On a bitterly cold night in February 2015, Gillian Heintzelman left her job at Sacred Heart Hospital in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and made her way to a nearby bar to meet her boyfriend and a friend. They stayed for a few minutes, and then left together to get a late-night dinner. They’d only driven a couple of blocks when their car was pulled over by the police.

Heintzelman, who was 29 at the time, recalled what happened next with a mix of anger and exasperation. “They ripped me out of the car and harassed me, asking me where the coke was,” she said. “I’ve never even done coke.”

She suspects that police were watching her on the city’s “blue-light” surveillance cameras and grew suspicious when they saw her leave the bar so quickly. The cops found roughly half of a gram of cannabis in her purse, worth about five dollars, and arrested her, as well as her friend who also had a small amount of cannabis on his person. “I felt like a criminal. I work at a hospital trying to help people,” Heintzelman told Leafly. “They made me feel like a piece of shit.”

Pennsylvania State Police did not respond to a request to comment.

Stories like Heintzelman’s are tragically common in Pennsylvania, even as more cities across the state—including Allentown—have passed ordinances to decriminalize possession of up to 30 grams of cannabis (a little over an ounce). In spite of these ordinances, arrests have persisted, and in some parts of the state, increased.

Nearly 22,000 people were arrested last year for possession of an ounce of cannabis, according to the Pennsylvania State Police. While some activists have cited that figure as a success—over 24,000 people were arrested the year prior, an all-time high—the number is still higher than it was before cities began decriminalizing small possession in 2015. Two main factors are at play: law enforcement’s blatant disregard of the ordinances, and their failure to accurately report their own data.

“It’s barbarism,” is how Pennsylvania’s Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman (D) described the current system to Leafly. “Just make it legal!”

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