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.”
The federal law enforcement agency also acknowledged that data shows “Black people and white people use marijuana at similar rates.”
“If MPD enforced marijuana possession laws without regard to race, we would expect that Black people and white people in Memphis would be charged with marijuana possession violations at roughly equal rates,” it said. “But that is not what the data shows. Instead, we found that MPD cites or arrests Black adults for marijuana possession at 5.2 times the rate of white adults, based on MPD’s data from 2018 to 2023.”
The DOJ report wasn’t centered around cannabis. Core to the investigation was its finding that MPD officers engaged in a pattern of excessive force against suspects and more broadly discriminated against Black people. But the repeated mentions of marijuana enforcement trends is notable, especially considering that federal law also still prohibits cannabis.
“This is a damning report, but such disparities are really nothing new when it comes to marijuana enforcement,” Morgan Fox, political director of NORML, told Marijuana Moment. “I’m glad that DOJ is joining the growing number of groups bringing attention to this ongoing injustice, even as that agency’s continued enforcement of federal prohibition and defense of bad cannabis policies may make doing so seem hypocritical.”
“Ultimately, it is up to lawmakers to end marijuana criminalization, so it is helpful for them to hear about the disproportionate harms it causes from as many sources as possible, especially those in the law enforcement community,” he said.
Data show that the Justice Department has clearly deprioritized prosecuting people over simple possession over recent years amid the legalization movement—and the agency is expressly barred from interfering in state medical cannabis programs under a congressional appropriations rider—but hundreds of people remains incarcerated in federal prison over nonviolent marijuana offenses.
President Joe Biden has repeatedly argued that nobody should be in jail over cannabis. And advocates have credited him for issuing two series of mass pardons for those who’ve committed federal possession offenses. However, especially in light of the president’s post-election pardon of his son Hunter Biden over gun and tax charges, advocates are imploring him to fulfill more comprehensive clemency objectives for those who remain behind bars over marijuana.
Biden also initiated a review that led DOJ to propose marijuana rescheduling, which is currently going through an administrative hearing process, but moving cannabis to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) would not federally legalize it. And just as in Memphis, people could continue to be criminalized over marijuana even if the potential reform is enacted.
Photo courtesy of Chris Wallis // Side Pocket Images.