Still Pot Bust Capital of the World: Despite Directive, NYPD Arrests 50K+ for Pot Possession in 2011

Marijuana possession arrests in the Big Apple rose to the highest number in over a decade.

NEW YORK, NY — Not wanting to shed its reputation as the “Pot Bust Capital of the World”, the city that never sleeps arrested over 50,000 people for low-level marijuana possession charges in 2011, according to a study released Wednesday.

NYPD making an arrest. (image/Michael Fleischhacker)

Despite a September directive from Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly ordering NYPD to follow the letter of the law and not arrest people with marijuana unless they have it in plain view, marijuana possession arrests in the Big Apple rose to the highest number in over a decade.

Although arrests dropped significantly after Commissioner Kelly’s memorandum, an increase of over 6 percent during the first eight months of the year more than offset the decline.

Marijuana possession arrests have soared in the last 10 years. With the 2011 numbers, the New York Police Department has made more than 227,000 bottom-rung marijuana possession arrests in the last five years — slightly more than the entire span from 1978 to 2001.

The high numbers of marijuana arrests under the Bloomberg administration have been linked by critics to the police’s stop-and-frisk practices and disproportionate enforcement against blacks and Hispanics.

“It is worth remembering and pointing out that U.S. government studies consistently find that young whites use marijuana at higher rates than young blacks and Latinos,” said Queens College sociology professor Dr. Harry Levine. “But the police patrols, stop and frisks, and arrest quotas are highest in black and Latino neighborhoods, and that is where the N.Y.P.D. makes most marijuana possession arrests. Mayor Bloomberg is like the Energizer bunny of marijuana arrests – he just keeps going and going and going.”

The police argue that getting tough on low-level offenses has dramatically reduced violent crime in the city. But so far, no academic study has conclusively proven marijuana arrests cause any decrease in crime. A recent study released by the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta found that even most gang violence is not drug related.

Professor Levine has studied the criminal records of people arrested for marijuana possession in New York City and says the data shows we’re not talking about people with violent records.

“A third of them have never been arrested before for anything,” he said. “Another third have never been convicted of anything whatsoever and you get something like about another 15 or so percent — 20 percent — who have never been convicted of anything but a misdemeanor.”

Although New York state has decriminalized the possession of small amounts of marijuana, the NYPD has made a practice of stopping people—mainly young people of color—on the streets, searching them or demanding they empty their pockets, then charging them with possession in public view. Unlike simple pot possession, which is only a ticketable offense, possession in public view is an arrestable offense that typically results in a day-long stay in jail before the defendant can appear before a judge.

A bill introduced in the New York State Legislature last year would make having a small amount of marijuana in public view a violation, but there has been no vote on it.