Toronto police are asking illegal marijuana dispensaries to report robberies committed in their shops, but lawyers say the fear of criminal charges makes cooperating with police a difficult prospect for pot sellers.

At a news conference Monday morning, police Supt. Bryce Evans said he found it “disturbing” that dispensaries refuse to cooperate with, or turn over evidence to, police robberies.

“They increase the victimizations because they want the almighty dollar and the profit from the sale of illegal marijuana,” he said of dispensary owners.

There have been four dispensaries robbed this month alone, Evans told reporters, and a total of 13 robberies since June 2016.

On two of those occasions, police charged the dispensary owners with possession for the purpose of trafficking, after being called in to investigate the robberies.

Storefront pot dispensaries are illegal under current Canadian law. Though many Toronto dispensaries claim to offer medicinal marijuana, only 38 providers are licensed by Health Canada.

“I realize that there is no legal obligation to report a crime, but where is your moral sense of an obligation?” Evans asked. “When will you step up to the plate for your employees (and) customers?”

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Alan Young, professor at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School, said police are “setting a standard few can live up to” by calling on dispensary owners to report a crime despite the risk of charges.

“When you operate in a grey or black market, you don’t have the same sense of security that other people have, feeling you can call the police to protect you, because you are always worried about repercussions,” Young said.

“Right now, knowing the police have very zealously been targeting dispensaries, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to call if they were concerned about facing charges.”

Whether or not dispensary owners are charged is determined on a case-by-case basis, police say.

But officers will seize any narcotics they find during any investigation, regardless of why they were initially called to the scene, Evans said.

“It’s like gambling, when you roll the dice you take the chance,” said Evans. “They roll the dice by opening up an illegal dispensary, and if you don’t win by rolling the dice, well in their case we take their marijuana.”

Asked by the Star why dispensary owners would risk being charged when they report a robbery, Evans responded, “These questions being asked, you’re making the dispensaries victims. It’s illegal.”

Many dispensary owners do contact police in the wake of a robbery.

Staff at the Green Leaf, near Danforth and Woodbine Aves., were happy to cooperate with officers after a Jan. 14 robbery, in which a customer was pistol whipped, said store manager Stewart MacDonald.

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“We’re quite thankful for the upfront assistance (police) provided,” said MacDonald. “They returned our cash, not our product, but that’s understandable. It’s all gone as it should, in my opinion.”

MacDonald added that he believes dispensaries must cooperate with police if they want to be considered legitimate businesses, as many do.

“Behave as such and we’ll be treated as such,” he said.

Lawyer Paul Lewin said mistrust of police amongst many dispensary owners was stoked by Project Claudia — the crackdown that saw dozens of Toronto pot shops raided, and over 180 charges laid, in May 2016.

“We’ve just gone through this massive wave of arrests over the last eight months and now there’s some surprise that people are reluctant?” said Lewin, who specializes in marijuana-related cases.

“It’s not just the cops, it’s the federal government,” he added. “They could fix this.”

Lewin said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the government’s marijuana task force could have instituted interim enforcement measures while they worked out the specifics of ending prohibition.

Legalizing and regulating marijuana was a key Trudeau campaign promise, but no date has yet been set for new laws to take effect.

In December 2016 Trudeau told the Star that, until prohibition officially ends, he wants police to criminally charge illegal dispensary operators.

At Monday’s press conference, Evans said Toronto Police “are not interested in what the federal government is doing,” but, rather, in what laws exist today.

“We can sit there and say it’s a grey area, it’s a clouded area. No, it’s not... Right now it’s clear.”

—With files from Salmaan Farooqui