Among those washed into Manhattan Criminal Court by the Tuesday morning tides was a 25-year-old man who works in technology support for a large company.
He had been caught with $30 worth of marijuana after his car was stopped on Riverside Drive, an offense against Section 221.10 of the New York State penal code. His case involved surveillance by an unmarked car and two officers who then stayed late into the night processing their prisoner, fingerprinting him, writing a complaint and taking his mug shot.
The court proceeding lasted about 45 seconds. The charges would be permanently dismissed if he stayed out of trouble for a year, which did not appear to be a big challenge, since he had never been arrested before.
If the case seemed like much ado about hardly anything, the laws of the State of New York agree. The city’s Police Department and the mayor, however, have other ideas.
A study released Tuesday reported that between 1998 and 2007, the police arrested 374,900 people whose most serious crime was the lowest-level misdemeanor marijuana offense.
That is more than eight times the number of arrests on those same charges between 1988 and 1997, when 45,300 people were picked up for having a small amount of pot.
Here are other figures from the study, which was conducted by Harry G. Levine, a sociologist at Queens College, and Deborah Peterson Small, a lawyer and an advocate for changes in drug laws and enforcement practices.
Nearly everyone involved in this wave of marijuana arrests is male: 90 percent were men, although national studies show that men and women use pot in roughly equal rates.
And 83 percent of those charged in these cases were black or Latino, according to the study. Blacks accounted for 52 percent of the arrests, twice their share of the city’s population. Whites, who are about 35 percent of the population, were only 15 percent of those charged — even though federal surveys show that whites are more likely than blacks or Latinos to use pot.
Among the pretty large population of white people who have used pot and not been arrested for it is Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. Asked during the 2001 campaign by New York magazine if he had ever smoked it, Mr. Bloomberg replied: “You bet I did. And I enjoyed it.” After he was elected and his remarks were used in advertisements by marijuana legalization advocates, Mr. Bloomberg said his administration would vigorously enforce the laws.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/ny...l?ref=nyregion
"Did it, enjoyed it"....now raising the bar for busts. HYPOCRITE!!
Have a good one!
On Arrests, Demographics, and Marijuana
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