Despite Mayor De Blasio’s “liberal agenda”, in his first five months in office he has arrested more people per month than former Mayors Bloomberg and Giuliani. The NYPD has arrested an average 80 people a month, 86 percent of those were either Black or Latino.
Even though marijuana decriminalization laws have been repeatedly been introduced since the 70’s, the arrests keep increasing. In 1994, under NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton, who is now in office again, cannibus arrests never averaged higher than 16 per month. Recently the New York City Council had discussed decriminalization during talks about the proposed NYPD budget.
Back on May 20 Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, addressed the media after the hearing ended. “Let me be clear: at the state level, since the 1970s, for small quantities, it’s been decriminalized,” the Council Speaker said. “My hope is that this is the next major policy change under the NYPD so we can curtail the number of African American and Latino youth that are being criminalized.”
However, while some decriminalization laws already exist, extending their reach is not unanimously supported.
“The idea of decriminalizing marijuana, I think, is a major mistake and something I will never support,” Bratton told City Councilmembers.
With Bratton making statements like this, many are looking to the Mayor to create needed change. Loren Siegel of the Marijuana Arrest Research Project said, “This is a practice and a policy that’s very easy to fix…All it requires is for the mayor to tell the police commissioner to stop it.”