Arrested for weed in Philly? We want your testimony!

Arrested for weed in Philly? We want your testimony!

On March 10th, PhillyNORML and other organizations will be testifying during an open public hearing before the Committee on Law and Government in the Council of the City of Philadelphia. The hearing takes place at 10:00AM in Room 400 of City Hall, and the subject is a new bill which would give Philadelphia police the authority to issue citations or summons on the street. Right now, police are required by law to arrest an individual and physically bring them into their police station for processing. This is known as a “custodial arrest,” and is what we aim to change. Read the full bill, Bill No. 14000100.

This bill would also make marijuana possession the lowest police priority. This means that the cops would have to have literally nothing else better to be doing when they arrest or cite a suspect for marijuana possession. Many other cities have similar ordinances.

We Need Your Testimony

To effectively make our case, we need testimony from people who’ve been arrested in Philadelphia for marijuana possession. You do not have to be a resident of the city, only arrested there. If you’ve been placed through the relatively recent “Small Amounts of Marijuana” program (aka the “SAM” program), that is acceptable as well. What happened during your arrest, how has it affected your life and family, that sort of thing.

If you’re interested in submitting your testimony, please include the following information and send it in an email to Rachael Friedmann at Temple.SSDP@gmail.com.

Name
Age
Date of Arrest
ZIP code

You can optionally include your ethnicity. Minorities bear the brunt of the war on marijuana users, accounting for the vast majority of arrests, especially for simple possession. If you have a particularly compelling story, we might want you to testify in person at the council hearing.

You can include your testimony as a PDF or MS Word/OpenOffice, or NotePad (.txt) file. Please don’t paste it directly into the email body.

Hearing Information

To state it again, the hearing is:

March 10th, 2014
10:00 AM
Room 400, City Hall of Philadelphia

This is an open, public hearing. Official testimony will be given, and then the floor will be open to comment by the public. We urge you to come out and take part in the process if you are able to attend.

See you there!

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