Reader Looks at "Grass Gap"

"I would say that police tend to look upon drug sales as an inner-city operation, and because of that they tend to come up and harass and bust people in a neighborhood where they suspect drug sales are being made. You don't find that as much in River Forest," Cook County public defender Patrick Reardon told Chicago Reader ace reporters Mick Dumke and Ben Joravsky. "It's just a different mentality in those neighborhoods."

The Reader's story unearths some hard truths about the racial disparities between marijuana possession arrests and charges — namely that black people are "disproportionately getting busted" in Chicago and Cook County.

According to the story, the approach to enforcing marijuana law by law enforcement officials — from the city's top cop Garry McCarthy to unnamed beat cops and watch commanders — varies greatly, and only one high-level politician, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle has said "what no other high-ranking official has declared: I think we should decriminalize possession of marijuana in small amounts, that's for sure."