| Photo: cityrag |
| New York City is the world “leader” in marijuana arrests — especially if you’re African-American or Hispanic. |
Getting stopped on suspicion of possessing drugs might have just as much to do with your race as it does with your potential illegal activity, according to a New York study.
Blacks and Hispanics are more likely to be pulled over for “suspicion of illegal drugs” by the New York Police Department than are white or Asian citizens, found the report by the New York Civil Liberties Union and Harry Levin, a sociology professor at Queens College.
An analysis by Columbia University’s Jeffrey Fagan of the NYPD’s “stop and frisk” data concurred, finding that race is the strongest way of predicting police activity in the city.
An ongoing federal lawsuit was filed in 2008 by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) after it analyzed six years of the NYPD’s data and found that almost 150000 stops were made without reported justification, according to Ashley Steves at New York University student newspaper Washington Square News.
Attorneys for the NYPD are currently motioning for the race discrimination trial to be dismissed, according to Darius Charney, a staff attorney at CCR.
“Plaintiffs are very confident that we will survive this summary judgment motion, after which the case will move towards trial,” Charney said.
The NYPD has been notorious for years in its racial profiling and deceptive tactics, which result in one of the highest marijuana arrest rates in the world.
A 2008 study found that New York’s war on cannabis users is both racist and fraudulent.
Another study, released last year, found that thousands of people charged with low-level marijuana “crimes” in New York City spend days in jail for these misdemeanors, not because they have been found guilty, but because they are too poor to post bail.
