Pam Slack and Eight Other Councilors Vote for Marijuana Decriminalization

September 18, 2009 by Ian Freeman
Filed under: Issues, National, News, Personal Freedom, Police, Response

cannabis

Bravo to Pam Slack and the rest of those who voted for marijuana reform at the city council meeting last night.

To those who opposed it, please note there is nothing wrong with the city council working toward hurting people less often. If they must exist, that behavior seems totally appropriate to me.

The city council hires and fires the city attorney, clerk, and manager, from my understanding. The manager hires and fires the police chief. Seems clear to me that the council could hand down a do-not-enforce or at the least a lowest enforcement priority policy to the police chief (who seems like a reasonable guy from my recent breakfast with him). That would actually accomplish significant decriminalization in a fairly short order (as opposed to Fred Parsells’ suggestion of a “substantial” fine, which would continue to harm peaceful people) resulting in many Keeniacs no longer having to be afraid of being caged for enjoying recreational or medicinal cannabis consumption.

I support steps in the right direction, but there’s no reason that this can’t be done in one step. Imagine the city council people saying this to the police chief:

Arthur,

It has come to our attention that your agents are harming peaceful people who possess or sell a plant called cannabis. The typical excuse for this is that you are “just doing your jobs” and enforcing the laws handed to you by the state legislators. We’d like to remind you that it is not your job to enforce bad statutes against good people. To refresh you on what your job is, please review your own Department Statement of Values and the Law Enforcement Code of Ethics. Right at the top of the values statement it says: (emphasis added)

We will obey and enforce the laws of the State of New Hampshire with courage, diligence, and discretion.

Your officers use discretion all the time when they choose not to enforce certain statutes based on their interpretation of its appropriateness. We are suggesting you expand your discretion to include ignoring peaceful people who haven’t harmed or endangered others, even if their actions are violations of statutes. To further clarify, perhaps you should have your officers review their Statement of Ethics more often and ask themselves if what they are doing on a daily basis matches up:

my fundamental duty is to serve mankind; to safeguard lives and property; to protect the innocent against deception, the weak against oppression or intimidation, the peaceful against violence or disorder; and to respect the Constitutional rights of all people to liberty, equality, and justice.

We are telling you that it’s time to stop “just following orders” and time to do what’s right. It is your job to protect the peaceful against violence. This is not accomplished by throwing the peaceful in cages or forcibly extracting their wealth. We trust that you will start spending your resources on investigating real crimes that involve victims, or your job will be in jeopardy. We look forward to your cooperation in this matter. You will likely find that many people’s opinions of you and your officers will start to rise when they are no longer afraid you will cage them, their friends, or their family, when they have not harmed others.

Comments

6 Comments on Pam Slack and Eight Other Councilors Vote for Marijuana Decriminalization

Lance on Fri, 18th Sep 2009 12:59 pm

Nice work over here, Ian!

Take a look at a comment I sent to your newspaper:

****
” “I don’t think (marijuana laws are) our business. I don’t think we should be involved.”
~ Councilor Greenwald.

But if you elect to investigate, pursue, prosecute, and incarcerate marijuana “offenses” then you ARE involved.

This obfuscation of yours demonstrates your willingness to deceive the public, and your incapacity to lead the community. Instead, you kick the can down the road and wait for someone else to stand up and stop the folly of prohibition that daily kills cops, wastes millions of taxpayer dollars, and incarcerates non-violent citizens.

How about listening to someone who actually has been on the front lines of the incessant war on our cities and citizens (aka War on Drugs), someone like Frederick B. Parsells, a former Keene police detective. Naaah . . . what would he know? “

Lance W. on Sat, 19th Sep 2009 7:09 am

Good work, Ian. No, excellent work! Also, it looks like there’s another liberty lover named Lance here. I’m guessing it isn’t the bailiff. I’ll start signing my comments with a W for Weber.

adam.m.mueller on Sat, 19th Sep 2009 1:19 pm

Yes Ian. Great blog, excellent points. I still wanna have a ’smoke out’ when I get there. Right out in front of Vendetta’s in the square.(circle) But you might have smashed this issue by then. Either way I can’t wait to get there.

Adam

Ian on Sat, 19th Sep 2009 4:24 pm

It will likely be a regular event by then, unless you move up your plans. It’s happened at least twice this year that I know of. None were announced in advance, though. That’s what needs to happen. Mass smoke out, planned in advance – tobacco smokers mixed in with cannabis, just to give the cops more difficulty if they decide to be tyrannical.

See you soon!

Kurt on Tue, 22nd Sep 2009 1:46 am

How about a “smoke out” in front of either the court house or the colossal Po-lice Dept… or how about having a smoke IN the court house… with Lance or Judge Burke? I’ll bet we can get at least a hundred people to come… the college kids will be there for sure… just as long as it’s done in the afternoon. I do think the PD is a great idea if I do say so myself… of course some of us might be going against some bail terms unless we signed “All Rights Reserved” on them.

Curt Springer on Tue, 22nd Sep 2009 6:45 pm

I don’t believe that the city council or the chief can order police officers not to enforce certain laws. I believe that the “discretion” mentioned lies with individual officers.

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