"The whole system relies on these arrests": The NYPD's racist marijuana arrest crusade and its national implications

New York's marijuana arrests, says a growing chorus of critics, are a
prime example of how the nation's drug laws disproportionately impact
black and Latino communities.

Every morning, several sheets of
paper are posted to the walls outside the arraignment rooms of New York
City's Borough Courts. They list the names of the accused scheduled to
appear before the judge and the legal codes of their offenses. On most
days and across the city's five boroughs, these lists include multiple
names next to the numbers 221.10. This is the legal code for the
misdemeanor charge of possessing small amounts of marijuana "open to
public view," meaning the public display or public smoking of pot. In
2010, more than 50,000 New Yorkers were arrested for violating 221.10.
The number represented 15 percent of all arrests made by the NYPD and allowed the city to keep its crown of Marijuana Arrest Capital of the World.Not
that there is a credible challenger for the dubious honor. The high
number of 221.10 arrests puts New York in a league of its own and has
become a lightning rod in the national debate over race and the war on
drugs. New York's marijuana arrests, says a growing chorus of critics,
are a prime example of how the nation's drug laws disproportionately
impact black and Latino communities.This is decreasingly a matter of accusation and anecdote. Hard data are
emerging that confirm what marijuana reform advocates and public
defenders have long maintained: That the NYPD's stop-and-frisk policy in
high-crime neighborhoods - sold to the public as a way to find illegal
guns and reduce violent crime - has instead resulted in racially
uneven drug law enforcement practices that seem to violate the spirit
and the letter of New York law as well as the United States
Constitution.Read the whole story:http://www.alternet.org