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Excerpts from the ACLU's new report in April 2020: "A
Tale of Two Countries: Racially Targeted Arrests in the Era of Marijuana
Reform" • REPORTS, PUBLICATIONS, TESTIMONY
By the Marijuana Arrest Research Project • THE SCANDAL OF RACIST
MARIJUANA ARRESTS • THE AWFUL SUMMONS COURT SYSTEM IN NYC NY City's Marijuana
Possession Arrests • POLICE
PERJURY AND FALSIFYING: Excerpts • STOP & FRISK REPORTS AND DATA __________________________________ ___________________________ Archives: No longer updated but still useful for researchers. • STOP & FRISK NYC (news excerpts) • U.S. MARIJUANA ARRESTS 1965-2013 ________________________________ |
By The Marijuana Arrest
Research Project ________________________________________________________________ • Unjust & Unconstitutional: 60,000 Jim Crow
Marijuana Arrests in Mayor de Blasio's New York The NYPD's Racially-Targeted Enforcement
of Marijuana Possession Continues, 2014-2016, Oct 2017 • NYC’s 1.5 Million Arrest Warrants for Non‐Criminal Offences and New York City's Jim Crow Marijuana Arrests: Truth, Race, Hidden Data, and Routine Policing in New York City by Harry Levine, March 2017. Testimony for The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights hearing on “Police Practices and Accountabiility in New York City," CUNY School of Law, 2 Court Square, Long Island City, March 21, 2017 • Race, Class and Marijuana Arrests in Mayor de Blasio's
Two New Yorks: The NYPD's Marijuana Arrest Crusade
Continues in 2014 Data on race, income and arrests in 20 neighbohoods with lowest rates and 20 with the highest rates of marijuana possession arrests. Harry Levine & Loren Siegel, 14 pages, October 2014
by Harry Levine, in The Nation magazine, November 2013. If there is one thing to read about marijuana arrests across the US, this is it. • Marijuana Madness: New York
City's Racist Marijuana Arrests, Long chapter for a book about the NYPD edited by former police Captain John Eterno. It tells the whole sordid story of the NYPD's hundreds of thousands of marijuana possession arrests in its marijuana arrest crusade under Mayor's Giuliani and especially Mayor Bloomberg. Written in late 2013 at the end of Bloomberg's last year.
• National Disgrace
• Bloomberg's Marijuana Arrest Crusade is ... Softened?
• $75 Million A
Year: The Cost of New York City's Marijuana Possession Arrests
• Regarding Marijuana Arrests: Testimony to the New York State Senate – June 2011 Includes new data
showing NYPD arrests by precinct and arrests in 13 counties and cites in NY
State
• Marijuana Possession Arrests, Illegal Searches, and The Summons Court System: Testimony by Harry Levine to the New York City Council – June 2012 Regarding proposed legislation with photos of illegal police searches and discussion of the summons court system which will handle the decriminalized marijuana possession charges.
• Police Stops, Illegal Searches, And
Marijuana Possession Arrests
• Marijuana Arrest Crusade: Racial Bias and Police Policy in New York City, 1997-2007, by Harry
G. Levine & Deborah P. Small. April 2008 • The
Epidemic of Pot Arrests in New York City,
by Harry G. Levine, Alternet.org – Aug 2009
• New York City's Marijuana Arrest Crusade ... Continues - 2009 Brief update of the above report with new graphs and
data. Sept 2009, updated Jan 2010 ___________________________________________________________________________ • Targeting Blacks For Marijuana:
Possession Arrests in California, 2004-08 By
Harry G. Levine, Jon Gettman & Loren Siegel, June
2010 By Harry G. Levine, Jon Gettman & Loren Siegel. Oct 2010. Report released with California
NAACP and the Drug Policy Alliance about arrests of blacks
for marijuana possession in 25 California cities where blacks are arrested at
4, 6, 8 and even 12 times the rate of whites. • Arresting Latinos for
Marijuana in California, 2007-2009: Possession Arrests in 33 Cities. By Harry G. Levine, Jon Gettman & Loren Siegel. Oct 2010. Report released with William C.
Velasquez Institute, a Latino civil rights organization, about the
disproportionate arrests of Latinos for marijuana possession in 33 Note: Because of our reports about California in 2010, and the national
attention they received, our reports about New York City's Stop & Frisk
and Marijuana Arrest Crusades then received more attention ... in NYC! Funny
how that works.
• Marijuana Possession Arrests In Colorado, 1986-2010 • 240,000 Marijuana Possession Arrests: Costs, Consequences and Racial Disparities of Possession
Arrests in Washington,
1986-2010, by Harry Levine, Jon Gettman, Loren Siegel, Oct 2012 Note: Our reports about
Colorado and Washinton in 2012, and the subsequent rejection by voters in
both state of marijuana criminalization and prohibition, helped change the
national debate about policing and marijuana, and very much affected NY City
and State. This again made our work timely, relevanant,
and showed what is sometimes possible in actually-existing America. _________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________ Marijuana Arrests in New York City • In New York City since 1997, 85% of the
people arrested for marijuana possession have been blacks and
Latinos. The New York Police Department has arrested blacks for
marijuana possession at seven times the rate of whites, and has arrested Latinos
at nearly four times the rate of whites. Yet, U.S. government studies have
consistently found that young whites use marijuana at higher rates than young
blacks or Latinos. • It has cost New York City up to $75
million dollars a year to arrest and jail people simply for possessing
marijuana. • Most people arrested for lowest-level
marijuana possession in New York City are young: 23% of the people arrested
are teenagers; 55% are under 25 years of age; and 68% are under 30 years of
age. • The marijuana arrests
target people who have never been convicted or even arrested before. Of the
hundreds of thousands of people arrested for marijuana possession in New York
City: 30% had never been arrested before for anything; another 41% had never
been convicted or plead guilty to anything, not even a misdemeanor. Mostly
the charges were dismissed or dropped. In other words, 71% of the people
arrested for marijuana possession had never been convicted of any crime
whatsoever. Another 11% had a previous conviction only for a misdemeanor. • Since 1977 and the passage of the Marijuana
Reform Act by the state legislature, the possession of 25 grams or less of
marijuana (7/8th of an ounce) has NOT been a crime in New York State.
Under New York State law, possession of a less than an ounce of marijuana is
a violation, like a traffic violation. • Most people arrested for
marijuana in New York City were not smoking marijuana or did not have
marijuana in public view. Most people simply had a small amount buried in
their pockets or belongings. Most of the arrests were made as a result of a
police stop. Police officers either tricked people into taking out their
marijuana, ordered them to do so, or illegally searched their pockets and
belongings. • The marijuana possession arrests do not
reduce serious crime or violence, but they are very useful for significant
groups within the police department. The arrests are relatively safe and
easy, provide training for rookie police, and allow patrol and narcotics
officers and their supervisors to meet arrest quotas and make overtime pay.
They produce records of police activity and help supervisors keep track of
what officers are doing. The arrests are also the most effective way for the
NYPD to collect fingerprints, photographs and other information on young
people not yet entered in the criminal databases. • New York City's
racially-biased marijuana arrests are extreme, but they are not unusual.
Large cities and counties throughout the United States arrest blacks and
Latinos for marijuana possession at three, four, five, and up to ten times or
more the rate of whites. Chicago and other major cities arrest blacks at
seven times the rate of whites, just as New York City does. Along with DNA
collection for misdemeanors and other policing policies, this produces an
institutional form of unjust discrimination that some have termed
"racism without racists." The law professor Michelle Alexander has
rightly described this as "the new Jim Crow."
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