Marijuana Offenses: 2013-2016 (Chapel Hill Police Department)
| Multi Request | Marijuana Offenses: 2013-2016 |
| Submitted | Oct. 25, 2017 |
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Communications
From: Narrative Arts
To Whom It May Concern:
Pursuant to North Carolina Public Records Law (G.S. ยงยง 132-1 through 132-10), I hereby request the following documents:
A copy of all data related to citations/arrests for marijuana possession made by your agency. We are specifically seeking any statistics related to the total number of arrests and/or citations for offenses related to marijuana possession as well as the location of the incident and the ethnicity, age, sex, and other demographic information of the persons arrested and/or cited, if available. The time frame for which we are seeking records is from January 2013 through December 2016.
If it is your position that any portion of the requested records is exempt from disclosure, we request that you provide it with an index of those documents as required under Vaughn v. Rosen, 484 F.2d 820 (D.C. Cir. 1973), cert. denied, 415 U.S. 977 (1972).
If you determine that any portion or portions of this request cannot be fulfilled as promptly as any other portion of this request, we ask that you first fulfill whatever portion of this request you can fulfill within 10 business days and then fulfill the remainder of the request as promptly as possible.
We are happy to work with your office to make this request as simple as possible and eliminate unnecessary work. Please contact us before you incur labor costs or the use of information technology resources beyond those that your agency has already established for reproduction of the information requested. We can probably find an efficient solution that serves the public interest while minimizing your effort.
The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.
In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.
Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I would request your response within ten (10) business days.
Sincerely,
Working Narratives
From: Chapel Hill Police Department
Thank you for your message. We have received it and will process it next week.
Christopher C. Blue
Chief of Police
Chapel Hill Police Department
828 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
Chapel Hill, NC 27514
[Description:]
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From: Chapel Hill Police Department
To whom it may concern,
Attached is the data that you requested. I feel that it's important that I discuss a limitation of the data. In your request, you refer to ethnicity as a field that you wished to have included. Typically, our officers will document ethnicity of Hispanic persons by indicating "H" in the ethnicity field. If the person is not of Hispanic ethnicity the officer would indicate this with an "N" in that field. However, sometimes the officer has no indication of a person's ethnicity... in those situations the field is left blank.
Additionally, in order to provide some context for the data attached, I have included a field that you did not request. This field is labeled "ArrestType." This field indicates whether the person was cited or arrested. Obviously "Citation" indicates that they were cited and not physically arrested. The other choices indicate a physical arrest. The need for context comes from the type of physical arrest. "OFA" and "Warrant" indicate situations where the court has issued an order to arrest the person. "On-View" indicates that an officer observed the person and developed probable cause to charge them with an offense and then physically arrested the person.
For what it's worth, our incident level data is currently available on our open data site at www.chapelhillopendata.org<http://www.chapelhillopendata.org> in case you need that type of data. Arrest level data, such as the data enclosed, will be available on that same website shortly.
Let me know if you need anything else.
[Town Seal]
Joshua Mecimore
Information Services Captain
Chapel Hill Police Department<http://www.townofchapelhill.org/police>
Town of Chapel Hill<http://www.townofchapelhill.org/>
828 Martin Luther King Blvd
Chapel Hill, NC 27514
Phone: (919) 968-2747
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