The New York Times reports
that the NYPD plans to stop arresting people for possessing small
amounts of marijuana “in public view.” Cops will instead issue
summonses requiring pot possessors to appear in court on the
misdemeanor charge. That means cannabis consumers, provided they
have ID, will no longer be handcuffed and taken to a police station
for processing.
In 2012, the Times notes, “more than half of those
arrested for marijuana were released a couple of hours after being
brought to a station house,” where they were “fingerprinted,
checked for warrants and issued a ticket demanding their appearance
in court six to eight weeks later.” The rest “were ‘put through the
system,’ meaning they were held for up to 24 hours before being
arraigned.”
Eliminating arrests for this petty offense would be a big
improvement, since cannabis consumers in New York City would no
longer have to endure the humiliation, inconvenience, and
deprivation of liberty that has been routinely inflicted on them
until now. But they would still be charged with a misdemeanor, even
though merely possessing up to 25 grams of marijuana (about
nine-tenths of an ounce) has not been a crime in New York state
since 1977, and they would still be subject to arrest if they did
not have ID or failed to appear in court. It does not sound like
the NYPD plans to change its practice of transforming a violation
into a misdemeanor by claiming that marijuana was possessed in
public view (often as a result of police instructions or
pat-downs).
Mayor Bill de Blasio
condemned such arrests during his campaign last year,
calling them “unjust and wrong.” He noted that pot busts
disproportionately affect minorities and can have
“disastrous consequences for individuals and their
families,” since they “limit one’s ability to qualify for student
financial aid and undermine one’s ability to find stable housing
and good jobs.” But so far petty marijuana
arrests have been
just as frequent under De Blasio as they were in 2013.
Now he apparently has decided that the arrests should
be replaced by misdemeanor summonses, which are not as bad but can
have the same “disastrous consequences” that he decried last
year.
This latest shift in policy is reminiscent of a change
announced by De Blasio’s predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, in
February 2013:
Right now, those arrested for possessing small amounts of
marijuana are often held in custody overnight. We’re changing
that. Effective next month, anyone presenting an ID and
clearing a warrant check will be released directly from the
precinct with a desk appearance ticket to return to
court. It’s consistent with the law, it’s the right thing to
do, and it will allow us to target police resources where they’re
needed most.
That change was welcome, but it raised the question of why
cops were bothering to arrest people for this trivial offense at
all, especially since Bloomberg said “Commissioner [Ray] Kelly and
I support Governor [Andrew] Cuomo’s proposal to make possession of
small amounts of marijuana a violation, rather than a misdemeanor,
and we’ll work to help him pass it this year.” Like De Blasio,
Cuomo
highlighted “gaping racial disparities” in marijuana arrests,
saying he wanted to “save thousands of New
Yorkers, particularly minority youth, from the unnecessary and
life-altering trauma of a criminal arrest.” He regretted
the “countless man-hours wasted” on “what is
clearly only a minor offense.” But after De Blasio, a fellow
Democrat, was elected, Cuomo dropped the proposed legislative fix,
saying “it’s not timely in the way it was last
year.”
Either possessing small amounts of marijuana for personal
use should be a crime, or it shouldn’t. If it shouldn’t, the
legislature should eliminate the “public display” loophole. But
even if it doesn’t, De Blasio, like Bloomberg before him, has the
discretion to stop charging cannabis consumers with a crime that is
not supposed to exist anymore.
from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/1u29jQ6
via IFTTT