Austin voters overwhelmingly say yes to marijuana, no-knock warrant ballot measure

Austinites voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure that prevents the city's police officers from enforcing laws against possessing small amounts of marijuana or from entering a property unannounced using no-knock warrants. Proposition A — which removes police discretion by cementing these two policies into law — passed with 56,004 votes in favor, or 85.8%, while there were 9,270 votes against it, or 14.2%, according to final but unofficial results from the Travis County Clerk's office. Prop A was Austin's lone proposition on the Saturday ballot and generated limited buzz ahead of the vote. Following hotly contested fights in Austin elections on homeless camping in May 2020 and police officer hires last November, Prop A did not even yield an opposition campaign.

With the passage of Prop A, the city's police officers will no longer be allowed to make an arrest or issue a citation for possession of a misdemeanor amount of marijuana, with two exceptions: if the arrest or citation is part of an investigation into a high-priority narcotics case or into a violent felony. Otherwise, the most police officers will be allowed to do is seize the drugs. The proposition's passage by voters codifies into law the policy the Austin City Council recommended to the Austin Police Department in early 2020 after Gov. Greg Abbott the year before signed a law that made it all but impossible to distinguish narcotic marijuana from legal hemp. In July 2020, then-Police Chief Brian Manley announced that officers would no longer cite or arrest people for having small amounts of pot. On the no-knock warrants issue, passage of Prop A stipulates that police officers investigating a crime can still enter a residence with a signed warrant, but only after they've announced their presence and waited at least 15 seconds.