How Come White People Never Get Arrested for Marijuana in NYC?

[Jim Finnel]

personally,
i think its a sensationalistic headline designed to draw attention (it worked). we all know that white people get busted for Cannabis. we also know that statistics will show that there are higher percentages of people of color incarcerated than whites. i don't know whats going on in NYC, i've never been there. i know where i live people of color are rarely busted for anything. thats because the few people of color who live in my area keep a very low profile and are rarely seen. its a very racist area. i don't remember the last time i saw anyone of color within 60 miles of where i live. so you could say 'How come Black people don't get arrested in *** County, Missouri?' if i lived closer to the interstate hwy i'm sure the number would go up because missouri leo's love profiling. in another thread someone suggested that perhaps it has something to do the increased police presence in certain neighborhoods in nyc. that makes sense to me. i also think that its more socioeconomic than race. greater minds than mine shake their heads in frustration when trying to figure out these issues. i know race has been a factor from the beginning of Cannabis prohibition and continues to be.

as news mod,
i post/approve articles for lots of different reasons. sometimes i agree with whats being said and sometimes i don't agree. trust me, you don't want to read only things i agree with. besides keeping you all informed about whats going on with re-legalization, medical Cannabis and people being busted i think its important for us to see what sort of attitudes exist concerning Cannabis and those who use it. i trust you our members to see though any b.s. and to discuss it, correct it when needed and sometimes to debate it. i'm very proud of our members (knowlegable & respectful of eachother) and honored to be able to be a part of all of this. i'm always open to your feedback as we learn and grow together.

 

[Pythaglio]

So all the post above means is that the answer to the question "How come white people never get arrested for merryjewanna in NYC?" is "because they're poor".

There's no doubt in my mind that black people get arrested more often than other races, that they get convicted when white people wouldn't and therefore more often, and subsequently do more time than white people. What makes me think that? Having spent around 8 months in Northern VA jails in counties that were ~90% white but the jails were ~60-65% black.

I think taking the position that somehow this is because blacks are more criminal than whites would be racist.

I'll buy the thought that economics plays a big role. But how about lack of education? One doesn't have to be rich to know that taking the pot out of your pocket makes it an arrestable offense. One doesn't have to be rich to know that one doesn't have to submit to a search.

The surveys the article refers to are probably the National Household Survey which results are tracked by the US gov't. Probably not a great source, again, the first rule of the pot club is don't talk about the pot club. I sure wouldn't check off yes if I found myself filling out one of those surveys. It may well be that black people are better at following that rule than white people.

 

[Transgressor]

It just seems to me that the police go after those that appear to have very little means of providing a strong defense, either financially, intellectually or socially. The police don't like to lose any arrests and will hedge their bet so to speak by not busting Johnie because he looks like he might have a lawyer in the family and instead bust a minority. If you look like you can't even spell lawyer......you are going down.

 

[Keith Lake]

Call for data recognized Please stand by

Personally, I think we're seeing a combination of factors, racism, easiest target selection, socio-economic. I just don't know how anyone could tease away each of these factors to determine how much of each is driving the effect.

Maybe we've got a statistician around?

 

[Keith Lake]

Here's the testimony of a college professor that I think is pretty on point. In addition to sounding the alarm on the NYC arrest disparity he was involved in trying to push back the effort to use the arrestees DNA in a database where "ciminals" would be catelogued for future reference.

Here's the citation if you want to see the whole thing. I've posted it nearly in full, just redacting the bits that are inconsistent with our guidelines (underage use and other drug discussion).

I'll put the graphs in the following post.

Interesting data.

TESTIMONY OF
HARRY G. LEVINE
Department of Sociology, Queens College and The Graduate Center,
City University of New York
AT HEARINGS OF NEW YORK STATE ASSEMBLY COMMITTEES
ON CODES AND ON CORRECTIONS, ALBANY, NEW YORK
MAY 31, 2007
REGARDING PENDING AND PROPOSED LEGISLATION TO COLLECT DNA
FROM ALL PEOPLE CONVICTED OF A MISDEMEANOR IN NEW YORK STATE,
AND ALSO REGARDING
NEW YORK CITY’S EPIDEMIC OF MARIJUANA POSSESSION ARRESTS​

_____________________________________________________________________________
I am a professor of sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. I received my PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. For thirty years I have been researching and writing about the history and sociology of alcohol and drug policies and problems.

[snip]

For the last two years I have been researching misdemeanor arrests in New York City focusing on low-level marijuana possession arrests. I have interviewed many long-time police officers, public defenders, legal aid and private attorneys, assistant district attorneys, and people arrested for possessing marijuana, mainly Black men in their 20s.1 Although almost nobody knows this, in the last ten years New York City has arrested and jailed more people for possessing marijuana than any city in the world. Beginning in 1995, and continuing to this day, New York City has created a serious marijuana possession arrest wave, binge or epidemic.

I have brought some graphs to show what has been happening. The data comes from the New York State Office of Criminal Justice Services here in Albany and the graphs are fairly selfexplanatory. Graph #1 shows the Marijuana arrests in the last three decades. From 1997 to 2006 New York City arrested and jailed over 360,000 people for possessing small amounts of marijuana. This was nearly a 10 fold increase in marijuana arrests over the previous decade, and a 9 fold increase over the decade before that. Nearly everyone arrested in New York City for marijuana possession has been charged with violating section 221.10 of the New York State penal code. This is a misdemeanor, a “finger-printable offense” in State terminology, and would be a DNA swipeable offense under the proposed legislation. Most of the people arrested possessed only a tiny amount, usually a few grams in a
marijuana cigarette or part of one, or a small, plastic bag about the size of quarter or half dollar –in street parlance a “nickel bag” or a “dime bag.” Some people arrested were simply standing with or near others who had the marijuana. According to numerous police, public defenders, legal aid and private attorneys, most of the people arrested were not smoking in public; they simply had marijuana in their possession, generally in their pocket.

Graph #2 shows the arrests in the last two decades broken down by race.
Of these 362,000 marijuana possession arrests in the last decade – or 33,000 of them in the last year, in 2006 – 55% are of Black people, nearly 30% are of Hispanics or Latinos, and less than 15% are of Whites. The majority of the people arrested are between 16 and 26 years old and 91% are male. Since 1997, New York City has arrested and jailed for at least 24 hours nearly 200,000 Blacks, over 100,000 Latinos, and over 50,000 Whites for marijuana possession.

New York City has arrested about 100 mostly young people a day, every day, for the last ten years. By the end of today another 90 to 100 will be arrested. About 85% of the people arrested are Black or Latino, most are working class or poor, from the outer boroughs and from less affluent and poorer neighborhoods.

These are among the New Yorkers, or a convicted
subset of them, whose DNA would be taken and kept by the state of New York if this proposed legislation is put into effect. Graph #3 shows the arrests each year for the last 20 years, showing the portion of total marijuana arrests in each year that were of Whites, Hispanics and Blacks. Graph #4 shows the rate of arrests for Whites, Blacks and Hispanics. For every 100,000
Whites in New York City, 124 were arrested; for every 100,000 Hispanics, 430 were arrested; and for every 100,000 Blacks, 975 were arrested.

Why is the New York City Police Department making all these misdemeanor marijuana possession arrests? I hope to be able to tell you, though it may have to be in the question period, but I can tell you that it is not because of any dramatic increase in marijuana use – which has not changed significantly since the early 1980s. Nor is the dramatic racial imbalance in the arrests
the result of marijuana use patterns. In fact, marijuana use among Blacks and Hispanics is lower than for Whites, and has been for decades, as U.S. government statistics show.

[snip]

Graph #[edit5] is from the U.S. government's annual National Survey and shows use by Whites, Blacks and Hispanics aged 18 to 25 in two-year groups: 2002 and 2003 together, and 2004 and 2005 together. This data set does not show cities or states, but other data make clear that the use patterns in New York City and New York State are like those in the rest of the U.S.: among teenagers and young adults, Whites use marijuana more than Blacks and Latinos, but Blacks and Latinos get arrested and jailed much more often, especially in New York City. Graph #[edit6] shows the arrests of Whites, Hispanics and Blacks for each year of the last 10 years.

Finally, Graph #[edit7] shows the percentage of the population that is Black compared to the percentage of marijuana arrestees who are Black in Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, Manhattan, and Staten Island in 2006. In each case, Blacks make up a significantly larger share of the marijuana arrestees than they do of the general population. When the New York State legislature considers collecting DNA evidence from people on the basis of marijuana and other misdemeanor arrests, it needs to understand that it will do so with a sample that is racially skewed and biased because the police find it easy and convenient to arrest certain people for these offenses and not others.

In my neighborhood on the West Side of Manhattan, White students at Columbia University walking around with marijuana in their pockets are almost never arrested – the area has one of the lowest marijuana arrest rates in New York City. However, Blacks in west and central Harlem, just a few blocks away from Columbia, are routinely stopped, searched and arrested, and Hispanics in Washington Heights, just a little further up on Broadway, are likewise arrested much more often.

Approximately one in three New Yorkers from ages 18 to 25 have used marijuana in the last year, but the Blacks and Hispanics are much more likely to get arrested and wind up in the criminal justice database with criminal records. And if this legislation is enacted their DNA samples will forever identify them as “suspects.” The Whites, however, will likely never have criminal records of any kind and will not have their DNA collected, processed, and possibly mislabeled or confused with someone else’s.

Why has New York City been making this enormous number of marijuana
possession arrests? The New York City Police Department does not like to talk about its marijuana arrests. The NYPD holds no press briefings and offers no press releases or documents taking credit for capturing record numbers of marijuana offenders. It would appear that the police, from the Commissioner and Mayor on down, have not wanted attention drawn to the city’s extraordinary number of marijuana arrests. As a result there has effectively been no media coverage of the arrests. 2 The dramatic increase in marijuana arrests began in 1996 and 1997 with Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. But marijuana arrests have continued at historically high levels under Mayor Michael
Bloomberg, and have remained high even after the bombing of 9-11 when one might think there were more important things for NYPD to do.

Because the NYPD is not publicly claiming credit for making record numbers of
marijuana arrests, my colleague Deborah Small and I have been trying to understand who wants the arrests, or likes them, or gains from them. The most important constituency we have found has been significant sectors of the New York Police Department. From our research and interviews, we identified several major incentives within the NYPD for maintaining high levels
of marijuana arrests. Marijuana arrests are generally easy, safe, and provide overtime. Ordinary New York police, street cops and narcotics police, like making marijuana arrests. The arrests are relatively easy. People arrested for smoking or possessing marijuana tend to be non-violent, easy to handle, and, in the words of one cop, "clean" – meaning physically clean, not smelly or dirty. This matters because the arresting officer is "married" to the arrestee through the booking process, sometimes for many hours. Because NYPD pay scales are very low, police naturally want overtime work. A marijuana arrest (or other low-level misdemeanor arrest) near the end of a shift guarantees several or more hours of relatively clean, easy overtime. And the officers can use the arrests to show they are being productive. In effect, making marijuana arrests and other misdemeanor arrests has become a quality
of work-life issue for the police. According to some news reports, narcotics police have resisted efforts to shift them to other duties, or even to higher level drug work, which is more dangerous and has less chance for overtime.
Marijuana arrests generate records, facilitate supervision of police activities, and allow police at all levels to show they are being productive. Police supervisors from the precinct level up to the police chief and perhaps even the Mayor also like the marijuana arrests. When cops are making many marijuana arrests (and other minor misdemeanor arrests such as having an open beer can in a paper bag) they are keeping busy. As a police lieutenant said: “you don't have to worry that they are goofing off or doing something else.” Most important, the work generates records of where they have been
during their shifts. In the era of computerized records, this is reassuring and useful to police supervisors at all levels. In addition, supervisors also accumulate overtime pay when the officers working directly under them do.
Further, at a time when other crimes (and therefore arrests) are down significantly, making many misdemeanor arrests is a handy way for supervisors, from the precinct on up, to show that cops are not sloughing off. Even though all categories of reported crime have dropped significantly since 1990, by making many marijuana and other misdemeanor arrests, police at all levels can show high numbers of arrests and high productivity.
Police assigned to marijuana duties (and misdemeanor arrests in general) can easily be shifted elsewhere when needed.

Police supervisors also like having cops assigned to making marijuana arrests because if something big comes up – an emergency, fire, bombing, visiting dignitary – they can pull the police off making marijuana and other misdemeanor arrests with absolutely no effect on other crime. No ongoing investigation is affected by temporarily reducing the marijuana arrests. In
effect, cops making marijuana and other minor misdemeanor arrests function as a kind of "reserve army" of police to be used whenever necessary, which is handy for the top brass at the department.

Marijuana arrests provide an easy way to target and acquire information on young people. Along with national and other local police agencies, the NYPD seeks to get as many young people as possible "into the system" – meaning getting them fingerprinted, photographed, and now increasingly DNA tested. Marijuana arrests are the best and easiest way currently available to acquire data on young people, especially Black and Latino youth, who have not
previously been entered into the criminal justice databases. There is nothing else police currently can do that gets as many new people "into the system" as the wide net of marijuana arrests and other misdemeanor arrests. Black and Latino youth are disproportionally searched and arrested because it is easy and convenient to do so, and because they usually lack political
and social connections that might make the arrests troublesome or embarrassing for the arresting officers or their commanders.

As a result of these factors and others, in the last ten years the NYPD has made a great many marijuana misdemeanor arrests, and many other low-level and arbitrary misdemeanor arrests as well, catching in their nets overwhelmingly poor, Black and Hispanic youth, mainly teenage boys and young men. Creating a DNA database on the basis of such a racially and demographically skewed and biased sample – essentially created by whom it is convenient for the police to search and arrest – is unfair and unjust. It would create a system which – especially in New York City, but elsewhere in the State as well – should be an embarrassment to its citizens and policy makers.

 

[Keith Lake]