Question

Interview a local police manager and ask what's the greatest problem facing law enforcement today and what approaches would they use to attack it?

Answer 1

I worked in a small college town. Shortly after I went on the street, the local college issued a policy saying that ANY drug charge or conviction for any student would result in expulsion. Let’s face it, most high school or college aged persons are going to smoke grass at some point. That’s just the law of averages speaking, not my personal opinion.

I personally didn’t see that a minor legal violation was worth trashing a kid’s education, losing a scholarship, or any of the other possible effects that an expulsion would have. Especially given that we weren’t catching even a small percentage of them.

Typically, if they were straight with me (none of the “these aren’t my pants, I just found them and put them on and that was in there” BS), I’d make THEM dump it out and stomp it. That prevented them going and telling their friends that I just “kept” their weed.

I’d also let them know that they’d just dodged a bullet and owed me a favor. I got a lot of information regarding much bigger and badder stuff going on as a result of that. A lot of those kids ended up finishing school just fine and leading a normal life unhindered by a criminal charge on their record. There’s even a handful of them that I’ve kept up with over the years. I’d like to think that my approach to those situations did more good than busting a kid for a simple misdemeanor charge.

As to the ones who wanted to be pricks, lie about it, or even fight me, they got the book thrown at them. (I don’t care what people say, somebody who’s high will still fight you in the instance that they realize they’re going to jail. Statistically, that’s the moment the first cuff goes on their wrist).

Edited to mention that depending on how you define it, this is still very much “enforcing” possession laws. It’s just doing it in such a way that (in my mind, at least) was more effective than simply charging and getting a conviction. There were lots of other laws that I seldom made extra effort to enforce or crack down on for a variety of reasons. Don't think I ever wrote a jaywalking or similar ticket, for example, although I politely recommended to a few people not to walk in traffic.