The nonstop humiliation of young black and Hispanic New Yorkers, including children, by police officers who feel no obligation to treat them fairly or with any respect at all is an abomination. . . Rather than a legitimate crime-fighting tool, these stops are a despicable racially oriented tool of harassment.<\/p>\n
Bob Herbert<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Bob Herbert\u2019s angry 2010 essay<\/a>, \u201cJim Crow Policing,\u201d was critical of the stop-and-frisk policy of the New York Police Department (NYPD), but it could just as easily have been directed at their differential enforcement of marijuana laws.<\/p>\n Surveys show that Blacks and Whites<\/a> use illegal drugs at similar rates. Surveys conducted by the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services show that both lifetime marijuana use and use in the past year is\u00a0slightly higher for Whites<\/a> than for Blacks and Latinos. Yet Blacks and Latinos are arrested and incarcerated<\/a> much more frequently.<\/p>\n In 2013, when Bill de Blasio was running for mayor of New York City, he promised to reduce the frequency with which citizens were arrested for low-level marijuana possession and the racial bias in these arrests, referring to such policies as \u201cunjust and wrong.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0He has been mayor since January 2014, so how is he doing? The Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) recently published an assessment<\/a>\u00a0by Harry Levine, a sociologist at Queens College, CUNY, and Loren Siegel, an attorney.<\/p>\n On the positive side, the number of arrests for marijuana possession<\/a> has gone down from about 40,000 per year to about 20,000 per year, as the chart below<\/a> shows. In other words, it now takes Mayor de Blasio and the NYPD two years to make as many \u201cunjust and wrong\u201d arrests as his two immediate predecessors averaged in a single year.<\/p>\n The higher conviction rates of Black and Latino defendants noted above, if they are due to their prior arrest records, can also be seen as self-perpetuating institutional racism.<\/p>\n Secondly, NYPD also targets commercial and night life districts<\/a> in mid- and lower Manhattan which attract out-of-town visitors and tourists, such as Greenwich Village, perhaps out of concern for the city\u2019s public image. Blacks and Latinos make up relatively few of the residents of these areas, but are arrested at disproportionately high rates. In an analysis of 15 such areas, the authors report that Blacks and Hispanics were 23% of the population but 72% of those arrested. The fact that Blacks and Hispanics are in the minority in these areas suggests that their higher arrest rate is due to racial bias by individual police officers.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not clear whether this lack of progress in eliminating discrimination is due to Mayor de Blasio\u2019s lack of commitment to his campaign rhetoric or NYPD\u2019s refusal to comply with his orders. If the latter, why was NYPD was willing to cut back on marijuana arrests but not willing to cease its racial discrimination?<\/p>\n Mayor de Blasio released a statement<\/a> criticizing the DPA study as \u201cmisleading.\u201d Rather than challenging their data, he reframed it. He pointed out that the absolute number of Blacks and Latinos arrested for possession of marijuana had gone down under his administration, but he failed to mention that the percentages by race were unchanged. He also attacked the DPA as \u201ca group committed to legalization,\u201d which is irrelevant.<\/p>\n A marijuana arrest can interfere with a young person\u2019s ability to get a job, go to college, take out a loan, or even find a place to live. There is no evidence<\/a> that eliminating these arrests has any negative impact on public safety. In fact, there seems to be widespread public support\u00a0<\/a>for legalization of marijuana, and there is no justification for racially discriminatory marijuana enforcement. Yet NYPD seems to have considerable ability to resist these policy changes.<\/p>\n You may also be interested in reading:<\/strong><\/p>\n In Perspective<\/a><\/p>\n Racial Profiling in Preschool<\/a><\/p>\n Making a Mockery of the Batson Rule<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The nonstop humiliation of young black and Hispanic New Yorkers, including children, by police officers who feel no obligation to treat them fairly or with any respect at all is an abomination. . . Rather than a legitimate crime-fighting tool, these stops are a despicable racially oriented tool of harassment. Bob Herbert Bob Herbert\u2019s angry … Continue reading Jim Crow Policing<\/span> ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/rates_drug_use_sale_800_546_80.jpg?resize=604%2C412\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/marijuanaarrestsyearmayor2016.png?resize=604%2C443\")
However, there is no evidence of any reduction in racial bias. Blacks and Hispanics account for 51% of the population of New York City, with Whites accounting for most of the remaining 49%. Yet Blacks and Hispanics account for 86% of those arrested<\/a> for marijuana possession and these percentages are unchanged from the Bloomberg administration.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/marijuanaraceethn2016.png?resize=604%2C328\")
Black and Hispanic defendants are also convicted at higher rates<\/a>, although this does not necessarily imply racial discrimination by the prosecution or the courts. It may be due to their having a greater number of prior offenses.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/marijuanaconvictionoutcomenyc2016.png?resize=604%2C362\")
The persistence of racial discrimination in marijuana arrests seems to be due to a combination of institutional<\/em> and individual racism<\/em>. Levine and Siegel suggest that two processes are at work<\/a> in producing these racial disparities. First, NYPD concentrates its enforcement of marijuana possession laws in public housing projects and neighborhoods in which Blacks and Latinos make up the majority of residents. Public housing residents are 5% of the city\u2019s population but account for 21% of marijuana arrests, with 92% of those arrested being Black or Hispanic. The city\u2019s 37 majority Black or Hispanic precincts have about half the city\u2019s population, but account for 66% of marijuana arrests, with 92% of those arrested being Black or Hispanic. Since the police usually base their decisions of where to deploy officers on prior arrest records, differential patrolling of Black and Hispanic areas is a type of self-perpetuating institutional bias.<\/p>\n