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NYPD's Enforcement Of Marijuana Laws Still Plagued By Extreme Racial Disparities
By
Jake Offenhartz
Published Mar 10, 2021
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Hans Pennink/AP/Shutterstock
By
Jake Offenhartz
Published Mar 10, 2021
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On March 4th of last year, Fitzroy Gayle was stopped by a plainclothes police officer in his neighborhood of Canarsie, Brooklyn. Video shows the 20-year-old, who is Black, begging to know why he was being detained. Moments later, close to a dozen NYPD officers sprinted toward the young man, tackling him to the ground as he cried out that he did nothing wrong.
An NYPD spokesperson later claimed that Gayle was approached after he was spotted with a "lit marijuana cigarette" inside a nearby park. He was charged with possession of marijuana, resisting arrest, and obstructing governmental administration.
The incident, which drew widespread outrage, was one of 437 marijuana arrests made by the NYPD in 2020. That number is a fraction of the tens of thousands of New Yorkers arrested for smoking pot in previous years in New York City. But even as arrests have plummeted, the extreme racial disparities in marijuana enforcement have remained essentially unchanged.
According to a new analysis by the Legal Aid Society, 93% of those arrested for marijuana in NYC last year were Black or Hispanic. White people — who make up 45% of the city's population, and have been shown to use marijuana at equal rates as other racial groups — accounted for less than 5% of citywide arrests.
Legalization advocates say the NYPD has continued to use drug stops as a tool for racist enforcement, despite Mayor Bill de Blasio's repeated vows to address the longstanding disparities.
"Too many people think we’re at a place where we’ve moved past this, and that’s clearly inaccurate," Melissa Moore, director of the New York chapter of the Drug Policy Alliance, told Gothamist. "We’ve seen over and over again, even during a pandemic, the NYPD continues to target communities of color for enforcement of cannabis."
As arrests have decreased, police have increasingly turned to marijuana summonses, while maintaining an almost identical focus on Black and Hispanic New Yorkers. Data shows that 10,374 people received a criminal court summons for marijuana last year — of which more than 93 percent were Black or Hispanic.
Neither the NYPD nor the Mayor's Office responded to Gothamist's inquiries about what accounts for the continued disparities.
"The data affirm that New Yorkers of color are still overwhelmingly shouldering the brunt of the NYPD’s racist marijuana enforcement while other communities get a free pass,” Anthony Posada, a supervising attorney at the Legal Aid Society, said in a statement.
Criminal justice advocates say that the striking stats underscore the urgency of passing legalization at the state level — something that Governor Andrew Cuomo has promised to accomplish every year for the last three years. The effort was abandoned last year during the COVID-19 pandemic, and failed in 2019 due to opposition from suburban Democrats.
When Cuomo unveiled his latest proposal in January, the approach was criticized for not going far enough to remove criminal penalties and address the harms prohibition continues to cause communities of color.
“Clearly, his tax proposals are all wrong, clearly his social equity proposals are all wrong," Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes said last month. "So there are a number of things that need to be fixed and if they’re not fixed, we’ll be here next year doing the same thing,”
Tagged
governor cuomo
marijuana
mayor de blasio
nypd
legalization
Jake Offenhartz
Jake Offenhartz is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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