In a shocking series of events that is still under investigation, Las Vegas police on Friday shot and killed Trevon Cole, 21, while serving a warrant that claimed Cole was selling marijuana. According to reports, Cole’s 20-year-old fiancé, Sequioa Pearce—who is 9 months pregnant—was forced to kneel and held at gunpoint in the moments just before Cole was shot.

A police spokesman told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that undercover officers had bought marijuana from Cole three times before the warrant was served, and investigators reportedly took an unknown amount of marijuana and digital scales from his home. Pearce, his fiancé, says Cole, who has no criminal record, “did smoke marijuana from time to time,” but was not a drug dealer.

The officer who shot Cole is a 10-year veteran who the Review-Journal reports has been involved in other questionable shootings. Police said he fired his weapon on Cole after Cole made a “furtive movement,” which Pearce denies.

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Every once in a while, there is room for humor at the expense of America’s war on marijuana and this is a story that I couldn’t help but share:

In their unyielding pursuit to rid the world of all of its marijuana plants, police in Corpus Christi, Texas arrived at a city park last week to pull up hundreds of weeds. The only problem with their gardening project is that these weeds were not marijuana at all but a type of wild mint that grows in the area.

Corpus Christi’s KRIS TV news reports that police…

…spent an hour pulling up about 400 plants and filling several garbage bags with the weeds. But, when they got back to the police station and ran some tests it turned out the suspected pot plants were just a fairly common type of weed called ‘horse mint.’

This is clearly an embarrassing waste of public safety resources. However, I can’t help but think about how much more useful an activity like clearing weeds out of a park is compared to chasing down adults for growing marijuana plants on their own property.

What do you think?

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.

Encouraging news from the City of Brotherly Love today: Philadelphia’s new district attorney and members of the state Supreme Court are taking steps to remove criminal penalties for people arrested with up to 30 grams (or a little more than an ounce) of marijuana. Under the new approach, those caught with marijuana would face a possible fine, but receive no criminal conviction.

“The goal,” according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, “is to sweep about 3,000 small-time marijuana cases annually out of the main court system, freeing prosecutors and judges to devote time to more serious crimes. The diverted cases amount to about 5 percent of the caseload in criminal court.”

But in a frustrating case of two steps forward, one step back, a Philly police spokesman tells the paper, “We’re not going to stop locking people up … our officers are trained to do that. Whether or not they make it through the charging process, that’s up to the D.A. We can’t control that. Until they legalize it, we’re not going to stop.”

What a nuanced view.

Maybe someone should tell that guy how police in Seattle, Denver, San Francisco, and more than a dozen other cities have followed orders to make marijuana a “lowest law enforcement priority” with few complications or adverse consequences. Except, you know, for police having to focus their efforts on more serious crimes.

In any case, decriminalizing marijuana in Philadelphia—the sixth most populous city in the United States—would be a major boon for marijuana policy reform efforts in cities all across the country. Let’s hope it happens.