Like Josh Feit, I attended Saturday’s Smokeout on Teletubby Hill, the would-be stoner celebration at the glorious new Cal Anderson Park. I didn’t go to smoke, but i wanted to see who would. The police in attendance were polite and professional but were there to do their jobs. When Seattle’s invaluable pot activist Dominic Holden urged cops to respect the voter-approved I-75, which made personal pot smoking the police department’s lowest legal priority, the spokesmodel cop replied with what seemed like an inspired bit of double-speak: Yes, smoking pot is a low-priority crime, but not when it’s happening in a high-priority park. Upon reflection, his point became clear: The police presence had less to do with punishing potheads and more to do with setting clear boundaries about what will and will not be tolerated in this fledgling city park. (And, surprise, pre-publicized marijuana smoke-ins aren’t among the desired activities.)

And so potheads were punished—specifically, the aforementioned Dominic Holden, who was nabbed after he concluded his levelheaded plea for police to focus on real drug crimes by lighting up some green. Dominic’s report on his experience, related to me via email, is excerpted below.

From Dominic Holden:

While it was a huge waste of taxpayer dollars to pay 10+ cops to work for hours at the event, I-75 seemed to shine. Even though dozens of people were smoking pot directly in front of a group of officers, only one person was penalized, me. My penalty was a gentle lashing from the wettest noodle SPD could find: a 7-day Park Exclusion Notice. Only a few years ago the event would have been blitzkrieged by cops wearing riot gear, riding horses and shooting tear gas, and people would have ended up in jail. This is a victory for I-75 and the voters of Seattle. Let us hope that SPD's top brass has learned that even this type this type of expensive action undermines confidence of their ability to prudently use resources and leaves the community of Capitol Hill more divided than united.

The officers who actually attended appeared to do a great job given that they were tasked with a pointless waste of time. I'm sure that the voters who passed I-75 would cringe if they knew that 10 well-paid officers were directed by their superiors to spend an entire afternoon making sure a small group of people didn't smoke some pot in the rain. One can't help but wonder how many hundreds/thousands of dollars were needlessly wasted when the rest of Capitol Hill is haunted with real drug problems and violence.