ARRESTS FOR POT ARE EXCESSIVE

'I call it an epidemic of marijuana arrests. New York City has been
on a binge of marijuana arrests for the last 10 years."

"I would call it a dragnet."

These are the conclusions of Harry Levine, a professor of sociology
at Queens College, and Deborah Small, director of Break the Chains, a
nonprofit drug policy reform group and a longtime advocate of
changing the city's drug policies.

The two, who are studying the city's marijuana arrest policy, want to
see the police give summonses to people who are caught smoking
marijuana in public or with small amounts of marijuana on them,
instead of the current practice of arresting them and jailing them overnight.

According to arrest data from the New York State Division of Criminal
Justice Services, the number of arrests for marijuana possession
skyrocketed from about 10,000 in 1996 to more than 50,000 in 2000.
The arrests have tapered off somewhat since then, but remain high:
33,000 arrests for marijuana possession last year.

Meanwhile, federal government figures show that between 1997 and 2006
marijuana use among high school students and 19- to 28-year-olds rose
only slightly.

Studies of marijuana arrests in New York City by Levine, researchers
at the University of Chicago Law School, and the National Development
and Research Institutes found that the overwhelming number of those
arrested for marijuana possession were black and Latino males, even
though national studies show that black and Latino high school
students use marijuana at a lower rate than white students. However,
the state criminal justice services officials say they have concerns
about the reliability of the city's statistics on the race of those
arrested because of how racial data are reported.

Marijuana arrests in the city surged in the late 1990s as part of
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's quality-of-life policing strategy, and have
continued under Mayor Michael Bloomberg. But although early law
enforcement efforts concentrated on heavily trafficked public areas
like Central Park and midtown Manhattan, the efforts shifted to
lower-income black and Latino communities, the studies say.

Camilla Price, chief of staff for State Sen. Ruben Diaz, whose
district includes the Soundview section of the Bronx, says police in
her district routinely swoop down on students as they leave school.

"Kids are going between Stevenson High School and several housing
projects. They can be standing on the corner, and I've seen the cops
with the kids against the wall, going through their pockets. Some
kids have money or weed. They just harass the kids like there's no tomorrow."

Legal Aid attorneys I talked to confirmed that they're handling far
more marijuana possession cases than in years past. One experienced
Legal Aid attorney told me the police used to issue desk appearance
tickets, but now they're putting them through the arrest wringer.
"It's disturbing," says Seymour James, the attorney in charge of
crime practice for the Legal Aid Society, "incarcerating them
overnight when they could be given a summons. There is no reason for
this ... for merely having a marijuana cigarette."

The police have considerable discretion in how they treat marijuana
offenses. They can confiscate the pot, give the person a warning and
tell them to go home. They can write a summons, which is similar to a
traffic ticket and requires the offender to appear before a judge on
a certain date. A summons can result in a fine or a dismissal. Or
they can choose to arrest and handcuff the offenders, put them in a
police car, take them to the station house, fingerprint and
photograph them, and hold them in jail until they can be arraigned,
which can sometimes take days. Many possession charges are dismissed
if the person doesn't get into any more trouble in the next year. But
it's ridiculously punitive to put people through a humiliating
process for a minor offense.

"We're socializing black and Latino youths to the criminal justice
system," Levine says. "We're teaching them how to be in the system."
It's like telling them this is a rehearsal for a future of getting
arrested and spending time in jail, Small says.

Police Department spokesman Paul Browne says the department is simply
carrying out the law, and argues that there's been no major increase
in such arrests during the last three years. But the number of
arrests is still large, and has grown dramatically over time when
there's been no similar increase in marijuana use.

Arresting people, especially teenagers, for smoking a joint, passing
one to a friend, or having a small bag of marijuana needs to stop.
Far more serious crimes are going on. And no parent of a teenager
wants to see her kid thrown in jail and treated like a criminal for a
minor transgression that could be handled with a summons.