TROUBLE WITH MARIJUANA ARRESTS

Commissioner Raymond Kelly of the New York Police Department came
forthwith too little, too late when he issued a memo directing
officers not to arrest people caught with small amounts of marijuana
unless the drug is in plain public view. A 1977 law decriminalized
minor possession, yet tens of thousands are arrested every year.

In 2010, more than 50,000 people were arrested for possession of
marijuana; a vast majority of them were racial minorities and male.
Civil rights lawyers say that many of them were stopped as part of the
Police Department's broad stop-and-frisk practice and were arrested
after officers told them to empty their pockets, which brought the
drugs into open view.

Commissioner Kelly's memo now makes clear that displaying the drug
must be an "activity undertaken of the subject's own volition" and
that individuals may not be charged with violating the law if the
marijuana "was disclosed to public view at an officer's direction."

While the memo, reported by WNYC last week, is an important step, it
does not by itself end the problem. The United States Justice
Department and New York lawmakers should investigate the legality of
practices that led to the arrests of hundreds of thousands of people
since the mid-1990s.

Under New York law, possession of 25 grams or less of marijuana is a
violation subject to a $100 fine for the first offense. Possession of
any amount that is in public view, however, is a misdemeanor
punishable by up to three months in jail and a $500 fine.

This statute was supported by district attorneys in the 1970s because
they believed it would free the police to fight serious crimes. That
changed in the mid-1990s when the city began emphasizing street stops
as an important part of its policing approach. Since 1996, the city
has taken more than 536,000 people into custody for the lowest-level
marijuana charge, according to Harry Levine, a sociologist at Queens
College who has tracked the data closely. From 1981 through 1995, that
number was 33,700.

Police have characterized marijuana arrests as important for keeping
criminals off the street. But, in testimony submitted to the
Legislature this summer, Professor Levine estimated that a significant
majority of those arrested in 2010 had never been convicted of any
crime, based on an analysis of data reported to the state.

Young African-Americans and Hispanics, who are disproportionately
singled-out in street stops, make up a high percentage of people
arrested for marijuana possession - despite federal data showing that
whites are more likely to consume marijuana. This policing practice
has damaged young lives and deserves deeper scrutiny by federal and
state monitors.