Police in New York City are still
stopping people and compelling them to empty their pockets, then
slapping them with a misdemeanor charge of criminal possession in
the fifth degree—public display, a controversial and illegal
practice meant as
an end run around decriminalization laws on the books in New
York for more than 30 years. In 2012, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo
called for such public display of marijuana to be
decriminalized too, a plan abandoned
earlier this year. A local congressman, Democrat Hakeem
Jeffries, tells The Huffington Post he thinks Cuomo
dropped the decriminalization effort because New York’s new mayor,
Democrat Bill de Blasio, had promised to curb such (illegal!)
arrests.
Instead:
Data released earlier this month from the New York
state Division of Criminal Justice Services shows that from January
to March, more than 7,000 individuals were arrested in New
York City for possessing small amounts of marijuana, and
86 percent of them were black or Latino. That number of arrests,
Jeffries said, puts New York City on track to have just as many
low-level marijuana arrests in 2014 as it did in 2013,
when nearly 29,000 New Yorkers were busted for low-level
marijuana possession.
In 2012, Commissioner Ray Kelly told cops in New York City to
stop making such arrests. Bill de Blasio’s pick, Bill Bratton, says
he’s against decriminalization (the law of the land for small
amounts, except for public view) and defends low-level arrests as a
crime-fighting measure. It’s called the broken windows
theory, and Bratton employed it when he served as police
commissioner for Republican Rudolph Giuliani in the ’90s; the idea
was that going after “petty” criminals—like vandals and fare
skippers—would cut down on more serious crimes too. Whether or not
the theory holds, it hardly applies to getting someone to show you
something that becomes a crime to possess only because you’ve shown
it. It dismisses constitutional rights in a way that’s not
necessary for fighting crime or doing anything other than
terrorizing select populations because you think they commit
crimes. Will de Blasio get a pass because he was something
Bloomberg never was—a Democrat?
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