Why on earth are San Francisco Police officers arresting small-time marijuana dealers? That was the question we asked after reading a Bay Citizen story last Saturday that detailed undercover buy-bust operations that officers have been conducting since June in the Haight-Ashbury. We don't think the police department should be expending time and resources on what is considered by many to be a low priority matter. In fact, it's not just ordinary residents who find the possession of small amounts of weed trivial; state law now makes possession of an ounce or less of marijuana an infraction, the least serious classification. What the cops are really doing is clogging up the criminal justice system with cases that will never go to trial and don't involve any jail time.
What the article seemed to focus on, however, was the decades-long crusade by police Captain Greg Corrales against marijuana and his longtime nemesis, medical marijuana activist Dennis Peron, who is not connected with these buy-bust cases. For years, Corrales has sparred with Peron: first as an undercover officer in the 1970s, and later, working with then-Attorney General Dan Lungren, when they tried to shut down Peron's famous (or infamous) Market Street Cannabis Buyers Club. Ultimately, a 1996 raid on the dispensary created public sympathy for Peron, who at the time had his Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act, on that fall's ballot. Voters – making California the first state in the nation to legalize medical cannabis – approved Prop 215 overwhelmingly.
These days, however, Corrales, the captain of Park Station, is arresting small fries. According to the article, his aggressive strategy meets with the approval of many Haight residents, who complained in February to the Police Commission about open marijuana dealing. Police Chief Greg Suhr transferred Corrales to the Haight, and bingo, buy-bust arrests have more than tripled, the article stated. Corrales used to oversee Mission Station, and when he was named to that post (for the first time) in 2002, some LGBT political leaders and others in the city expressed reservations, including then-Supervisor Tom Ammiano, who supports marijuana legalization. They were concerned that, among other things, Corrales's ongoing feud with Peron, a gay man, meant that he might not be the best fit for a police district that includes the Castro's sizable LGBT population. But during his tenure Corrales proved to be an effective captain who worked well with the community. One thing that did not happen, however, was widespread buy-bust marijuana arrests. Corrales later returned as captain of Mission Station in 2009 and was similarly effective.
The reform of marijuana laws is a growing political issue. Last month, two states – Washington and Colorado – approved initiatives to legalize cannabis for recreational use. This, of course, creates potential problems with the federal laws because marijuana remains a Schedule I drug. But President Barack Obama this month told ABC News that the country has "bigger fish to fry" and said it does not "make sense to see a top priority as going after recreational users in states that have determined that it's legal." California voters narrowly rejected a marijuana legalization initiative in 2010, but backers remain optimistic that the issue could appear on a future ballot and are encouraged by this year's electoral successes.
Of course, we still face the issue of the U.S. Justice Department's crackdown on medical cannabis dispensaries; but we expect that DOJ officials will hear the president's recent remarks on recreational use. If the federal government won't challenge state laws in Washington and Colorado that legalize recreational use, it certainly should not continue its aggressive stance on medical marijuana.
Closer to home, San Francisco police should be giving the least priority to these buy-bust cases. If officers – including a captain – have time to bust people in Golden Gate Park for selling $20 bags of pot, maybe they should beef up the homicide detail so that more work can be done on recent – and not so recent – murders of gay and transgender people, which we detailed in a front-page story last week. The police have far more serious matters to pursue than small time busts that will never result in trial or jail time.