By MARK TOOR
Mayor de Blasio and Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill announced new policies June 19 that would reduce what the Mayor’s Press Office called “unnecessary marijuana arrests.”
But police-reform advocates said the policy, which requires that violators with no criminal record be given summonses rather than being taken into custody, would not achieve Mr. de Blasio’s goal of reducing racial disparities in arrests for smoking marijuana in public.
A ‘Safe and Fair’ Policy
The Mayor said at a press conference that he had ordered the NYPD last month to conduct a 30-day review of the way it enforces marijuana laws “to create a fair and consistent policy that would keep us safe but make us fairer at the same time. And that is what we are announcing today, the policy that will take effect on Sept. 1 this year.”
Less than a week into that 30-day review period, he gave the game away by saying, “I want to see those [new] rules include an end to arrest for smoking in public.” He had ordered the review after a report in the New York Times that blacks were eight times more likely and Latinos five times more likely than whites to be arrested for low-level marijuana infractions, although studies have shown they smoke pot at equal rates.
At the press conference, he said, “Under the new policy, New Yorkers with no prior record will receive a summons instead of an arrest for smoking marijuana publicly. And we believe that this will result in thousands of fewer arrests. In fact, next year we think at least 10,000 fewer New Yorkers will be arrested under this new policy, 10,000 lives that will be affected.”
Actually, there is a list of exceptions, which were displayed on the NYPD’s Twitter account. “Under this policy change, people will still be subject to arrest if they are: on probation or parole, have criminal warrants, don’t have ID, have a recent documented history of violence [or] their smoking poses an immediate public-safety risk-like driving.”
Chief of Patrol Rodney Harrison said each arrest will have to be approved by a precinct-level supervisor.
“The NYPD is not in the business of making criminals out of people with no prior arrest history,” Mr. O’Neill said. “We know that it’s not productive and it doesn’t further the NYPD’s goal of getting the people responsible for violence and disorder off our streets.”
Mr. de Blasio spoke about the effect a marijuana arrest could have on young people. “We now understand that negative reality of anyone, particularly a young person, being held back by an arrest record for something minor and how it connects to the very troubled history we have in this city, this state, this country of mass incarceration.”
Critics: Won't Solve Problems
But advocates said the plan will not succeed in erasing racial and ethnic disparities in marijuana arrests.
“If the Mayor wanted to create a plan to make racial disparities in marijuana enforcement worse, he’s accomplished it with this,” said Monifa Bandele, a spokeswoman for Communities United for Police Reform. “...All this plan will do is push the racial disparities to the summons system and then hide them from the public. The NYPD must stop its discriminatory targeting of certain New Yorkers for marijuana enforcement--that’s the way to end the racial disparities.”
“The policy will not reduce racial disparities,” said Robert Gangi, director of the Police Reform Organizing Project. “There’s a strong argument that it would aggravate them.”
Disparities Common
The vast majority of people who fit into the exceptions allowing arrests are black and brown, he said. “Every category of arrest is marked by stark racial disparities," he added, mentioning felonies and fare-beating as examples.
The solution is decriminalization of marijuana and public possession of it, he said, but that’s unlikely as long as Republicans control the State Senate.
But, he said, Mr. de Blasio could effectively decriminalize pot in New York City simply by ordering police not to arrest violators.
“Marijuana enforcement has long been a key pillar of broken-windows policing,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, referring to the NYPD’s dictum that strict enforcement of low-level offenses deters major crimes.
“Substituting summonses for arrests is certainly an improvement, but not nearly enough to end counterproductive and discriminatory policing that has disproportionate and harmful impacts on communities of color. For New York to achieve common-sense criminal-justice and public-health policies, we need to legalize marijuana at the state level.”
Nod for Legalization
The State Health Department is in the final stages of writing a report recommending that marijuana be legalized, Health Commissioner Howard Zucker said June 18.
“We looked at the pros, we looked at the cons,” he said. “When we were done, we realized that the pros outweighed the cons.”
The report was requested by Governor Cuomo, whose position against legalizing marijuana for recreational use has softened as Massachusetts legalized it and New Jersey is considering doing the same.
“We have neighboring states that have legal marijuana,” Dr. Zucker said. “When those facts change, we need to look at things differently.”
Nobody Legalized This
Susan Herman, Deputy Commissioner for Collaborative Policing, said legalization efforts have gone only so far. “Just to say that there isn’t a jurisdiction in the country where smoking marijuana in public is legal,” she said at the press conference.
“Even in states where small amounts of marijuana possession or recreational use is legal, in all jurisdictions it’s not legal to smoke marijuana in public. In some instances it will result in a summons and in some jurisdictions, an arrest."