The city’s police department’s stop and frisk policy is sending thousands of young people of color through the penal system for minor marijuana arrests, according to a recently released study.

The Drug Policy Alliance report found that there were 50,383 low-level marijuana possession arrests last year and 86 percent of those arrested were young people of color.

“Had this been 86% of our young children of a lighter shade, there would be uproar. I believe there still should be,” said Flatbush City Councilmember Jumaane. Williams. “These arrests are simply about boosting arrest numbers and aren’t the answer to our problems.”

There are two components to all the marijuana arrests, explained Evan Goldstein, policy coordinator for the alliance.  The first is that in 1977, the state decriminalized concealed possession of up to 25 grams or seven-eighths of an ounce of marijuana. People caught with under this amount of weed are given a violation ticket, similar to a traffic offense, and are subject to a $100 fine.
The second component, however, is that those caught burning or exhibiting marijuana in public are committing a class B misdemeanor, which is an arrestable offense.
“In communities of color which has both police Impact Zones and stop and frisk policing, you have cops coming up to young men of color and saying to empty their pockets. “If even the slightest amount of marijuana is in their pockets, once they take it out, even if it’s through police coercion, it becomes public view and then arrests are made.”
Such an arrest was made of Brownsville resident Chino Hardin, who was stopped by plain clothes police in 2005 with three “nickel” bags of marijuana in her pocket – far less than three-quarters of an ounce.

“They (cops) pulled me into a building and said, ‘Where are the drug?’” Hardin recalled. “I said if I had marijuana they would have to find it.”Hardin recalled after being searched the cops pulled out the marijuana and then arrested her for exhibiting it in public. She then spent two days in the prison system before the matter was eventually dropped to a violation.Goldstein pointed out that 70 percent of these arrested on these minor pot charges are under the age of 29, and for many it is their first encounter with the prison system.

The study also found that these minor marijuana arrests costs the city $75 million a year at a time when many safety net programs are being cut due to budget constraints.

NYPD Police commissioner Ray Kelly has repeatedly defended the stop and frisk policing, particularly in communities of color because it helps fight the high incidents of black-on-black crime.     Kelly told reporters that the reason police make the marijuana arrests is because cops are following the letter of the law and once pot is displayed it becomes a misdemeanor and arrestable.

The report notes that during the Bloomberg administration from 2002 through 2010 cops made nearly 350,000 arrests for marijuana possession – costing taxpayers $350 million to $700 million. It also found that although 70 percent of the arrests were of black and Latino between 16-29,      “More people have been arrested for marijuana possession under Mayor Bloomberg than under Mayors Koch, Dinkins, and Giuliani combined,” said report co- author Dr. Harry Levine, a sociology professor at City University of New York and a national expert on marijuana arrests.      City Councilwoman Letitia James said it’s clear that the NYPD’s current policy of giving high arrest priority to marijuana enforcement is fiscally wasteful, and has a greater impact on low-income communities where the ‘war-on-drugs’ has been primarily focused.     “Although African-Americans only constitute 13% of national of drug users, they make up 38% of those arrested for drug offenses, and 59% of those convicted of drug offenses. It is fair to say that the high priority given to marijuana enforcement directly relates to racial profiling in New York,” she said.

Only one in four young black men in New York City has a job, according to a report released by the Community Service Society of New York. The report, “Unemployment in New York City During the Recession and Early Recovery: Young Black Men Hit the Hardest,” illustrates that some demographic groups experienced the brunt of the recession more than others in terms of unemployment and job loss. Data for the report comes from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics and, according to the report, in New York City the groups most affected by the recession were blacks, Latinos, youth and those with less than a high school or equivalent diploma.

Only one in four young black men in New York City has a job, according to a report released by the Community Service Society of New York. The report, “Unemployment in New York City During the Recession and Early Recovery: Young Black Men Hit the Hardest,” illustrates that some demographic groups experienced the brunt of the recession more than others in terms of unemployment and job loss. Data for the report comes from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics and, according to the report, in New York City the groups most affected by the recession were blacks, Latinos, youth and those with less than a high school or equivalent diploma. “The recession has created a landscape of the unemployed and underemployed with particular catastrophic consequences for young African-American men,” said David R. Jones, president and CEO of the Community Service Society of New York. “We have long known the struggles of the more than 200,000 youth in New York City who are out of work and out of school. Now young black men between 16 and 24 years have become the banner of hopelessness, particularly here in New York City.”

According to CSS Labor Market Analyst and the report’s author Michelle Holder, the Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t compile city-level demographic employment data such as contained in the report, which outlines a difficult picture for young people, people of color, and the less educated in New York City. Ms. Holder added, in addition to unemployed youth, an estimated 30 percent of the unemployed in the city who previously held a job were unemployed for more than a year and, for those 55-64 years old, it took almost nine months to find a job. The top line report findings are: The largest increase in the unemployment rate occurred among working-age black men – it jumped from 9 percent in 2006 to 17.9 percent in 2009, an increase of nearly 9 percentage points.

The highest unemployment rate in 2009 was among men 16-24 years of age—their overall unemployment rate hit 24.6 percent during the recession and early recovery period. Breaking this down by race, young black men had the highest unemployment rate in this group—33.5 percent. While only one in four black men ages 16-24 have a job in the city, that figure drops to an astounding one in ten for young black men without a high school diploma.

Men 55-64 years old had the longest average spell of unemployment (approximately 39 weeks), but black New Yorkers had the highest percentage of those unemployed for more than a year; nearly 40 percent of black men and women who held a job before were unemployed for more than 12 months during the recession and early recovery. Overall, the average length of unemployment during the recession/early recovery period for all New Yorkers was just over six months. CSS published a report in 2004 on black male unemployment that explored the jobless and unemployment figures for this demographic; that report showed that only about 50 percent of all working-age black men held jobs in New York City at that time. While that figure has not changed significantly, noted Ms. Holder, the jobholding rate for young black men in particular is about half that level, and even lower for those who lack a high school or equivalent diploma.

Ms. Holder added, “From a public policy perspective, the main findings of my report are troubling because young African-American men without a job and without an adequate education become at-risk for involvement in the criminal justice system. As it is, black people are overrepresented among the incarcerated in this country. We need to ensure that young men of color in New York City are achieving the basic educational requirements to either get a decent job or go on to college if they so choose.”

Existing research has shown that the lack of a high school diploma as well as high unemployment puts young men at greater risk for incarceration. Also, there is strong evidence that shows that having a prison record is associated with subsequent poorer employment and wage outcomes. CSS continues to strongly advocate for quality General Educational Development (G.E.D.) programs as well as transitional workforce programs that help prepare young people to make successful transitions into either college or permanent, full-time employment. “Without work, without school and without a diploma, young African-American men are vulnerable for the prison pipeline,” Jones added. “The absence of training and jobs will provide a clear and uninterrupted pathway to poverty and potential imprisonment,” Jones added. For 165 years, the Community Service Society of New York has been the leading voice on behalf of low-income New Yorkers and continues to advocate for the economic security of the working poor in the nation’s largest city.

“John White’s life is valuable. John White’s family’s life is valuable,” Greys said. “If we lose this opportunity, the entire country is in trouble.”
Gubernatorial candidate Charles Barron said “Racism id no the badge. It is easy to see racism in police brutality. Racism is also in the budget. We can’t just organize around symptoms. If the machine is producing unemployment, homelessness, inadequate health care, police brutality, and mis-education, we need to use leverage politics to change the system,” said Barron. “We can pick, choose, or be the next people in powerful positions.”
Labor activist Brenda Stokely spoke of her grandfather and grandmother, both of whom had to violently defend themselves against being lynched. Stan Kinnard referenced Robert Williamson’s book “Negroes with Guns” and Malcolm X’s “Ballot or Bullet” speech and recalled Mayor Koch applauding Bernard Goetz, who shot several Black youths on a NYC subway.
The rally raised more than $6,000 in cash and checks for the John White family and another $6,000 in pledges.
Flanked by his family, John White thanked 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, the Nation of Islam, CEMOTAP, and “all the people who came to our aid and support. I give all honor and glory to God.”

Bill Thompson grew up on Putnam Avenue between Stuyvesant and Malcolm X Blvd.   The journey from those streets to being elected City Comptroller in 2001, managing a staff of more than 700 with a budget of $68 million and being overwhelmingly reelected in 2005,  is a long one with middle-class struggles, and successes achieved by hard work.  It is a journey that has attuned Comptroller Thompson to the problems that the middle class and middle class aspirants feel every day.  It has also given him the confidence to use the strategy necessary for this mayoral battle.  “The only way to compete with the richest man in New York City is to build from the ground up.  If you’re going to get into a dollar battle, you’re going to lose very quickly.” 

Thompson was speaking at a fund-raiser in the UN Plaza home of Edward Bergman and his family, high above the East River and about as far from Putnam Avenue as you can get. Here, Bill Thompson was speaking about education  and the need to go in a different direction.  “Our young people are being taught to take standardized tests,” he said.  “Our children are not taught critical thinking.  They’re not taught comprehension.  Not taught the skills they will need in the future.  We’re being given a false sense of accomplishment and all it is leading to is that our children are not being taught to compete.” 

Bill Thompson has an empathy with ordinary people that Mayor Bloomberg feels can be achieved by riding the subway four or five times a week.  But the Brooklyn Papers reported that in their interview with the Mayor, they asked about community benefit agreements, such as that signed by Bruce Ratner for the Atlantic Yards Project.  “I’m violently opposed to community benefits agreements,” the mayor replied.   “A small group of people, to feather their own nests, extort money from the developer? That’s just not good government.”    This statement alone disqualifies him as a choice for Mayor of New York City.  Here he is the richest man in New York, oblivious to the irony of his being “violently opposed” to small groups of unemployed Black men, many living pressed in by the explosion of construction in downtown Brooklyn, feathering their public housing nests, by demanding the opportunity to do hard work. 

He accuses them of extortion for insisting that developers of the gilded city rising only blocks away, put aside a portion of contracts and work for local people and companies.  He has $16 billion dollars, but helping someone bring home a paycheck for rent, food and clothing is “not good government.”  His concept of good government would have met with a vigorous nod of approval from Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France who, the apocryphal story goes, when told the starving masses had no bread, thought she’d be cute and said, “Let them eat cake.”  True or not, it was 1793 during the French Revolution and the people objected to the haughty attitude and the lady lost her head.  

The mayor’s team seems to have lost their collective heads as well or they must have read something in the polls saying it won’t be a double-digit win, to risk bringing in Rudy Giuliani, the biggest loser in the Republican presidential primaries, and someone anathema to the African-American community, to campaign with the mayor. Giuliani knows as much now as when he snickered at the Republican Convention at the thought of a “community organizer” becoming president.

Rudy’s connecting an election of William Thompson with a probable rise in crime and Bloomberg, frankly dishearteningly, going further, saying that New York can go the way of Detroit if Thompson were elected, was certainly the most offensive local politicking we’ve seen in some time.  Why does a billionaire have to resort to running a morally bankrupt campaign? Maybe it is as former mayor David Dinkins said at the Manhattan fundraiser, they have forgotten the great Negro Baseball League player Satchel Paige’s admonition, “Don’t look back, they may be gaining on you.” 

I don’t know what the calculus is here, perhaps the old tactic of tricking poor whites that they and the plantation owners share a bond, but it is certainly dismissive of the Black vote and those who would rather have the men of the neighborhood going to and from work rather than standing around chronically unemployed.   The mayor’s office has to become centered on the problems of regular working people and those who want to be working, and the city budget has to be used to not only deliver services but to circulate in the communities that need them most, lifting the quality of life for all New Yorkers.  It’s time for the Bloomberg era to come to a close.   Polls open 6am, November 3rd.  Every vote counts.