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The Dispatch/Maryland Coast Dispatch
June 14, 2013
Area Police: Alarming Pot Arrest Rates Are Misleading
By TRAVIS BROWN
STAFF WRITER
OCEAN CITY – An ACLU report released earlier this month lists Worcester County at more than eight times the national average for marijuana possession arrest rates, based on information collected by the FBI and census data for 2010. There is some disagreement, however, over how much that statistic is warped by the seasonal nature of the county and the huge population shifts it goes through from winter to summer. According to the report, Worcester County had 2,132 marijuana possession arrests per 100,000 residents in 2010. That’s 8.3 times the national average and five times higher than the state average. The next closest county to Worcester’s rate mentioned in the report is Kleberg, Texas, which had roughly 800
less arrests per 100,000 than Worcester. Local law enforcement advises readers to take those statistics with a grain of salt since the ACLU report doesn’t account for the huge population boom that Ocean City, and by proxy the county, goes through every summer. “The rate that you see for Worcester County, Md. is actually a gross over representation of the actual arrests because they calculate the county’s population against the number of arrests,” said Worcester County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Ed Schreier, “but they don’t take into consideration the summer influx of up to 300,000 more people. So the rate is higher, not the number of arrests but the rate per capita. So we get over-represented in the arrest rate, which is a proportional thing.” Local attorney John Phoebus
agreed that the influx of hundreds of thousands or even millions of visitors every summer will distort the rate. He quoted a page from the ACLU report directly on his blog where the writers of that document acknowledge that Worcester does have reason to have a higher-thanaverage arrest rate, but Phoebus argued that Worcester’s place at the top of the chart is still highly unusual given the fact that other tourist destinations didn’t have similar rates. “This statistic is also being compared to every tourist area in the entire country. Panama City Beach is a perfect example,” he said. “For a couple of weeks in spring, they’re going to have millions more residents of students that are there on spring break than they are yearround. But you don’t see Panama City Beach with the off the charts thing.”
In fact, several of the top 10 areas listed are metropolitan including Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Bronx, N.Y. It is fair to note that areas with much smaller populations like Cole, Mo., and Dare, N.C., also show up in the top 10. “If you just look at that as a comparison between Ocean City and every other resort town that doesn’t have a large year-round population but does swell in the summer it’s still off the charts high,” he said. The theory Phoebus offered is that Worcester’s spot at the top is a combination of the population flux as well as tighter laws and policing in the area. “I think there are two things that go into that number: one part of it is the increase in population but the other part, I think, is aggressive policing on the part of the Ocean City Police Department [OCPD],” he said. Phoebus was quick to clarify that he wasn’t accusing the department of anything illegal but only arguing that the approach in Worcester can be more forceful than some other areas. “Many vacationers and students working in Ocean City for the summer come from states that have much laxer marijuana laws and are often surprised at the level of enforcement they encounter,” he wrote. The OCPD doesn’t make it a seSEE PAGE 36
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