Pot Possession and Open Container Are #1 in Busts

How many thousands of Mexicans have been killed last year in the drug trade? Spark up another joint; as long as you are high, you won't feel guilty about all the blood on your hands.

Its simple: obey the law re: open containers and don't use illegal drugs and the "prision business" will wither on the vine.

Worst excuse ever for a story. Read up on "the broken window theory." Come on john does anyone really care about this story. I wish i could make the nypd stop enforcing minor crimes in poor black and latino areas, i'm sure crime would drop.

the entire system would collapse if everyone said hell no im not pleading guilty.

the system is based on abusing the poor and minorities who are unaware that that they are brainwashed into believing this is normal. 50K arrests going to jury, trial and asking to confront their accusers in court would collapse the entire system, making enforcement impossible since if every potsmoker agreed to fight the ticket or arrest would grind the justice system to a halt.

everything ive said before and people are saying here is correct, but im always attacked for being a loon because my handle is potsmoker.

the fact is the loons are all the potsmokers pleading guilty when in fact they were prob searched illegally and only guilty of a violation which should be thrown out also since there were no grounds for search anyway.

fight the power, free the weed.

No it would not be hard to show that their 4th amendment rights have been violated if people would actually go to a suppression hearing instead of pleading guilty to the first deal the ADA offers them. Also, police officers "testi-lie" at the suppression hearing in order to make it look like they had the requisite cause for search & seizure when in fact they had none at all. If u have a fair judge who knows cops lie, then u have half a chance. Not likely though. This happens a lot every day here in NYC & other places too.

How come none of the people charged under "stop and frisk" have challenged their arrest under 4th Amendment violations? Where is the probable cause?

It seems like it wouldn't be too hard to argue that this is illegal search and seizure.

I remember a time in New York that if a cop caught you with a bag of weed they'd just take it. throw it on the floor and mash it with their feet and let you go. In fact many cops owed their jobs to this practice. Now not only do they overburden the system with these trivial arrests but they can potentially ruin a person's life.

My biggest concern regarding these "Stop and Frisk" operations is when they are used against minority teenagers. I find this to be a form of genocide against our youth. These officers have quotas to fill and that means that they must arrest at least some of these people, regardless of how minimal the charges may be. While the majority of arrests from these "stop and frisks" end up being for minor infractions such as loitering, trespassing, possession of marijuana, etc. it nonetheless ruins their future prospects by staining them with a criminal record for the rest of their lives. It seems that minority teenagers are being systematically targeted and given a Scarlet Letter that they must live with for the rest of his/her life. What happens when these young men and women decide they want to become a member of law enforcement? Will they be allowed despite having a conviction for a bag of marijuana in their youth?

For example, marijuana use among teens in NYC is pretty consistent throughout all races but it is a fact that the chances of a minority teenager being arrested or having a criminal record because of it, is much higher than non-minority teenagers in NYC. I know many will find the word genocide too strong for this argument but the definition of genocide is "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide ) " and I think it fits here because these "stop and frisk" operations are systematically destroying the city's minority teenagers' futures and I believe that outweighs the benefits.

At best these "Stop & Frisk" operations are a violation of human rights and unconstitutional and at best the are a waste of police resources that produces very little results. I don't understand how anyone can justify a database of innocent people in America.

oops, sorry for the double post.

I remember a time in New York that if a cop caught you with a bag of weed they'd just take it. throw it on the floor and mash it with their feet and let you go. In fact many cops owed their jobs to this practice. Now not only do they overburden the system with these trivial arrests but they can potentially ruin a person's life.

My biggest concern regarding these "Stop and Frisk" operations is when they are used against minority teenagers. I find this to be a form of genocide against our youth. These officers have quotas to fill and that means that they must arrest at least some of these people, regardless of how minimal the charges may be. While the majority of arrests from these "stop and frisks" end up being for minor infractions such as loitering, trespassing, possession of marijuana, etc. it nonetheless ruins their future prospects by staining them with a criminal record for the rest of their lives. It seems that minority teenagers are being systematically targeted and given a Scarlet Letter that they must live with for the rest of his/her life. What happens when these young men and women decide they want to become a member of law enforcement? Will they be allowed despite having a conviction for a bag of marijuana in their youth?

For example, marijuana use among teens in NYC is pretty consistent throughout all races but it is a fact that the chances of a minority teenager being arrested or having a criminal record because of it, is much higher than non-minority teenagers in NYC. I know many will find the word genocide too strong for this argument but the definition of genocide is "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide ) " and I think it fits here because these "stop and frisk" operations are systematically destroying the city's minority teenagers' futures and I believe that outweighs the benefits.

At best these "Stop & Frisk" operations are a violation of human rights and unconstitutional and at best the are a waste of police resources that produces very little results. I don't understand how anyone can justify a database of innocent people in America.

you may want to read "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness " by Michelle Alexander.

Absolutely!

There is a monumental flaw in a system that will only help a poor 18 year old with $3,000 to go to college, but if that same 18 year old commits a crime they will pay from $25,000-45,000 to keep him/her imprisoned. I never understood the logic behind that.

Also remember that the jail industry is big business, for the phone companies, for goods and services, etc, etc. There's whole cities in upstate New York that developed around jail facilities. They built these jails in the middle of a forrest then housing, shopping centers, movie theaters, etc. were developed around them. So there's whole communities depending on these jails. These cities also receive a disproportionate amount of federal funds because the census counts prisoners as residents even though they are not using services beyond the jail walls.

So that's why while crime is down you don't hear of any jail closings, they must keep those jails to capacity, even if that means arresting people for something as simple as jaywalking. Those jails must, at all cost, stay full.

Apparently people in the East Village aren't to worried...they're growing it wild over there right on the sidewalk.

Can a police departnent be any more pathetic? The stop and frisk statistics were unbelievably comical, so they need something to counter that with some lame productivity report. So this is it, this is why we so desperately need even more thug cops to so-called keep NYers safe from, people with weed and open containers.

There is some serious mental instability within the NYPD, and its sad that there is no one who can protect us from these clowns

its bloombergs fault, right? i hope you get stopped and frisked then ticketed for riding your bike on the sidewalk. douche

Wait, I don't get it, weed and booze are more common than guns?

apparently, retard.

thats it, i'm switching to heroin.

In other words, generating revenue from those who partake mainly to escape from their worries about lack of revenue. It makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

This is like that one episode of the Wire!

46,491 arrests for fifth-degree marijuana possession.

I wonder what that costs the city? cops, lawyers, judges, jail, and on and on, all for something that its seems like 90% of the people dont have a problem with.

strange.

I suppose though, so long as theres something you can call a crime its job security for a lot of people.

Now you're getting it!

Right.

Many seem to not get that the ramifications of legalization are too great for our corporatist government to tolerate.

Our economic system relies on a permanent underclass for stability. One that's, by and large, unemployed. But we can't just have all of these people roaming the streets, so the easiest thing to do is to lock them up for bullshit. And now we have a whole industry whose interests it is to keep them locked-up.

Then there's the pharmaceutical and alcohol industries, who also would have a lot to lose.

And for those who scream "tax it!" Sure, I'd be happy to pay a tax on it if I bought it at a store or bar, like alcohol. But true legalization, which is the only answer, also requires having the freedom to grow your own. And that's also what 'they're' petrified of, because it's so easy to grow.

I've got to challenge you a little bit. Putting people in prison doesn't actually make them statistically "unemployed", because they aren't job hunting. They are reducing the labor and the non-labor pool by taking people out of it. It's always been my secret conspiracy theory that arresting lots of people actually REDUCES the official unemployment statistic because they are removed from the statistical pool.

If a hundred people are in the pool and ten are unemployed, that's 10% unemployment. Arrest five of those people and you suddenly have 5% unemployment.

Funny - as I typed that, I actually thought I should clarify "unemployed." I don't mean it in the official Labor Dep't sense.

I won't pretend to remember much of what I learned in Economics. But I'll never forget how surprised I was when the professor showed, graphically, that for our basic system to work, there can be no theoretical 100% employment.

legalize it.