His top cop Bill Bratton seems unaware that pot has been decriminalized . . . since 1977. The NYPD continues to toss blacks and Latinos in jail for low-level pot offenses, despite Mayor Bill de Blasio‘s campaign pledge to end arrests for possession of small amounts of marijuana. Data assembled by the Marijuana Arrest Research Project indicates that the NYPD under de Blasio has managed to pull slightly ahead of the Bloomberg administration‘s 2013 arrest rates for pot possession. In the first 4 months of 2014, police have arrested an average of 80 people per day for small amounts of pot; the average last year was 78. The department is also continuing the proud NYPD tradition of primarily targeting young minorities in poor neighborhoods. […] Read More
Tag: Bill de Blasio
New York is on track to arrest 28,600 people for pot possession this year, most of them minorities. New York’s new Democratic mayor Bill de Blasio ran a significant portion of his election campaign on his promise to end the racialized policing practices of his predecessor, Michael Bloomberg. Law enforcement practices under Bloomberg, and Rudolph Giuliani before him, disproportionately targeted poor communities of color and led to the arrests of tens of thousands of people per year for carrying tiny amounts of marijuana. Sadly, the city is currently on track to hit 28,600 marijuana possession arrests under the new de Blasio administration—on par with the average arrests during the Giuliani years. And similar to stats from Bloomberg’s time in office, minorities account for 86 percent of […] Read More