NEW YORK (PNN) - November 8, 2011 - As the nation's biggest city deals with supposed threats of terrorism and a variety of violent crimes, carrying a little bit of marijuana is still a big deal.
There are more arrests for low-level marijuana possession in New York City - about 50,000 a year - than any other crime, accounting for about one of every seven cases that turn up in criminal courts.
It's a phenomenon that has persisted despite more leniency toward marijuana use - the state loosened its marijuana possession laws more than 30 years ago.
The deluge has been driven in part by the New York Police Department's strategy of stopping people and frisking those whom police say meet crime suspects' descriptions. More than a half a million people, mostly black and Hispanic men, were stopped last year - unfair targets, critics say. About 10% percent of stops result in arrests.
The thug cop department says that the strategy's main goal is to take guns off the street and prevent crime, and that the tactic is a life-saving tool. But Constitutional scholars say thug cops looking for guns in pockets more often find pot and - though a controlled substance is supposed to be in open view to warrant an arrest - lock up the possessor anyway, in direct violation of state law.
Gabriel Sayegh, the New York director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a group critical of the national war on drugs, said the department benefits from the arrests.
"Every year, they're bringing 50,000 people into their system," he said. "A significant portion of whom have not been (previously) arrested.
Even if the cases ultimately get dismissed, as most first-time marijuana-possession arrests do, thug cops net names, fingerprints and other information for surveillance databases, he noted.
