Today the Dallas Morning News published a story with the headline “Black People Make Up Most Arrests for Small Amounts of Marijuana in Dallas, Report Says.” The first sentence: “A new report by Dallas’ top police watchdog and activists shows Black people are overrepresented in low-level marijuana arrests, spurring calls for an expansion of the de-enforcement policy in the city.”
That is all very much true. You read that, and you’re like, “What the hell, Dallas? Are we still doing this?”
Yes, we are still doing this. Last year we did it to exactly 33 Black people.
And that should be the story. Police Chief Eddie Garcia directed his officers to stop making low-level marijuana arrests in 2021, with some caveats. The news is that the cops arrested a total of 49 people last year for low-level possession of weed, down from 456 people just four years earlier. The News story has a chart in it clearly showing this important trend. That’s real progress, especially for the hundreds of Black people who were getting arrested.
There’s still work to do. The cops need to get better at transparency. The report makes that recommendation and several others that deserve attention. But let’s keep things in perspective.
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