Houston voters will have the opportunity this November to reshape two significant law enforcement policies \u2014 low-level marijuana possession enforcement and no-knock warrants.<\/p>\n
The Houston City Council passed an ordinance placing a charter amendment on the November ballot. If approved, the measure would make low-level marijuana possession the lowest enforcement priority for the Houston Police Department and ban the use of no-knock warrants.<\/p>\n
The move comes after approximately 40,000 Houston residents signed a petition calling for the change.<\/p>\n
Mayor says HPD already deprioritizes low-level marijuana, no-knock warrants<\/p>\n
Mayor John Whitmire told KPRC that low-level marijuana possession has not been an enforcement priority for HPD in some time.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is not an issue in the city of Houston,\u201d Whitmire said. \u201cWe are very firm that we do not serve no-knock warrants. It\u2019s been that way since the beginning of my administration, all the way back to Turner.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why turn to a public vote?<\/p>\n
If the city is already putting to practice a ban on no-knock warrant and deprioritizing low-level marijuana , why bring it to voters? At-Large Position 5 Council Member Sallie Alcorn says the ballot proposition would reinforce and double down on current city enforcement by writing it into the city charter.<\/p>\n
Ground Game Texas, a statewide organization focused on social justice, led the signature drive to put the measures before voters. The organization\u2019s executive director told KPRC on Monday these policies are about accountability.<\/p>\n
Houston eligible voters will find the proposition on their Nov. 3 ballot.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Houston voters will have the opportunity this November to reshape two significant law enforcement policies \u2014 low-level marijuana…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[4519,56,58,57,3328,142315,6056],"class_list":["post-406421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-city-council","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-marijuana","tag-no-knock","tag-warrant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}