A feisty crowd paid a visit to the Capitol Hill office of Rep. Andy Harris Thursday morning, ostensibly to bring their local complaints to the federal lawmaker.

The activists were upset about a budget rider Harris attached to a spending bill that would block marijuana decriminalization in the nation’s capital and Harris’ subsequent explanation to WAMU that for D.C. residents "Congress is their local legislature." Building on that remark, the local advocacy group D.C. Vote urged city residents to give “Councilman” Harris an earful.

“I really can’t tolerate this,” a member of the U.S. Capitol Police told a crowd of about 40 activists and reporters after he shooed a group out of the Maryland Republican’s office and into a hallway of the Longworth House Office Building. “If you choose to be arrested, I don’t have a problem accommodating you,” the officer said, insisting over jeers that participants cannot protest within the building and that they must line up against hallway walls.

Nobody brought their neighbor’s dog poop or complained about noise from the local bar at the so-called "constituent service day," but D.C. Vote spokesman James Jones said the protest was a success. “It was disruptive. We want to let him know if he gets in our business, we’ll get in his,” Jones said. “We’re not going to stop.”

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The D.C. decriminalization law went into effect July 17. People caught by District police with up to 1 ounce of marijuana are now given a $25 civil fine. The previous penalties included arrest, along with a possible $1,000 fine and six months in jail.

Araz Alali, a spokesman for the city’s Metropolitan Police Department, tells U.S. News five tickets were filed with police headquarters in the first week of decriminalization.

Four were issued in the Seventh District, which includes the Anacostia neighborhood in the Southeast corner of the city, and one was issued in northern Fifth District. The number is “not carved in stone and subject to change,” Alali says, noting officers must physically deliver the tickets to headquarters, meaning some tickets may have been issued but not yet filed.

Harris’ rider was attached to a spending bill in the House appropriations committee June 25. The bill was approved by the full House on July 16. Fearing a loss, House pot reformers chose not to fight the rider on the floor, and are hoping that it won’t survive a House-Senate conference committee.

Harris was in D.C. when protesters visited Thursday, but spokeswoman Erin Montgomery says he was attending a meeting outside his office.

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“I only wish the members of D.C. Vote cared as much about keeping marijuana out of the hands of teenagers as they care about the right of D.C. residents to do drugs with no consequence," Harris said in a emailed statement.

Protest participant Kathleen Frydl disagrees with Harris. “The sky has not fallen,” Frydl said, arguing that if Harris, a doctor, was truly concerned about the effect of marijuana on public health “he would help us to legalize, so we could regulate" the drug.

If Harris' budget rider does become law later this year, it would likely leave District officials with the choice of either enforcing no law against possession or filing federal charges. Harris told U.S. News in June "it would be whatever the District wanted to do,” possibly including the abandonment of all anti-marijuana enforcement.

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Many participants in the Thursday protest were affiliated with the D.C. Cannabis Campaign, which on July 7 submitted what appear to be enough signatures to put outright legalization on the city’s November ballot. In addition to scuttling the decriminalization law, Harris’ budget rider would prevent the city from implementing any law that legalizes and regulates marijuana for recreational use.

“They know if legalization happens here, it’s a done deal federally,” says Adam Eidinger, the D.C. Cannabis Campaign organizer.