New York police cracking down on marijuana
But NYPD watchdog says the force's arrests are marked by racial bias
People of color accounted for more than nine out of 10 arrests made on suspicion of marijuana possession and sale in New York City from January to March, according to statistics from the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services obtained by the Police Reform Organizing Project.
PROP also found that 86.5 per cent of New York Police Department misdemeanor arrests involved people of color, up 2 per cent from 2015.
Arrests for "small amounts" of marijuana were up a whopping 33.7 per cent from last year.
Robert Gangi, PROP's director, said the statistics showed that NYPD arrest practices are marked by "waste and racial bias" and that, despite the rhetoric in City Hall, marijuana infractions remain a major focus of the police.
"While Mayor de Blasio, NYPD Commissioner Bratton, and other city officials have made widely publicised pronouncements about reducing punitive sanctions for marijuana infractions, the data present a different story," Gangi said. "Arrests for these activities are actually on the rise."
The NYPD was not immediately available for comment.
Steve Zeidman, a law professor at City University of New York and a longtime police-reform advocate, said the fact that marijuana-related arrests had risen in New York despite changing public opinion — and the fact people of color are overrepresented in the arrest statistics — "should sound very loudly all kinds of alarm bells."
