So has everyone got the scare stories out of their system?

Is there anyone else planning to go before the Denver council and regale it with alarming predictions about the opening of retail marijuana outlets next year — and oh, by the way, why they need a bump in their budgets to handle the chaos?

We’ve had officials warn councilmembers that they must not stint on more funding for cops, park rangers and medical staff — and even legal support and planning. And while no one has yet suggested pot stores put undue wear on streets, maybe that’s coming next.

The award for most lurid presentation to date goes hands down to Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey, who testified Monday to a council committee considering a sales tax on cannabis stores.

Morrissey didn’t actually have an opinion about the tax. But he did appear aggrieved that “no one asked me what impact [retail sales] is going to have on my office” — and then answered the unasked question by describing his “experience with medical marijuana.”

“We’ve had 12 homicides related directly to medical marijuana,” he said. “We’ve had over 100 aggravated robberies and home invasions. Many of you probably didn’t read about the double-execution-style homicides that we had here in Denver where people were laid down on the floor and executed because they were running a medical marijuana outlet. … [T]here is a lot of crime around this stuff” because “there are large amounts of cash sitting in people’s homes, sitting in people’s businesses.”

“Nobody is talking about it and when I talk about it, nobody listens.”

All right, sir, you’ve got our attention.

Trouble is, the DA’s testimony obscured the subject by lumping together crimes associated, often loosely, with medical marijuana in general, as opposed to crimes at commercial outlets. Yet it’s new retail outlets that will be taxed. The question is whether they will be crime magnets.

Based upon follow-up reporting in The Denver Post, the answer appears to be: probably not. Indeed, The Post found “many of the cases [the DA’s office cited] were home invasions — not robberies of brick-and-mortar businesses — and it was unclear whether victims in the homes were legally growing and selling marijuana.”

Officials also noted that one-third of crimes in Denver occur within 1,000 feet of a marijuana dispensary — but that’s a useless statistic given the huge area involved. What percentage of crimes occur within 1,000 feet of a school?

And as for those 12 homicides, none of the killings later referenced by the DA’s office (which numbered fewer than 12) occurred in a dispensary. It also isn’t clear how many involved law-abiding patients or caregivers as opposed to someone dealing on the side. The latter have no business on the list.

Nor do two killings that Morrissey featured in his testimony involving a “medical marijuana provider with an AR-15” — which, by the way, occurred in Aurora — since the shooting was deemed self-defense. For that matter, an Aurora cop told a Post reporter the shooter was not a legal marijuana provider.

Have some dispensaries been robbed? Of course. But the relevant question, asked by Councilwoman Mary Beth Susman, is whether the legalization of medical marijuana increased violence involving drugs — since “I would imagine there have been many murders around illegal marijuana as well.”

Morrissey conceded violence in the black market, but added, “There were no dispensary robberies before there were dispensaries.”

True, and there were no convenience store robberies before convenience stores, or bank robberies before banks.

Or is it only the cannabis business that is responsible for predators in their midst?

E-mail Vincent Carroll at vcarroll@denverpost.com.