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<P class=storyheadline><STRONG>NYC's Staggering Arrest Rate for Pot Achieved By
Police Deception and Scams</STRONG></P><!-- end: headline --><!-- start: byline -->
<P class=storybyline><B>By <A title="View all stories by Steven Wishnia"
href="http://www.alternet.org/authors/3332/">Steven Wishnia</A>, <A
href="http://www.alternet.org/">AlterNet</A>. Posted <A
title="View all stories published on May 9, 2008"
href="http://www.alternet.org/ts/archives/?date[F]=05&date[Y]=2008&date[d]=09&act=Go/">May
9, 2008</A>.</B></P><BR><!-- end: byline --><!-- end: headline and byline --><!-- start: teaser -->
<DIV class=teaser>
<DIV class=teaserleft>New study says New York's cannabis crackdown is both
racist and fraudulent -- and that more have been arrested under Bloomberg than
Giuliani. </DIV></DIV>
<DIV class=videowrapvid
style="CLEAR: both; PADDING-LEFT: 12px; PADDING-TOP: 25px">
<DIV class=rightadnote>New York City has been the pot-bust capital of the world
for a decade, since Rudolph Giuliani's decision to make public toking a top
police priority. A new study sponsored by the New York Civil Liberties Union
says the city's cannabis crackdown is both racist and fraudulent.</DIV></DIV>
<DIV id=storycontainer>
<P>New York police have arrested almost 400,000 people for misdemeanor marijuana
possession in the last decade. Last year, there were 39,700 such arrests. The
vast majority of those seized have been black and Latino men, most under 25. And
according to the NYCLU study, released last week, thousands of them are the
victims of police scams, falsely charged with possession of marijuana "burning
or open to public view."</P>
<P>"We are confident in estimating that about two-thirds to three-quarters of
the people arrested were not smoking marijuana," the study says. "Usually they
were doing their utmost to keep their marijuana concealed, generally deep inside
their clothing." The authors, sociologist Harry Levine of Queens College and
activist Deborah Peterson-Small of the organization Break The Chains, say that
conclusion is "based on the experience of legal aid and public-defender
attorneys who have handled thousands of these cases, along with that of the
police officers and arrestees we interviewed."</P>
<P>New York State decriminalized marijuana in 1977. That reduced possession of
less than 25 grams is a violation, carrying a $100 fine and no criminal record.
But smoking or possession in public is a misdemeanor, punishable by up to three
months in jail. So in order to get around the constitutional restrictions on
searches and find a valid reason to make an arrest, police have to use
deception.</P>
<P>A typical ruse is for police to stop someone near a suspected marijuana-sales
site and tell them something along the lines of "We saw you coming out of the
weed spot. If you have anything on you that you're not supposed to have, give it
to me and all I'll give you is a ticket." If the suspect falls for the ruse and
hands over his marijuana, he is then arrested for displaying it in public view.
Though most people charged with misdemeanor pot possession do not receive jail
sentences, they often have to spend up to 24 hours in jail before arraignment,
and they acquire a permanent arrest record.</P>
<P>Police and defenders of the crackdown say that making large numbers of
arrests for minor offenses has reduced major crimes. Other benefits include that
it's an easy way for police supervisors to show their precincts' productivity,
it's an easy way for individual officers to get overtime-rookie New York cops
get paid only $25,000 a year, so "collars for dollars" augment that -- and it
keeps a reserve of officers occupied.</P>
<P>Peterson-Small states bluntly that the crackdown is "racist," a legacy of the
Giuliani principles that "we will tame New York by bringing the black and brown
people under control" and "no offense is too petty." Of the people arrested for
misdemeanor pot possession from 1997 through 2006, five out of six were black or
Latino, in a city that is almost half white and Asian. Nine out of ten were
male, and most were aged 16 to 25. And over the years, the focus has shifted
from Midtown Manhattan and Greenwich Village to outlying black and Latino areas.
The police precincts in upper Manhattan's Washington Heights, the west Bronx,
Jamaica and St. Albans in southeastern Queens, and the "Black Brooklyn"
neighborhoods of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brownsville, and East New York regularly
turn in more than 1,000 petty pot busts a year each. Though there is no evidence
that black New Yorkers smoke more pot than white ones -- nationally, the rate of
use among young adults is slightly higher for whites, at least according to
government surveys -- the city's marijuana-arrest rate for blacks is more than
five times what it is for whites.</P>
<P>Another worry is that the arrests tag thousands of young black and Latino men
as criminals. The study terms the crackdown "Head Start for prison and
unemployment." The Head Start preschool program, it notes, intends to
"familiarize and socialize young children in the routines and expectations of
school systems"; the marijuana-arrest program works to "familiarize, socialize,
and prepare disadvantaged black and Latino teenagers and young adults from poor
neighborhoods for the routines and expectations of the police, court, jail, and
prison system."</P>
<P>The study also calls the policy a waste of money -- at an estimated $1,500 to
$2,500 per arrest, it cost the city $60 to $100 million last year, at a time
when Mayor Michael Bloomberg is slashing the city budget and closing libraries
on weekends. Peterson-Small adds that it violates the spirit of the state's
decriminalization law. The ban on public smoking, she says, was originally
intended to apply only to people creating a public nuisance, not to someone
lighting up discreetly "in the alley behind a jazz club."</P>
<P>Though the city's cannabis crackdown is Rudolph Giuliani's legacy, Bloomberg
has continued it. Bloomberg has a reputation as a moderate, as less racist and
draconian than Giuliani, and he famously declared "You bet I did -- and I
enjoyed it" when asked if he had ever smoked pot. But in his first six years in
office, more people have been arrested for misdemeanor possession than in
Giuliani's entire eight-year regime.<BR></P></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>