On Tuesday, voters in Flint, Michigan enacted a measure decriminalizing possession of less than an ounce of marijuana by people 19 or older.
The municipal government afflicting that city blithely responded by saying, in effect, that it doesn’t take orders from the people whom they supposedly represent: “The ballot proposal approved by Flint voters creating an exemption under city ordinance to allow persons at least 19 years old to possess less than one ounce of marijuana is symbolic in nature. It does not decriminalize possession of marijuana.”
Police Chief Alvern Locke candidly asserted that the officers under his command will simply defy the new law: “We’re still police officers and we’re still empowered to enforce the laws of the state of Michigan and the United States. We’re still going to enforce the laws as we’ve been enforcing them.”
Prior to the election, Patrick Richard, a state police Detective who heads the federally funded Flint Area Narcotics Group (whose acronym, appropriately, is FANG), said that passage of the decriminalization measure wouldn’t “affect the way we do business.”
That “business,” of course, consists of stealing property and kidnapping people who do no harm to anybody else by consuming an innocuous substance banned by the government. Like 19th Century Slave-Catchers, the “local” police are provided with lucrative bounties for tracking down and imprisoning people who dare to exercise the right of self-ownership.
12:33 pm on November 8, 2012
