NYPD accused of sodomizing man in custody for smoking marijuana

(CannabisFantastic.com) New York – A disturbing case out of New York City. On Wednesday, Michael Mineo took the stand to testify and describe in detail his experience on a Brooklyn Subway Station in 2008. Mineo was held down by three NYC police officers and sodomized with a foreign object for the crime of smoking marijuana.

The Brooklyn police chased Mineo into the station after spotting him smoking and that is where, Mr. Mineo claims, that the cops tackled him kicked him and then sodomized him with a baton. The police officers then gave him a summons and threatened that they would go to his house and serve him with a felony charge if he went to the hospital for treatment. The officers are denying that part of the story, but his story is corroborated by eyewitnesses – including a transit police officer. The three officers charged in the attack are now on trial.

The NYPD has come under increasing pressure from what seems like their obsession with marijuana possession busts. Tens of thousands of New Yorkers a year getting caught up in the criminal justice system for simple possession with most spending a few days in jail.  According to a report by the NY Civil Liberties Union in 2008 showed that NYC police arrested 40,300 people with just a small amount of cannabis, most of them under 26 years old more disturbing 87% of those charged were black or Latino even though those groups together represent only half of the city’s population.

US government surveys consistently find that young whites use marijuana at higher rates than blacks and Latinos. The large number of arrests of minority groups are in part because officers make stop-and-frisk searches disproportionately for those groups and in low-income neighborhoods. With the arrest records per capita, shamefully, New York City is the marijuana bust capital of the entire world.