In his July 21 New York Times column, ‘A Smell of Pot And Privilege In the City,’ Jim Dwyer takes New York mayor Michael Bloomberg to task for granting city summer internships mostly to the sons an daughters of rich whites and for the lack of blacks, Latinos and women in his administration’s key management positions. Dwyer complained that the interns "reflected the mayor’s social and political circles: mostly white, many quite wealthy, coming from private high schools and Ivy League colleges" and "not residents of Stop and Frisk New York."
As for the Bloomberg administration’s white male managers, Dwyer says they "are shaping policies that wind up leading to the deprivation of liberty of people who do not look like them." Here Dwyer is referring to New York’s successful ‘Stop and Frisk’ crime fighting tool which he blames for the disproportionate number of blacks and Latinos that get busted on pot charges. (For some insights into NY’s Stop and Frisk program, read my blog NON-HISPANIC WHITES COMMIT ONLY 5% OF NEW YORK'S VIOLENT CRIMES, 1.4% OF ALL SHOOTINGS AND LESS THAN 5% OF ALL ROBBERIES / 7-5-10)
Dwyer mentions that Bloomberg says 'medical marijuana' was a Trojan horse for the complete legalization of pot, adding that "It has nothing to do with medicine." The mayor sure got that one right! All you have to do is look at what has happened in Kookfornia and Colorado.
Here are the excerpts on pot busts from A SMELL OF POT AND PRIVILEGE IN THE CITY:
No city in the world arrests more of its citizens for using pot than New York, according to statistics compiled by Harry G. Levine, a Queens College sociologist.
Nearly nine out of ten people charged with violating the law are black or Latino, although national surveys have shown that whites are the heaviest users of pot. Mr. Bloomberg himself acknowledged in 2001 that he had used it, and enjoyed it.
On the Upper East Side of Manhattan where the mayor lives, an average of 20 people for every 100,000 residents were arrested on the lowest-level misdemeanor pot charge in 2007, 2008 and 2009.
During those same years, the marijuana arrest rate in Brownsville, Brooklyn, was 3,109 for every 100,000 residents.
That means the chances of getting arrested on pot charges in Brownsville — and nothing else — were 150 times greater than on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
No doubt this is, in large part, a consequence of the stop-and-frisk practices of the Police Department, which Mr. Bloomberg and his aides say have been an important tool in bringing down crime.
Nowhere in the city is that tactic used more heavily than in Brownsville. On average, the police conducted one stop and frisk a year for every one of the 14,000 people who live there, an analysis by The New York Times found. More than 99 percent of the people were not arrested or charged with any wrongdoing.
Brownsville has the highest marijuana arrest rate in the city. The top 10 precincts for marijuana arrests averaged 2,150 for every 100,000 residents; the populations in those precincts are generally 90 percent or more nonwhite.
Mr. Bloomberg’s neighborhood has the lowest rate of marijuana arrests; the 10 precincts with the lowest rates averaged 67 arrests per 100,000 residents. The population in most of those neighborhoods was 80 percent white.
A few weeks ago, Mr. Bloomberg talked about proposals that would allow marijuana to be distributed for putatively medical purposes.
He said it was a Trojan horse for complete legalization.
"I mean, the idea of medical marijuana, we all know what that means: It means everybody is going to qualify," he said. "The worst thing is the hypocrisy of saying it’s medical marijuana. If you want to legalize it, let’s have that debate, but that’s what you’re really talking about. It has nothing to do with medicine."
In truth, in New York, the debate was over before it began.
For blacks and Latinos, it is very, very illegal.
But not in Mr. Bloomberg’s neighborhood.
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