Tegger wrote:

You want to eliminate gang violence? Legalize drugs.

Bloomberg Backs Plan to Limit Arrests for Marijuana

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/05/ny...st-policy.html

Published: June 4, 2012

ALBANY — The New York Police Department, the mayor and the city’s top
prosecutors on Monday endorsed a proposal to decriminalize the open
possession of small amounts of marijuana, giving an unexpected lift to
an effort by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to cut down on the number of people
arrested as a result of police stops.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, whose Police Department made about 50,000
arrests last year for low-level marijuana possession, said the
governor’s proposal “strikes the right balance” in part because it would
still allow the police to arrest people who smoke marijuana in public.

The marijuana arrests are a byproduct of the Police Department’s
increasingly controversial stop-and-frisk practice. Mr. Bloomberg and
police officials say the practice has made the city safer, but, because
most of those stopped are black or Hispanic, the practice has been
criticized as racially biased by advocates for minority communities.

The support expressed by Mr. Bloomberg, prosecutors and police officials
is likely to carry significant weight in the Republican-led State
Senate, which is the key obstacle to passage of the bill in Albany
during this year’s legislative session. Mr. Cuomo has amassed a strong
track record of winning passage of legislation he embraces, and the
speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver, joined him at his news
conference Monday, indicating that the Democrat-controlled Assembly
would back the measure. The Republican Senate leadership has
traditionally opposed legislation it views as soft on criminals.

Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, framed the issue as one of racial justice as well
as common sense, saying that the police in New York City were wasting
time, resources and good will making tens of thousands of unnecessary
arrests. Possession of small amounts of marijuana is a crime only if the
marijuana is in public view or if it is being smoked in public, but many
of the marijuana possession arrests have been occurring when the police
order someone stopped to empty his or her pockets, making the marijuana
visible — a phenomenon the governor called an “aggravated complication”
of the stop-and-frisk practice.

“It becomes a question of balance,” the governor said of the city’s
police stops. “Part of the balance is the relationship with the
community. I think the N.Y.P.D. and the mayor are making efforts to work
with the community.”

The governor’s announcement was cheered by lawmakers from minority
neighborhoods as well as by civil rights groups, who are increasingly
looking to Albany and to Washington in an effort to rein in what they
see as overly aggressive tactics on the part of the Bloomberg
administration.

Black leaders also cited the governor’s proposal as a rare recognition
of — and attempt to remedy — what they describe as a cultural and legal
double standard: that young African-American men are being arrested in
large numbers for an activity — using marijuana — that is prevalent, but
with less frequent legal consequences, among whites of the same age.

“Some of our police officers are making race-based discretionary
decisions on who they’re going to arrest for low-level marijuana
possession,” said Leroy Gadsden, the president of a branch of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Jamaica,
Queens, and the chairman of the criminal justice committee for the
statewide N.A.A.C.P. “Therefore, of course, if you’re a young, black
male, even a female, you’re going to feel that you’re being targeted
when you notice that your white counterparts are not being arrested for
the same thing.”

The Rev. Al Sharpton praised Mr. Cuomo’s proposal as “a step in the
right direction” in curbing what he described as racial profiling by the
Police Department. And Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, a Brooklyn Democrat
who has pushed legislation to end low-level marijuana arrests, said, “It
cannot be criminal behavior for one group of people and socially
acceptable behavior for another group of people, where the dividing line
is race.”

A spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg rejected the notion that the Police
Department acted with racial bias in arresting people for marijuana
possession.

Under Mr. Cuomo’s proposal, the state would downgrade the possession of
25 grams or less of marijuana in public view from a misdemeanor to a
violation, with a maximum fine of $100 for first-time drug offenders. It
is already a violation to possess that amount without putting it into
public view.

In September, facing growing pressure over the marijuana arrests, Police
Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly issued a memorandum clarifying that the
police were not to arrest people who take small amounts of marijuana out
of their pockets after being stopped. A city spokesman said that
low-level marijuana arrests had fallen by nearly a quarter since then.

Mr. Bloomberg, whose administration had previously defended low-level
marijuana arrests as a means of deterring more serious crimes, said on
Monday that Mr. Cuomo’s proposal was consistent with Mr. Kelly’s
directive. Mr. Kelly made a rare trip to the Capitol to join Mr. Cuomo
at the news conference as a way of demonstrating the city’s support for
the governor’s proposal.

“This law will make certain that the confusion in this situation will be
eliminated,” Mr. Kelly said, adding, “Quite frankly, it will make the
application of this law much clearer.”

Mr. Cuomo said changing the law was a better approach in the long term,
saying, “I think it puts the police in an awkward position to tell them,
enforce some laws, don’t enforce other laws.”

“This is nice and clean: change the law, period,” the governor added.