Since Dallas County’s "cite-and-release" program for marijuana possession launched in December, the Dallas Police Department says it has freed up officers’ resources to fight violent crime.

But it still needs time to ramp up across the department, officials said. Through the end of June, the department has applied cite-and-release in only 65 out of a total of 1,544 marijuana possession cases.

The program allows offenders (and officers) to skip the trip to jail for low-level possession offenses. Instead, anyone caught with under 4 ounces of marijuana can get a court summons and go on his or her way.

It doesn’t absolve anyone of legal consequences, though — a person cited for marijuana possession can still be convicted and sentenced to jail time.

There are a few reasons the number of citations so far is low, police said.

First, some marijuana possession cases aren't eligible for cite-and-release — only 6 percent of the cases from December through June were eligible. Police didn't specify what made the rest ineligible, though a spokesman said it's possible that a person was charged with another crime in addition to marijuana possession.

And officers are still adjusting to the new program, said Assistant Chief Lonzo Anderson, who presented an update on the program Monday to the Dallas City Council’s public safety and criminal justice committee.

“We're basically working on refresher training” with officers for cite-and-release, Anderson said. “It's kind of like marketing, you always have to keep it in their face until they catch on.”

Council member Philip Kingston raised concerns about racial disparities in enforcement both for cite-and-release and overall marijuana possession offenses.

Of the 65 people cited and released for marijuana possession, 35 were black, 25 were Hispanic and five were white. For all cases, 91 percent of people facing charges were black or Hispanic, and the remaining 9 percent were white.

“It still appears to be the case that marijuana is legal in Dallas County if you’re white, but not if you’re Latino or black,” Kingston said.

While officers save about 45 minutes when issuing a citation rather than taking a person to jail on a possession charge, Kingston said writing tickets for low-level offenses is “wasting a lot of police time on something that simply isn’t a public-safety issue.”

“If you’re spending time writing up a citation for low-level marijuana possession, you’re probably not utilizing the public-safety resources at the city of Dallas in the most efficient way,” he said.

Kingston said the department chooses to enforce marijuana possession specifically in areas where black and Latino people live.

Police Chief U. Renee Hall defended the enforcement, saying she had heard from citizens — specifically in council member Kevin Felder’s district in the southeastern part of the city — who said marijuana posed a real quality-of-life issue in their communities, preventing them from letting their children outside to play because people were smoking weed.

“Though there are some concerns here as a police department, we are doing everything that we can to ensure that we are not overlooking this,” she said. “But the one thing that we cannot overlook is illegal activity.”

She said most of the individuals cited for marijuana possession have been involved in other criminal activity, so there’s no option to look the other way.

And Kingston didn't speak for the whole committee when he asked police to stop enforcing low-level marijuana offenses.

"I do not want you looking the other way," council member Jennifer Staubach Gates told police leadership at the meeting.

Anderson said the department regularly audits itself to make sure it's not enforcing crime differently in certain communities.

“I tell my police officers to treat all people, regardless of their color and their race, to treat them respectfully and treat them with dignity,” he said.

Dallas police see cite-and-release as a success, so the department is considering using the system for other charges, including driving with an invalid license. Anderson said that crime, like marijuana possession, doesn’t involve a victim.

“The victim is the offender that we have there in front of us — there's not a second party,” he said.