Is NYC the Marijuana Arrest Capital of the World?

[DreamSmoker]

Organizers called out Bloomberg’s hypocrisy, noting that when Bloomberg ran for Mayor in 2001, he admitted to having smoked and enjoyed marijuana, but continues to support using loopholes in the stop-and-frisk law to orchestrate mass arrests of young people of color for small amounts of marijuana. Under Mayor Bloomberg, marijuana arrests have surpassed those under Mayors Koch, Dinkins, and Giuliani combined. Despite a tight budget and the stripping of federally funded social programs and education, the city pumped $75 million into arresting more than 50,000 people for small amounts of marijuana last year.

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/600637/is_nyc_the_marijuana_arrest_capital_of_the_world/


Marijuana arrests fall in New York after rule change

"Unfortunately, these figures are cause for outrage, not celebration," Gabriel Sayegh of the Drug Policy Alliance said in a statement. "In this economy, Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD are wasting millions of tax dollars by using illegal searches and false charges to sweep tens of thousands of black and Latino youth into the criminal justice system.

http://news.yahoo.com/marijuana-arrests-fall-york-rule-change-214724543.html

[iscooterliberally]

1. Good question.

I can't say I know the answer though. It might be Florida. It seems that the DEA has agents that are also police officers in the city where I live. They do lots of marijuana arrests here. They got away with murder back in 2005. They use tanks. I know one case where they threw a cancer patient in her 50s on the ground and stood on her back. They drive around a prey on the 20 somethings that live in our community. I think things are bad nationally due to drug policy and the fact that we have been militarizing our police forces for decades now. These drug cops beat the crap out of suspects even if they surrender immediately. This happened to one of my step-sons when we was arrested. It cost us thousands to hire a lawyer. I have written my reps, but get either incoherent responses, or they admit they are prohibitionists and don't want to change anything. It's very frustrating to live in a country that claims to be 'the land of the free' and has the most people incarcerated at the same time. I guess freedom is slavery, war is peace...etc...

[SixthSense]

2. I almost got arrested once for pot in NYC

but it turned out I was just doing origami, not rolling a joint like the cop initially thought

I offered the finished model to him but he declined

The funniest part is that I was tripping my ass off at the time!

[SteveW]

3. The mayors of NYC have punked around on pot a long time...

When Giuliani was mayor, and running for re-election, he was asked about what his big goal was for the next term, and answered (I paraphrase): Making NYC drug-free.

Wholesale Clinton-esque arrests to create a new revenue streams, and for maintaining the Gingrich-esque culture war.

I have said for years that the enforcement of current drug laws have jailed so many blacks that Theodore Bilbo would shit in his grave.

You may be interested in this post about Obama's back-tracking:


http://www.democraticunderground.com/11726125

[Kolesar]

4. Alternet article reads like the Current TV "Vanguard" episode

The city is ostensibly searching people for guns, but they abuse the process. To put it mildly

http://current.com/shows/vanguard/episodes/season-five/the-war-on-weed/