Political and Community Leaders Speak Out

These marijuana arrest numbers are the latest of example of what many New Yorkers feel is racially motivated policing. Combined with other police tactics like stop-and-frisk – tactics that are only used in certain neighborhoods in the city – the results are devastating. Our jails are filling up with non-violent offenders, and our youth are getting pushed into the prison pipeline. By funneling the NYPD’s limited resources into those unfair and unwise tactics, serious crime in the city goes unchecked and residents become increasingly distrustful of those who have been sworn to protect them.

- New York State Senator Bill Perkins

In vivid graphs and lucid prose, Marijuana Arrest Crusade describes the great many arrests that the NYPD has made of people possessing small quantities of marijuana. Although simple marijuana possession has been decriminalized by New York State law since 1977, the NYPD has nonetheless pursued these arrests for over a decade, stopping, frisking, and searching mostly blacks and Hispanics. Young whites use marijuana more than blacks, but the police arrest over five times as many blacks. As the report rightly points out, the arrests function as a kind of Head Start program for unemployment, incarceration, distrust of the police, and – if some politicians get their way – for having private biological information permanently stored in DNA data banks. This is a shocking and important report.

- David Rosner, Ronald Lauterstein Professor of History and Public Health, Columbia University, author of Deceit and Denial, Deadly Dust and other books.

Every day in New York City, many young men, mostly blacks and Hispanics, are arrested for possessing small amounts of marijuana. Most of them are not smoking marijuana or displaying it in any way. They are stopped by police, often as part of a stop and frisk, and are usually tricked or intimidated into taking out and handing over their contraband. When they do so they are arrested and generally spend the night locked up. Legal Aid attorneys who work in the city's criminal courts see this everyday. Marijuana Arrest Crusade, by Levine and Small, clearly describes this process and begins the important task of opening the NYPD's policing practices to public scrutiny. I hope its findings and recommendations receive much attention.

- Edward McCarthy, Supervising Attorney, Legal Aid, Criminal Defense

New York City’s marijuana possession arrests are a part of the “war on drugs” and are sometimes justified as improving ‘quality of life.’ Nobody thinks that misdemeanor marijuana arrests reduce serious drug problems. And according to Marijuana Arrest Crusade, the chief quality of life they improve is that of some police officers and their supervisors, who use the arrests to accumulate much-needed overtime pay. The young blacks and Latinos, most of whom were not smoking marijuana or even displaying it, suffer the most. As those who work in New York’s criminal courts daily know, when police tell people to take out and hand over what they have in their pockets, including a bit of marijuana, people do so because they are intimidated and fear the police, often with good reason. This otherwise excellent report could emphasize that even more.

- Michael Letwin, Legal Aid Attorney in Brooklyn, Former President of the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys, UAW Local 2325

Arrests for the possession of small amounts of marijuana in New York City under sometimes questionable circumstances are clearly having a disproportionate impact on young Blacks and Hispanics. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other New York City officials may want to carefully evaluate the societal implications of continuing practices which stigmatize members of these population groups with lifetime arrest records for simply possessing small amounts of marijuana. Punishment for youthful indiscretions should be tempered with mercy.

- Clarence Edwards, Past National President of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE)

Levine and Small lay bare the corrosive policy of low-level marijuana enforcement in New York. They reveal disturbing patterns of racial and neighborhood disparity that mirror similar trends in street stops and frisks as well as the enforcement of trespass laws. This senseless policy fails the tests of legality, efficacy, and fairness, while costing New Yorkers more than $50 million each year. This perverse waste of money, resources and lives soils respect for the law and discourages citizens from joining with the police as full partners in the co-production of security.

- Jeffrey Fagan, Professor of Law & Public Health, Co-Director, Center for Crime, Community and Law, Columbia University