Columbia Police Chief: ‘I’m With You on the Fight’ to End Marijuana Prohibition
In the aftermath of the recently release video showing a family terrorized and their pets shot by a SWAT team in Columbia, Missouri, that city’s police chief is now saying he supports efforts to change marijuana laws so officers will no longer need to spend time and resources enforcing them.
During a press conference yesterday, Columbia Police Chief Ken Burton went out of his way to state his support for ending marijuana prohibition.
“I applaud your efforts,” he told a reporter who asked about campaigns to change marijuana laws. “If we could get out of the business [of going after marijuana offenders], I think there would be a lot of police officers that would be happy to do that.”
After reviewing the results of a four-month internal investigation, the chief announced that his officers acted appropriately during the February SWAT raid that resulted in the death of a dog and endangered a young child.
Columbia police are currently updating their policies to hopefully prevent further incidents, but the decision to use extreme force in executing a warrant for marijuana possession has been widely criticized as being contrary to city law. Columbia passed a law in 2004 making marijuana violations the lowest law enforcement priority. Unfortunately, as the chief points out, state laws can still interfere with officers’ abilities to go after real criminals.
Chief Burton also acknowledged that violence surrounding marijuana is often associated with the illegal market created by prohibition, and not the drug itself. “Crimes do occur because of marijuana,” he said. “And you may make the argument that it’s because it’s not legal, and you may be right.”
And if there was any lingering doubt about the sincerity of his remarks, the chief even gave a big thumbs up to the cameras.
Well, a big thumbs up to you too, chief. Hopefully, you won’t have to worry about enforcing irrational marijuana laws for much longer.
Tagged with: Columbia and dog and Ken Burton and marijuana and market and Missouri and police and Prohibition and raid and reform and SWAT and violence and Whitmore by the author
30 comments
Its about time pepole with some athority start to see the truth, we can only hope the truth continues to spreed like a virus. I can only prey that this farce, the continued prohibition of mj is close to an end
Hey MPP, do you have any info on hand about emailing or calling this police chief? My mother in law lives in Ashland, about 10 minutes south of Columbia and she has lupis and fibromyalgia. She could really benifit from this medicine but her husband is completely against pot (and his son is a heroin addict). BUT I have been going strong for 4 years trying to change his mind. I think that seeing his BEST friend cop on national headlines saying this, it will do the trick.
Maybe other families and their pet will be safe for a while, but the prohibitionist and their psychopathic addiction to free the children from marijuana by destroying what ever it takes to reach the prohibitionist infinite dream goal may still be a problem in that state.
WHEN 10,000 PEOPLE MAIL $4.20 TO THE IOWA BOARD OF PHARMACY/Make It Legal Make It Green
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjH61Gw_AcI
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the anti-prohibition movement needs a public face. Oprah, or someone of the like, would be great. Americans listen to, and vote with, people they trust. If the Queen of all media says marijuana is safe, the moms of America will follow suit.
I’ve should of left out the last 21 words of that last reply, but I think most people know what I’m taking about.
Very interesting comments from Chief Burton in the video. We often hear that police privately don’t care too much about cannabis, but the statements from police and from officer’s associations in the media often contradict that. It’s refreshing to hear a police chief openly state that he has no objection to the legalization of cannabis.
MPP should look into the phenomena of police deptartments putting “non-cooperation policies” with DHS about immigration matters and try to get cities to put these same policies in place to block police from cooperating with the DEA. Has it been tried?
I hope the california cops that are against marijuana legalization initiative hear this. Theres noting i cant stand more when people say. you cant make marijuana legal in states because its against federal law. Thats just as bad as people saying you should believe in god because thats what the bible says.
That wasn’t a reporter who asked Chief Burton about the marijuana policies Columbia voted on in 2004, but rather it was Dan Viets who is a local attorney, regional director of the ACLU, and national board member for NORML who has been fighting the good fight for nearly 35 years now.
Here is the police report to download.
http://rapidshare.com/files/388138469/0512_swat_incident_report.pdf
Then view the SWAT raid video and tell me they haven’t lied in this video about the dogs having to be shot because they refused to “retreat”.
How many lies can you point out?
Here is the link to the page with links to all the tribune storys on this.
Complete coverage of the February 2010 SWAT raid | The Columbia Daily Tribune – Columbia, Missouri
Last link didn’t go live here.
http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2010/may/06/complete-coverage-february-2010-swat-raid/
This cop is a hypocrite. If he really believed what he was saying, he would resign from a corrupt institution.
EVERY COP IS A CRIMINAL!!!!
Burton should join LEAP and become a spokesperson. He should go around the country showing the video and explaining that this violence was caused by the drug war, a “cure” that is truly worse than its disease.
I’ve think the mayor is just using police chief Ken Burton for the PR. Is the mayor still not making any comments? Is he hiding from public view and hoping the town of Columbia will forget this incident by election day? You know there are other people who are behind this; do they feel safe by next election?
Off topic. I watched gangland last night, the episode was about Zeta, a mexican cartel that’s been killing people left and right, these guys have military camps to train their new recruits, initiation is by executing an innocent person at point blank.
They kept saying on the show how this vicious gang has unlimited resources because of the drug trafficking and how they are continualy growing their influence across the border in texas and arizona. What really blew my mind, is that narrator and couple of cops that were interviewed kept asking, how do we stop these gangs?
ARE YOU SERIOUS? How can these people be responsible for fighting these criminals and not understand that they have to start by eliminating the money flow. Which is as easy as legalizing cannabis in US.
Why does our government continues to follow this crazy agenda to keep cannabis illegal?
Free The Weed. Free The People.
If they want to go after “real crimunals
‘ all they have to do is look in a mirror.
What they really want is to placate an angry crowd so they can continue to pick the low hanging fruit.
Free The Weed asked “Why does our government continues to follow this crazy agenda to keep cannabis illegal?”
Answer: Because then the prohibitionists would have to admit they have been wrong over the last 74 years and that they have ruined the lives of millions still alive, and are responsible for EVERY DEATH in this failed war based on a RACIST LIE. And you know know how Americans (especially prohibitionists)are: we are never wrong.
Yeah. Dead silence on my last post.
Think it’s time we looked within and admit WE are partly to blame because we Americans are so friggin arrogant and entitled?
@Mark – I could live with that, if the government would just legalzie and move forward, history of this country is full of failed policies that were eventually overturned and forgotten, and I think we came out as a better society in the end.
I think it might have something to do with the fact that smoking cannabis promotes so to speak un-american mentality. I could be over reaching on this but hear me out… Since I started smoking cannabis I slowly came to realize that I’m working to buy shit that I don’t need, I keep trying to live up to someone elses standards, that we are as society are doomed because of our consumer mentality, and our foreign policy is based on world domination. I said I might be over reaching on this because my mentality could just be me and attributed to simply growing up and seeing the truth, but somehow I still believe this has something to do with smoking cannabis.
It comes to my mind when US government proclaimed that marijuana is a socialist conspiracy to destroy american way of life. Maybe this has some truth to it or maybe it’s just me.
Free The Weed. Free The People.
The Chief probably means well. He lost me on the issue of not understanding the voters decision making marijuana the lowest law enforcement priority. He didn’t seem to understand what that means. He said “if we come across marijuana…” well in that raid they had a warrant, which means they must have been following up on some informant and the DA + judge who signed the warrant were more interested in upholding the law – than upholding the will of the people. So they didn’t just “come across it, as he says… they were hunting for a high-profile marijuana arrest. But all that aside – no police officer HAS to enforce a law they themselves feel is unjust or unconstitutional. But to refuse would take a certain level of courage that seems rare in today’s Land of the (drug) free, home of the afraid. This whole concept of a drug-free America/world is Puritanism on steroids. Our founding fathers would not have wanted the regulate commerce clause to be used in this way, in a way that is creating tyranny by law. I would further argue that the term “unreasonable search and seizure” must be defined by the people who are subject to these searches and not the courts who apparently find nothing objectionable to terrorizing families and killing the family dogs. They are more concerned with getting their arrest than protecting the citizens they are sworn to protect. This is not a war on drugs – its a war on people. WHERE in the constitution does the government get the right to declare war on the people? If it was a war on drugs then they would confiscate the drugs and that would be the end of it. They can’t even be honest about the war they are fighting. Its not drugs that are paying the price of this Puritanical fanaticism, it’s people, families, children, America itself has been severely damaged by this misguided and unconstitutional crusade. How many citizens have been shot dead by police during these sorts of raids? The answer – TOO many! In a war against a plant that was banned without science and without an amendment to the constitution. Yet the drug warriors continue to defend their drug war. They are addicted to their drug war. Puritanism is a religion and they have no right to force their religion on America – that’s what the 1st amendment says.
WOW i have an 8 month puppy and before that i never understood the meaning of mans best friend until i bonded with my dog. But really a drug raid over TINY amount of weed is just so stupid. Weed is not that harmful and is used for medicinal purposes in some states. Marijuana is such a big problem because the word ILLEGAL stirs it up and Marijuana goes against the LAW. Maybe the CRIME raates would go down if it were legal; possesing or using marijuana should not be considered a crime ; to tell u the truth in maryland the only drug i’ve experience is weed and i have never even seen anything other than weed at parties, friends house, college at george mason, college parties, and etc. When i have children i know they’ll be exposed to marijuana because almost everybody does it. other drugs should be kept illegal because it KILLS.But going on a drug raid for tiny amount of weed is the dumbest thing i’ve heard. if i found out the swat team was outside my house ready to shoot my pup for a pipe and tiny amount of weed i would start swinging.
Free The Weed:
Thank you for your post. What you have accurately described is the effect cannabis has on the mind – it opens the mind up. And you hit the nail on the head about material possessions. We need food, clothing shelter and weed. That’s it! Everything else is gravy.
I live very comfortably in a 1 brd apartment on $30K a year. I am debt free. Drive a 20 year old car. And I smoke pot every day. Now it pot were legal I would be able to save some money, likely 50% of what I’ve been spending to date.
bottom line is this: most people are working jobs they hate and only have the weekend to look forward to, despite the hundreds of thousands of dollars they may earn. Every day is Saturday for me. I get up when I want, work when I want (from home), never have to drive in traffic, eat, sleep, toke whenever I want. All on $30K a year.
My Mom has lung/spinal cancer and I want to be able to treat her w/cannabis.It may be the only thing that saves her…as her son thats what I need to do,save her and I cannot w/o legal acsess to cannabis.
If you want to know about the medical use of cannabis from reliable, scientific sources (PubMed, WebMD, medical journals and the news), please run a search for “Granny Storm Crow’s MMJ Reference List” or visit greenpassion.org for free access to hundreds of medical studies and articles. Cannabis is an amazing healing herb that can treat a broad range of ailments. Educate yourself! Thank you.
MPP pleas look into this.
Word has it that the Columbia swat conducted another “False” raid with bad Intel on a couple the day after the news conference.
I am unable to find any specifics yet I would like to call out the MASSES to help get these details and to make it become public. If you are reading this contact someone who will fight your fight for you, there are many who will, we support you and are sorry for your trauma!
One day the CPD promises to stop this madness and the next day they go right back to terrorizing Nonviolent Columbia Citizens!
Where are the Swat raid press releases?
I really do applaud what the police chief had to say, he was really correct on a lot of points. As an officer he does have to uphold the laws of the land no matter how stupid they are and he admits that. I like how he says he doesn’t have a problem with marijuana or the people who use it and he understands that the violence associated with it is cause its illegal. Its his job to enforce it and way to make a living, I could hold it against him for choosing such a career but somebody has to do it and at least its someone who realizes the wrong. Unfortunately he cant himself decide for his department to not enforce marijuana laws or some misinformed people could put his job in jeopardy. Kudos to this man and hopefully he can use his position and voice to help make a difference to change the laws so he himself wont have to enforce them.
TacoHerder
Columbia has voted to decriminalize Cannabis to a ticket and fine only violation.
Quote-
Unfortunately he cant himself decide for his department to not enforce marijuana laws or some misinformed people could put his job in jeopardy.
So he in fact is going against the wishes of the voters of Columbia, so YES he can in fact choose not to enforce Cannabis Prohibition laws.
He is simply trying to quite the masses of citizens disgusted by HIS mens actions.
He did not say that to a reporter; he said it to me, a known legalizer and the co-author of the ordinance in question which received support from 61% of voters here in November, 2004. It said that marijuana law enforcement should be the lowest priority of law enforcement and it requires the police to send almost all misdemeanor marijuana and paraphernalia cases only to municipal court, a non-criminal court where no loss of federal education aid can occur and it limits punishment there to a fine only and it encourages the court to use a form of probation which is unsupervised and leaves the defendant with no conviction and no public record.It prohibits arrests and requires a summons instead. MPP provided important financial support for our campaign.
Dan Viets, Columbia, Missouri
Here in Wa. state, we have a wonderful medical marijuana law that gets about halfway to being rational.If you can get a med. marijuana card, you can grow (or have grown by designated provider) 15 plants. There is, however,no provision for making dispensaries legal-there are no business licences available to folks who want to supply the herb. So; if you are unable to grow it yourself for whatever reason,or cannot find someone to grow for you, your only other option is buying on the “street”. There is really no point in doing things half-assed, Washington.
I never thought things would progress this far, though-maybe there is hope for an end to this reign of terror-but as long as Big Pharmaceutical is still allowed to keep their pet senators and congressmen (Upper case avoided intentionally as a sign of utter contempt) nuttin much of substance will change.They see Marijuana as a threat to their bottom line and that will not be tolerated. A big step to restoring an actual Democracy in this country is to make lobbying of any kind, including PACs punishable by death. When legislation is sold to the highest bidder and corrupt pols are openly purchased with no real consequences, these traitors will continue to call the tune and we all must dance..
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