NYC cops caught profling poor pot smokers

Anyone who doubts the war on some drugs is racist should read this report in the Harm Reduction Journal on NYC policing practices. Public marijuana smoking arrests went from being concentrated mainly in lower Manhattan, to a widespread dispersal throughout the city, with arrests mainly in poor black and Hispanic boroughs.

Not to mention, as JackL tells me, it used to get a court "appearance ticket" as a non-criminal "violation" under state law, "decriminalized" in 1976. Now it results in an arrest and overnight jailing with a sentence after some more hours wasted in court with a minor fine and time served.

What a waste of the taxpayer's money. Issusing a ticket costs a lot less. And the cops and the bureaucrats of course deny profiling.

"The study distorts reality to prop up a thinly disguised manifesto for marijuana legalization," Browne charged. "More arrests of all kinds take place in areas with more crime," he said.

That last is true enough but while they're wasting time processing easy pot busts, violent crimes aren't being solved. It's a hard sell as public safety and as the study points out, it only inflames racial tensions in the city.