead to a huge increase in criminal behavior. Others predicted the elimination of arrests for marijuana would bring a huge savings for police and the justice system.
But after facing numerous challenges, the Police Foundation and the Colorado Association of chiefs of Police teamed up to prepare a 95-page-long “practical” guide for law enforcement on dealing with challenges associated with the legalization of marijuana.
According to the report, Denver officials said they were seeing an unexpected influx of homeless adults and juveniles visiting due to the availability of marijuana. Marijuana businesses were also becoming targets for burglaries and robberies because they were keeping too much cash on hand due to federal banking restrictions.
The report suggests that criteria for determining an illegal marijuana growing operations and search warrant policies be updated in accordance to marijuana laws. In Colorado, legalization of marijuana created challenges in police investigations, establishing probable cause, determining search and seizure procedures, addressing public safety concerns with home growing operations, black market operations, and drug-detecting canines who are trained to alert on all drug scents including marijuana, according to the report.
“(T)herefore, it is not clear to an officer which drug a canine has detected. If a police dog detects drugs in a car, for example, it is not clear under the new laws if the officer has probable cause for a search since the officer does not know which drug the canine is detecting,” the report states. “If the driver has legal amounts of marijuana in the car, the search might be deemed inadmissible even if other drugs were found.”
Fitzgerald said he hopes Connecticut legislators will build in some protections to make sure the issues surrounding marijuana legalization occurring in other states do not happen in Connecticut.
“We’re all flying by the seat of our pants here to see how it’s going to work,” Fitzgerald said.