An advisory group recommends that the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department stop arresting people only for smoking marijuana, but police say they’ll continue to enforce drug laws.
After a viral, controversial arrest last year, community leaders have been meeting in private with police and looking for ways to improve department policies. The group has finished its list of recommendations, police announced at a news conference on Tuesday.
One of the community group’s suggestions: Police should not “stop to investigate or arrest for the smell or smoking by (individuals) of what appears to be marijuana only.”
But the law is the law, CMPD said in response.
“Marijuana continues to be illegal under both North Carolina and federal law at this time,” the department’s response said. “Officers continue to have the discretion to enforce the legal standard — either a voluntary contact, investigative detention or make an arrest — depending on the situation encountered.”
Police are adopting some of the 17 recommendations from the group, which has been meeting for months.
Those meetings were barred to the public, and participants agreed to keep information about the meetings confidential, The Charlotte Observer previously reported.
The advisory group stemmed from an arrest where an officer hit a woman 17 times after confronting her and her fiancé at a bus stop because police smelled marijuana.
This breaking news story will be updated.