The Justice Department is condemning the Memphis, Tennessee Police Department (MPD) following an investigation that discovered a “pattern” of civil rights violations—including racial disparities in marijuana-related arrests. At the same time, however, cannabis remains criminalized across the board under federal law.
Following a broader review of the local department’s enforcement practices, U.S. Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said on Thursday that among DOJ’s findings is the fact that MPD “cites or arrests Black adults for marijuana possession at 5.2 times the rate of white adults, based on data from 2018 to 2023.”
One prosecutor cited in the new federal report also described MPD’s actions based on alleged marijuana odor as “cringey.”
MPD’s “aggressive street enforcement” also involved targeted operations that they’ve carried out for years, and the Justice Department report says, in 2019, “marijuana was 96.6 percent of the drugs recovered, by weight” for Operation Spring Cleaning.
DOJ also criticized MPD for relying on the odor of cannabis, often under questionable circumstances.
“While officers often justify vehicle and pedestrian searches based on statements that they have smelled the ‘odor of marijuana,’ courts and MPD’s own internal affairs unit has found that those justifications are not always credible,” the report said. “Officers will, for example, write in reports that they smelled marijuana, but there will be no mention of the odor of marijuana on body-worn camera footage.”
“A prosecutor described MPD’s explanations as sometimes ‘cringey,’ and gave the example of an officer claiming to have smelled marijuana in a car that was going 60 miles per hour,” the DOJ report notes.
“MPD arrests Black people for marijuana possession at more than 5 times the rate of white people. We also found significant disparities in MPD’s enforcement of laws prohibiting the possession of marijuana. Data on drug arrests can be compared to relevant benchmarks on drug use to evaluate whether MPD enforces drug laws disproportionately.”
