New York City Now World’s ‘Marijuana Arrest Capital’
wcbstv.com - NYCLU: City Now World’s ‘Marijuana Arrest Capital’
NEW YORK (CBS/AP) ? Police busted nearly 400,000 people for carrying small amounts of pot in the last decade, making New York City the world leader in marijuana arrests, civil rights advocates said Tuesday while unveiling a study criticizing the war on drugs.The study by Queens College sociologist Harry G. Levin, titled “Marijuana Arrest Crusade,” accused police of purposely singling out minorities during the 10-year crackdown. It said that data provided by stat Division of Criminal Justice Services showed that between 1997 and 2007, 52 percent of the suspects were black, 31 percent Hispanic and only 15 percent white.
Laws were revised in the late 1970s to largely decriminalize carrying small, concealed stashes of marijuana, Levin said. But he claimed police routinely “manufacture” arrests for possession in public view — still a misdemeanor — by stopping young black men on the street and goading them into emptying their pockets.
According to the study, arrests for marijuana possession began skyrocketing in the late 1990s during the Giuliani administration — a trend that continued under Mayor Michael Bloomberg at an estimated cost of between $50 and $90 million a year. There were 39,700 arrests last year alone, according to the study.
The 2007 total makes the city “the marijuana arrest capital of the world,” Lieberman said. The study says New York deserves that title because it devotes far more resources to arresting and jailing marijuana offenders than other large cities in Europe and elsewhere. It also cites a previous analysis of FBI data showing that five of the top 10 counties with highest per-capita arrest rate were the five boroughs.
Police spokesmen slammed the report, of course, saying Dr. Levine is a “legalizer” and was grossly distorting his research. Law enforcement believes that marijuana arrests are part of “quality of life” policing under the “broken windows” theory, which states that if you ignore graffiti, broken windows, garbage, etc., then people will believe that they live in a lawless zone and more serious crimes will increase.
The theory isn’t necessarily wrong, it’s the lumping of marijuana smoking in with those other misdemeanors that is the problem. It has created an adversarial relationship between young minority males and police and drives drug users toward crime and drugs that do create societal problems, like alcohol. It’s OK for young adults to sit on the stoop and drink a 40-ounce of malt liquor, a drug that’s proven to increase aggression and violence, but not to consume cannabis, a drug that leads to mellow happiness and social belonging.
Tags: Dr. Harry Levine, New York, New York City
April 30th, 2008 at 7:51 am
Great job by Harry Levine to get the word out about harrassing marijuana arrests! It’s not every day that our message gets picked up by potent news aggrigators like drudgereport. It’s this kind of story that we need to be promoting to bring this drug war back to the top of mind awareness for the public. It’s the continuing efforts put forth by our foremost visible activists (like Russ and Harry) that will wake Americans up to the costs and corrosive nature of the drug war on the American society. If you don’t have XM (and even if you do) be sure to add Russ Belville’s Show to your iTunes and show your support for our ONLY talk show host that isn’t affraid to talk about legalization on the air! Congratulations should also go out to Russ for his new LIVE Saturday 12-2 time slot on the XM. This is a better position than the 2-4 shift he had earlier. I don’t know squat about radio, but I ran into the show live on XM for the first time just in time for his great 420 show with Keith Stroup(still available for a limited time as a download on his site).
The road to success is travled by each step you take, and we need to keep easin’ on down the road.