Marijuana Offenses: 2017-2018 (Gastonia Police Department)

To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the North Carolina Public Records Law, I hereby request the following records:

A copy of all data related to citations/arrests made by your agency for marijuana offenses. 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 race, ethnicity, age, sex, and other demographic information of the persons arrested and/or cited. The time frame for which we are seeking records is from January 2017 through December 2018.

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 look forward to receiving your response to this request within 10 business days.

Sincerely,

Working Narratives