New York City Commissioner Ray Kelly recently told Big Apple cops to stop arresting people for simple possession of marijuana. As Radley Balko has repeatedly pointed out, police in New York routinely trick “suspicious” types into violating the city’s law against “public display” of the drug as a way to boost their arrest records. In September of this year, Kelly sent out a memo saying that an individual who is emptying his pockets in response to a “stop and frisk” encounter should not be arrested for public display merely because he comes up with a handful of weed.
But despite the memo, NYC marijuana arrests set a new record in 2011—50,684 arrests, as reported by New York magazine. Maybe next year will be better.
