This week, we learned that NYC has now become the "marijuana arrest capital of the world." The NYPD arrested 50,383 people for low-level marijuana offenses last year, making low-level pot possession the number one cause of arrest in NYC. But it's important to note who was getting arrested: according to the Drug Policy Alliance’s report, "86 percent of those arrested are Black or Latino, even though research consistently shows that young whites use marijuana at higher rates." more ›

The News is spending their blizzard day locked inside their offices crunching the census numbers, and they've come to some conclusions: Manhattan is losing its diversity, and new white residents in Harlem feel that blacks don't like them. Overall, Manhattan's population has increased by five percent since 2000, and they credit that to the white population rising by an estimated 11 percent to around 928,000 in the past decade, while the number of blacks dropped by six percent, to less than 250,000, and the Hispanic populations dropped four percent, to just under 400,000. more ›

Now that Black Friday is over, let's survey the damage some shoppers did. A 23-year-old student who had been camping outside at the Union Square Best Buy since Tuesday afternoon bought "a Sony laptop for $399, saving $300, and buy a 32-inch Samsung TV and Nintendo Wii, both for just $435, saving more than $300." He told the Post, "When I finally got in, it felt like the gates of heaven opened up. I had to miss a couple of days of school to be here." more ›

Community activists are hoping that planned construction projects won't disturb the remains of African slaves buried in a long-forgotten 17th century cemetery underneath an MTA bus depot on East 126th Street. With the MTA planning to replace the bus facility and the city renovating the nearby Willis Avenue Bridge, locals are trying to preserve the graveyard in an effort to keep the burial ground from being desecrated. more ›

The NAACP says two white policemen in Yonkers assaulted a black NYPD officer as they tried to pin him with a purse snatching. Sgt. Kenneth Kissiedu, who lives in Yonkers, was heading to work in the Bronx when local cops got a call about a theft nearby. In a canvas of the area, they spotted Kissiedu walking to his car. "Yo, Yo," they allegedly shouted trying to get his attention. Then they saw that he had a gun. more ›

A Queens woman has filed a $4 million discrimination suit, claiming that instead of teaching her how to use the equipment at Starrett City power plant, higher ups had her mopping chemicals in the men's locker room. What's worse, the walls were papered with pictures of naked ladies! Suzanne Langford signed on for an apprenticeship at the power plant thinking she'd get valuable job training, but soon after she started a member of the all-male staff told her "school is over." According to the Daily News, she's suing the union, Local 30, that allegedly threatened her with insubordination charges when she confronted it about the injustices, as well as a shop steward she says called another black worker a "gorilla." Langford was dismissed from the job in 2007. more ›

Remember those students from Queens who were returning from a college visit when they were pulled over, searched, and cuffed by New Jersey state police officers—sparking allegations of racial profiling and excessive force? Cops denied that the students' skin color had anything to do with the Jersey Turnpike traffic stop, insisting that they only pulled over the van because they received a 911 call warning them that van passengers were carrying guns. Well, it turns out one of the students in the van made that 911 call, according to officials. more ›

Police stopped and questioned more New Yorkers last year than ever before, and 87 percent of those stopped were black or Latino. The NYPD used the controversial policing technique to question 575,304 people in 2009—an uptick of 8 percent from the short-lived 2008 record of 531,159, according to the Daily News. more ›

Get a load of Lotto's new look! This is not your grandmother's cluttered blue and green scratch-off—no, this is the new, sleeker, hipper, black-label version: the New York Lottery Black scratch-off ticket. With the economic downturn in full thrust, ticket sales dwindled for the New York State Lottery. But a silver lining emerged: the chance for Gordon Medencia, the envelope-pushing, Mad Men-esque renegade director of the NY Lotto, to push for his minimalist black design, "against the advice of vendors and his own sales staff" no less! He told the Times, “The black American Express card, Johnny Walker Black: These were all the images we were trying to get in our mind.” more ›

The percentage of black students at New York City's best high schools has fallen over the past seven years, since the Mayor took control of public schools. Fewer black students attend seven of the eight public high schools that require entrance exams for admittance, while the number of African American students has stayed the same or fallen at 10 of the 12 schools where more than 90 percent of students graduate with Regents diplomas. more ›

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo—who's widely believed to be ramping up to challenge Gov. Paterson in a September primary—has been seen all over town shaking the hands of black civic leaders and clergymen. Taking on New York's first black governor, Cuomo is building a defense against critics who'll say he's derailing the career of a prominent African American politician. more ›

A week after the city was found to be at fault for discriminating against blacks and Latinos who wanted to become firefighters, a Brooklyn federal judge ruled that the city must pay damages to thousands of black and Latino applicants, and give jobs and retroactive pay to 293 others. more ›

In a major demographic shift for a neighborhood that has long been "synonymous with black urban America," the majority of Harlem residents are no longer black, according to the Times. In a decade when Harlem's population grew more than it has since the 1940s, the number of black residents has fallen to its lowest point since the 1920s. more ›

Sgt. Reginald McReynolds, a 19 year veteran of the NYPD, was returning to his girlfriend's Bronx apartment with their Chinese food one night at the end of October when he was stopped by a rookie cop and his partner. Officers Kyle Bach and Joseph Azevedo, who are white, were responding to a domestic dispute call in the building. The perp was described as in his late 20s and weighing about 150 pounds; McReynolds is a 42-year-old black man weighing in at 275 pounds. Nevertheless, McReynolds says Bach "came right up in my face and said, 'What fucking apartment are you going to?'" It's no surprise that the ensuing exchange wasn't all that courteous, professional, or respectful. more ›

For the first time ever, black, Hispanic and Asian residents of New York City outnumbered their white counterparts at the polls. In what the Times describes as "a seismic political shift," voters who identified themselves as minorities constituted 51 percent of the vote in November's citywide elections, compared to white voters who made up 46 percent of the total. more ›

It's no shocker that the vast majority of marijuana arrests in NYC ensnare blacks and Latinos. But what's really incredible is how, um, high the number of pot arrests have risen during Mayor Bloomberg's first two terms. The lowest-level marijuana arrests rose 50 percent since Giuliani time, according to a recent study [pdf] by Harry Levine, a sociology professor at Queens College. Last year, the NYPD made more low-level pot arrests "than in the 12 years of Mayor Koch, plus the four years of Mayor Dinkins, plus the first two years of Mayor Giuliani" combined. And all this happened under the Mayor who famously told New York, "You bet I did [smoke pot], and I enjoyed it." more ›

The author whose book release party at Varick Street nightclub Greenhouse was allegedly ruined by a racist door policy may file a lawsuit of her own. The "eco-friendly" club was recently hit with a $1 billion class action lawsuit, accusing the bouncer and owner of denying entry to approximately 100 people because of their ethnicity. Now author Teri Woods has come forward corroborate the allegations, and she says it wasn't just blacks who were kept out of her party. more ›

The off-duty police officer who was fatally shot by police in Harlem last night as he chased a burglar with his gun drawn died from a gunshot wound from the chest. But a spokeswoman for the city medical examiner says that though the fatal bullet was recovered from the front of Officer Omar Edwards's chest, the bullet actually entered the left side of his back before hitting his heart and left lung. Another bullet struck his left arm, and a third hit his left hip. The NYPD is still withholding the name of the white cop who fired on Edwards and is conducting an investigation to determine whether officers identified themselves. But Rev. Al Sharpton wants a federal investigation; speaking to 1010WINS, he says sees "a growing pattern of black officers being killed with the assumption that they are the criminals." On that note, City Room takes a compelling look back at the many incidents of white cops shooting black cops over the years, including one such report from 1940 with the antiquated yet eerie headline "Patrolman Slain by Fellow-Police: Negro, Off-Duty and Chasing a Burglar, Felled by Shots of Men from Radio Car." more ›

The State Senate has agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by their former official photographer, who says Governor Paterson fired him because of his race, back when Paterson was Senate Minority Leader in 2003. In his civil rights lawsuit, Joseph Maioriello of Schenectady said John McPadden, then Paterson's chief of staff, explained he was being fired because some senators wanted to replace him with "a minority photographer, a black photographer." Maioriello, who had been a Senate employee for 26 years before he was fired, said McPadden also told him, "You got to remember who Sen. Paterson is. Sen. Paterson is black." In a sworn deposition, Paterson denied the allegations, claiming he didn't see well enough to have fired Maioriello because of his race. Paterson would have been required to testify had the case finally gone to trial, and one source "close to the lawsuit" tells the Post that the size of the settlement—$300,000—suggests "that the state wouldn't have made out very well if it had gone to trial. If nothing wrong happened, why is the state paying out this kind of money?" Shhh... It's late Friday afternoon—by Monday it'll be like this never happened. more ›

17-year-old Ali Kamara, a black Muslim, was walking home on Staten Island Tuesday night after it was announced that Barack Obama was elected president when he was brutally assaulted by four white men. Kamara tells the Daily News: "I see the car coming. They looked at me and said, 'Obama!' They were not happy. They had hoodies on. They started hitting me with bats and my body started vibrating." Luckily, Kamara was able to break away and hide until the thugs left; his mother, who moved with Ali to Staten Island from Liberia in 2000, showed the News a bloody towel she used to staunch his wounds. An NYPD spokesman says the department's Hate Crime Task Force is investigating the incident as a bias crime. And Kamara says he heard his assailants scream the word "Obama!" but not any other racial or religious slurs, so it could be the bullies just mistook Kamara for the new President-Elect. more ›

Meet Richard Ivory: New Yorker, blogger, black man, and John McCain supporter. He also works as a counselor to mentally ill patients, but he himself is not mentally ill—he just doesn't want another tax-and-spend Democrat to undo the proud achievements of George Bush, even if said Democrat would, you know, be America's first black president. Today the Times takes a look at what it's like to be a black Republican for John McCain living in liberal elitist New York City. Ivory (not pictured here) says he's gotten used being called "Uncle Tom, sellout, self-hater," and isn't even upset about that time a white man confronted him and a black friend at the 2004 Republican Convention to warn them that "protesters were not welcome." He tells the Times, "I always say my heart is with Obama but my brain is with McCain." more ›

The NYPD is stepping into a long-running feud between two rival Orthodox Jewish patrol groups in Crown Heights in order to unite them into a single police-supervised unit. Shmira and Shomrim are two bitterly-divided private crime-patrol organizations that split in the late '90s. (Here's one explanation of their complicated rivalry.) In an exclusive titled, "Jew Guys Need to Talk," the Post reports that Shmira has agreed to the merger, but Shomrim refuses to sit down with Shmira, who they accuse of slashing patrol-car tires, making prank emergency calls and falsely informing on Shomrim to the police. Yossi Stern, director of Shmira, denies the allegations: "It's all a bunch of rhetoric. Show me a police report. We're not out to harass anybody. We're out to do a service for the community." You'll recall that members of Shmira were suspected of beating a 20-year-old black man, Andrew Charles, in Crown Heights last April. more ›

The police have increased their presence in Crown Heights after two incidents that have upset the black and Jewish communities and caused unrest between them. And many are recalling the summer of 1991, when the Crown Heights riots shook the city. more ›

Somehow, race relations in Crown Heights, Brooklyn have taken a huge hop, skip, and a jump back to the 1980s, when tensions between African Americans and the Jewish community kept the city on tenterhooks. In recent weeks, attacks on young people, both black and Jewish, have driven people to protest in the streets. The Post headlines its article on a neighborhood protest "Jewish Blood Is Not Cheap," echoing the sentiment of one of approximately 300 protestors calling for justice after a 16-year-old young man was beaten and robbed yesterday. more ›

According to its website, Murray Hill's Tonic East “is the most well rounded sports bar in the area, with an attractive scene of locals.” But it seems black was not deemed beautiful by the management: they recently agreed to settle a discrimination lawsuit brought by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to the tune of $35,000. more ›