This is a really big deal to me as a father of 2. I don’t like that my kids can’t play outside. I don’t like that the cops are never around when they are desperately needed. And I don’t like that my city would risk losing what little resources we have in the way of law enforcement.

I submitted a few questions early on about marijuana legalization and how the revenue could be used to supplement our law enforcement and education programs (another area of concern in Jacksonville).

Let’s see how the conversation went. You can catch the whole thing here, but I wanted to talk about some of the more relevant points.

The questions were presented by David Hunt. Keep in mind that these questions and responses are taken from the chat portion and are not direct quotes. However, the video shows them to be of the correct context and sentiment.

Sheriff Rutherford: For 17 years Jacksonville has been 1 or 2 in the murder rate. Why are we raising more killers here than anywhere else in this state?

I want you to keep this in mind as this is one of the more important points to me. I’m a law-abiding citizen of Jacksonville, and I would like to think that being so means I may raise my family without harm. Unfortunately, this isn’t true. My neighborhood specifically has been on a downward spiral that I’ve personally witnessed over the last few years. More on why in just a few.

Sheriff Rutherford: Over 4,000 people in Jacksonville had been to jail 5 or more times
Sheriff Rutherford: Drug court is one of the best drug treatment programs in the country, bar none. And it helps stop that cycle of in/out of prison. Many are now productive members of society.

If you don’t know much about drug court, it’s basically a movement wherein a substance abuse offender would be directed into treatment instead of incarceration. This sounds great on paper, but it costs a lot of money too.

This is not to say that we shouldn’t have treatment programs, rather that we shouldn’t be marking every person who smokes pot as criminals.

It goes like this:

• You get arrested because your neighbor smelled marijuana and the cops used it as probable cause to search your home.
• They haul you in because you are now a threat to society.
• The judge says “you can go to jail, or you can go to a treatment facility.”
• You are pretty sure that all jails are comparable to ‘OZ’ and decide that roughing through a treatment center would better fit your lifestyle.
• Blamo. Your, and my tax money hard at work.

As far as becoming productive members of society, who is to say they weren’t before you busted them? I know many people who work full time (some with additional part time jobs), spend time with their families and pay their taxes. They like to smoke marijuana every once in a while (some of them nightly after the wife and kids are in bed) to help them unwind from the society that we’ve created.

This is a bad person? This person deserves to go through the legal system wasting countless hours and resources? He or she deserves a record that will follow them for the rest of their lives? For what? Because they took part in an action that allowed them to relax with absolutely no negative impact on the people around them.

I find it funny that this system is praised by officials when it suits them, but when they need a different point of view they use it as a scare tactic to keep marijuana illegal.

The DEA will use the rise in admissions to treatment centers as proof that marijuana usage is out of control. And that they need more funding for the war on drugs. Sheriff Rutherford: I believe in the residential portion of the drug treatment program and have used forfeiture money to continue to fund that.

Hunt: Can’t you just seize your way of out of this problem?
Sheriff Rutherford: laughs. We seize about 1.2 $1.3 million per year, and that goes right back into our programs.
Hunt: Are you saying that $1.2 million is cash, assets, or both?
Sheriff Rutherford: Both.

Make sure you read that carefully. Approximately $1.2 million in seized cash and property is in turn used to fund the drug court program. I can guarantee you that it isn’t enough money to go around. We seriously barely have a new courthouse, and countless millions have been dumped into that.

Let’s take a different look at the same situation. Let’s say marijuana use is legalized, regulated and taxed.

First, no more drug court, at least in the same way it is now. No more high dollar judges and lawyers pulled away from an already stressed system for pot use. There, we just freed up some of the money I’m handing you people every 2 weeks.

Also, that money seized from crimes. Sure, it may go down a bit becuase you aren’t stealing all the stuff marijuana user bought (and paid tazes on). But, all of it goes to the Sheriff’s office.

Now that marijuana is legal, it is taxed. This is money that goes back into the system (hopefully we can spare some of it for our schools too).

Estimates from California put the revenue generated from teh legalization of marijuana at about $1.4 billion. Yeah, that’s a ‘b.’ Sure, Florida isn’t quite as large as California; their population doubling ours. So, using poor, simple math we could argue that Florida would be looking at about $700 million in generated revenue.

If I have $700 in my pocket, I would gladly give the Sheriff $2. See where I’m going with this?

But what about the crime?

Sheriff Rutherford: The decrease in murder rates are largely because we got “dopers” off the street
Hunt: Is the decrease in crime because of a decrease in drug use?
Sheriff Rutherford: Absolutely
Sheriff Rutherford: If people will go online to jaxsheriff.org and look up our 2006 murder study, one of the stats is that 55% of our murder victims died in high-drug trafficking areas. That’s one good clue.

I’m a bit disappointed that a man in law enforcement looks at the numbers this way. This is his reasoning for not agreeing to the legalization of marijuana.

55% of the murder victimes died in high drug trafficking areas. Wouldn’t it be nice if those areas didn’t exist?

Let’s take a walk into my fantasy world again and imagine that instead of the need to deal with real criminals, I could simply go to the store and purchase a joint, in much the same way I do a pack of cigarettes. They check my I.D., I pay my price and the state makes money.

A large chunk of the revenue generated illegally drops because they don’t have anymore marijuana customers. Yay for me.

He “got dopers off the streets?” Actually, he didn’t. Sheriff Rutherford soon continues that:

Hunt: Has violent crime been spreading to other areas?
Sheriff Rutherford: Actually, it’s around those drug-dealing areas. We have identified those areas.
Sheriff Rutherford: We are attacking those particular areas. There is some displacement, including Sheriff Beasler in Clay County saying Duval County is chasing some down to Clay.

Wait, so you never got them “off the streets.” You just pushed them to other streets. Awesome. If you aren’t from around here, Clay County isn’t exactly far away either. Simply pushing them somewhere else doesn’t actually help anything.

The Sheriff explains that removing the criminals is the goal, but getting them out of the city is the “next best thing.”

Actually, that’s not the next best thing. That’s not a thing at all. That shouldn’t even be on the table. Sure, you are the Sheriff of Jacksonville, and that should be of your main concern. But above that you are an American. And if America goes to shit because of your type of thinking, do you really think Jacksonville will be the bastion of hope?

And what of those “areas” you talked about. Apparently my street wasn’t one of those areas a few short years ago, but it is now. I wonder if the Sheriff’s office has re-established what those areas are now that they have forced violence into neighboring communities, and if they will ever take on those new areas. I wonder how long it will be before they understand that it’s an uphill battle to be reactive. We need to think proactively.

I don’t think Sheriff Rutherford has any military experience. When faced with an enemy with resources over which you have the power, you don’t fight said enemy head on. You take their resources.

Okay. It’s obvious that I’m just getting emotional now, so I’m going to end the post with this:

For so long as you recklessly spend your money and resources on a battle that you can not win, you will make no progress.

And Jacksonvillians, for as long as we have people like this in authority, we will continue to have economic problems and increased crime. They aren’t approaching the situation with any logical thought, but reactionary and perpetuated mis conceptions. Remember this when it’s time to vote.

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It may not make you a bad person, but the law is the law.

And that’s a problem for more than just our selfish reasons. Sure, the desire to smoke legally, without fear of having your kids and possessions taken away would be really nice (and much deserved). But there’s a bigger issue here.

And that’s the state of our country in regard to the perception of our law enforcement.

They Aren’t Bad Guys

If you think about it, cops aren’t bad guys. They are just guys doing a job. I don’t mean this in a negative way, but they are little more than pawns in the legal system. So yeah, it sucks that they pull you over and give you a ticket, but they are just following orders.

That’s closer to the truth of the situation than it is the reality. In reality, we collectively hate cops for knocking down our doors, hauling friends and family members to jail and breaking up families. We hate that they take us down for responsibly taking part in an action that doesn’t hurt anyone around us, but helps to relive the stress of our daily lives.

We Abide By The Law (Well, Except That One)

Right or wrong, marijuana use is illegal. But it’s a law that is broken by millions of Americans every day, and substantially more at least once in their lifetime. But other than that, most marijuana smokers are rather law-abiding. They pay taxes, they take care of their families and they help their neighbor with their lawn (even though we work all week and really don’t want to deal with it on a nice Saturday morning).

Sure, we speed sometimes, or throw a piece of garbage out the window, but generally we don’t kill, rape or beat people up all the time.

It isn’t difficult to find a resident of your local county jail who has no priors, no history of violence or criminality, but has found himself sleeping in a small bunk for up to a year for possession. Now he’s a “criminal.”

Bad Timing

Do you know why airplane crashes are such a big deal on T.V.? Because they are so rare relative to successful flights. When an accident finally occurs, it’s a big deal. But, it looks bad when you see a few of them in a few month’s time. In reality, flying is still pretty safe, but too many pictures of burning debris strewn about the ground and you start to consider walking as a means of transportation.

This is the same thing with cops, and the timing is pretty bad. With the advent of camera phones, we are seeing more and more instances of “cops gone wrong.” From harassing EMTs to beating the hell out of 15 year old girls, cases of police brutality are all over the Internet.

However, though I have no numbers to back this up, I feel like this is a case of perception rather than reality. I feel like there are way more “good” cops than bad. Just as there are way more “good” marijuana smokers than bad.

A Dis-Respect For The Law

Tie these 3 thoughts together, and you have a large group of people that begin to dis-respect the law on a larger level, thus promoting further illegal activity, however minor.

We are constantly playing in an underground industry, forcing us to deal with people to whom we wouldn’t otherwise even converse. We have to hide our stash when driving, and are constantly looking in the mirror to see if the “fuzz” is onto us for that joint in the ash tray (Hint: don’t keep your joint in the ash tray, or any other location in plain view).

We start to regard cops as “them” instead of “us.” I don’t like murderers. I would like to think of cops as on the same side as I. But I can’t help to think of the harassment cases when I see a cop on the side of the road. I can’t help think “that dick is just waiting to bust some guy with a joint.” And that’s a real problem.

It’s Time To Come Together

I know this sounds cliche, but for as long as we divide this country into opposing sides on so many issues we only hurt ourselves. When we finally get marijuana legalized, millions of people will have few excuses to look at cops as enemies. The underground trade of marijuana distribution will diminish, lowering crime rate all around (I do have numbers for this statement, but I want to keep this post as a “thought provoker” than another war of statistics).

We will be able to free the time our cops usually spend taking some guy into jail, filling out paperwork and stressing tax dollars just to hold him. That time could be used to find the guy that took my buddy’s license plate. Or perhaps spend a few extra man hours on the thousands of kids that go missing every year. Or maybe solve that rape or murder case.

In the end, our cops are just doing their jobs. But right now, a large chunk of that job is hurting everyone involved whether you use marijuana or not. And in the end, by keeping marijuana illegal we aren’t getting rid of criminals, we are creating them.

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