Police Targeting Black Communities For Pot Arrests In DC: Claim

WASHINGTON, DC -- Hard to believe, but it's been more than four years since D.C. decriminalized marijuana in the District. And yet marijuana arrests are way up in the years since, and mostly among black people, according to a report.

WUSA9 reports that marijuana arrests are up 186 percent from 2015 to 2017 based on D.C. police arrest data, and 86 percent of those arrested are black. In terms of demographics, D.C. is fairly evenly split between black people and all other ethnicities.

Even more damning is the fact that marijuana arrests were up 97 percent in Districts 5, 6, and 7, which are mostly comprised of black communities, the report found. By comparison, arrests have fallen 9 percent in the rest of the city.

Ward 7 Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Lorenzo Green told WUSA9 that it was clear that a "racist policing strategy" was behind the statistics. Green argued that marijuana use is the same among black and white people.

Marijuana has been decriminalized in D.C., but there are significant limitations to what you can do with the drug. It is only legal in small amounts (less than two ounces) to adults 21 years of age and older in the privacy of their own homes. You can transfer an ounce or less of marijuana, but you cannot sell it. You can grow a limited number of marijuana plants.

Selling marijuana, smoking it in public, or having too much marijuana is still illegal. And then there's the fact that it remains against federal law, period. That's a bigger issue in a city like D.C. that is filled with federal drug agencies than somewhere like Colorado, for example.

It's created a strange "twilight zone" in D.C. where pop-up markets for marijuana come and go, making pot available to the public before quickly moving on to avoid arrest, the Washington Post found in a recent report.

(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)