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McCarthy said in a statement earlier this month that the arrests of more than 18,000 people for misdemeanor possession of 10 grams or less of marijuana "tied up more than 45,000 police hours" and that the "new ordinance nearly cuts that time in half ... freeing up cops to address more serious crime." Other states are starting to relax their marijuana possession laws. This month alone, governors in Rhode Island and New York moved toward decriminalization of small amounts of the drug. Of the 8,625 misdemeanor marijuana cases between 2006 and 2010 in Cook County, about 87 percent were dismissed, according to statistics from the Cook County Clerk of the Circuit Court. In Chicago, the debate has been going on for several months. Alderman Danny Solis introduced a similar ordinance in November. He focused much of his argument then on his estimate that the tickets given for marijuana possession would bring in as much as $7 million a year in revenue to the financially strapped city. Solis said Wednesday that such an ordinance would mean poor neighborhoods on the city's south and west sides would not have police officers go missing for hours at a time to do paperwork, as they do now when they arrest people for small amounts of marijuana. He said cutting the time that officers spend making those arrests adds up to 2,500 more "police days" that officers will be on the street. "This ordinance is going to have a definite impact on the safety of our community," Solis said.
[Associated
Press;
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