new york

BY Rocco Parascandola, NY Daily News

 

Pot possession and boozing in public are the top reasons New Yorkers get arrested or ticketed by the cops, new statistics show.

 

And although marijuana arrests has been the top category for three years running, the number of busts spiked 15% between 2008 and 2009, the Daily News has learned.

 

The NYPD says the data - including more than 21,000 summonses for riding bicycles on the sidewalk - reflects its emphasis on quality-of-life violations to prevent more serious crime.

 

"It's often about complaints being generated by the public and us responding to them," said Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne. "Other times, it's just us enforcing violations when we see them."

 

Critics say the high numbers for weed, beer and other offenses like riding bikes on sidewalks smacks of quotas - or harassment in black and Hispanic neighborhoods.

By JIM DWYER

 

The Bloomberg administration has quietly been fixing up its sons and daughters with cool summer internships, as reported Tuesday in The New York Times. Which is probably fine: It is hard to see nepotism as much of a sin when it is really just another chapter of Darwinism, the drive possessed by all creatures to finagle a better future for their offspring.

 

No matter how much Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg preached about meritocracy, no one expected that the laws of nature would be repealed when he was elected.

 

Sure enough, a Freedom of Information Act request showed that tucked among hundreds of summer interns picked through a competitive process were dozens of the children of City Hall insiders or of Mr. Bloomberg’s friends. They reflected the mayor’s social and political circles: mostly white, many quite wealthy, coming from private high schools and Ivy League colleges.

 

In short, these are not residents of Stop and Frisk New York.

By. Steve Elliot, Toke of the Town

 

Former talk show host, U.S. veteran and New York resident Montel Williams on Tuesday will urge Governor David Paterson and members of the state Legislature to act quickly in order to finally pass New York's medical marijuana bill.

 

The bill would create one of the best regulated systems in the country for providing seriously ill patients with safe and effective access to medical marijuana when doctors recommend it, according to patient advocates.

 

Under New York's bill, the state department of health would play an active role in regulating dispensaries that would be licensed to provide medical marijuana to qualified patients.

 

Williams suffers from multiple sclerosis, and uses medical marijuana to help ease the effects of his condition.

By. Dave Lucas

 

Chronically ill patients from across New York state gathered in Albany tuesday to make a final plea for Governor David Paterson and the legislature to include a compassionate medical marijuana program in the state's budget. Capital District Bureau Chief Dave Lucas reports.

 

The Cannabis advocates argue that lawmakers are "playing political games while patients' lives hang in the balance" --- they want medical marijuana in the budget. Assemblyman Richard Gottfried chairs the Assembly Health Committee and is the sponsor of the Assembly's medical marijuana bill. "With the session almost over, this year's budget offers the best possible chance to provide some of the state's most vulnerable residents with the care they deserve. We need to pass this now."

 

Gottfried blasted critics of his bill, saying they're looking at California's "radically different" medical marijuana law than the one being contemplated for New York, which he says would be far more restrictive and regulatory than medical marijuana laws currently on the books in 14 states and the District of Columbia.

By. The Gothamist

 

Earlier this week NYC's special narcotics prosecutor Bridget Brennan (website: SPECNARC.org!) fired off a letter to state legislators considering a bill that would legalize marijuana for medical purposes. Among her concerns, she feels that the bill would create a situation similar to LA, where pot dispensaries supposedly outnumber Starbucks. That's what we call Utopia, but it's Brennan's nightmare, and she thinks the New York bill is "far too loosely drawn, and offers no safeguards to protect the health of those who use it, and the safety of the communities where marijuana dispensaries would be located."

 

Brennan also argues that "dispensaries have proven to be public nuisances and magnets for crime," and criticizes the bill for not requiring a doctor in "good standing" to meet with a patient in person before writing a pot prescription. For counterpoint, we turn to Mike Meno, Director of Communications for the Marijuana Policy Project. He tells us, "Bridget Brennan’s fears are way off mark. New York’s medical marijuana bill is specifically crafted to safeguard against abuse through regulation—one of the many reasons it has garnered support from the likes of former Manhattan D.A. Robert Morgenthau and state Sen. Eric Adams, a former New York City police captain.

By. Gabriel Sayegh, AlterNet

 

Driving along the Brooklyn Queens Expressway (BQE), you’ll see advertisements for just about everything, including alcohol, strip clubs and casinos. But there’s one ad you won’t see: a rejected billboard highlighting Mayor Bloomberg’s marijuana arrests policies in New York City.

 

Most New Yorkers don’t know that last year, the New York Police Department arrested close to 50,000 people for marijuana possession at a staggering cost of nearly $100 million. Even fewer know that possession of marijuana has been decriminalized in New York State since 1977. Yet over thirty years later, New York City has the dubious distinction as the marijuana arrest capital of the world.

 

To raise public awareness, the Drug Policy Alliance contracted advertising space on the BQE from TITAN 360, the world’s largest transit advertising company. The billboard, criticizing Mayor Bloomberg for his out of control marijuana arrest policy, was set to go up this week in Brooklyn and run through the month of May. TITAN estimated the billboard would be seen by nearly 400,000 people per day.

By/Published: My Latino Voice

 

The Latino Commission on AIDS, the leading national Latino HIV/AIDS organization released a new report today entitled New York State Responds to the Latino HIV/AIDS Crisis and Plans for Action with strategies for coordinated statewide campaigns to mobilize community leaders, elected officials and Latino communities in response to AIDS and promote a call-to-action to prevent and reduce the further spread of HIV.

 

New York city police made 46,400 lowest level marijuana possession arrests [NY State Penal Law 221.10] involving cases where marijuana was either used or possessed in public. Of those arrested, 54 percent were African American, 33 percent were Hispanic, and only ten percent were Caucasian.

When a police officer in this Long Island suburb found a marijuana cigarette in Jerry Lemaine’s pocket one night in January 2007, a Legal Aid lawyer counseled him to plead guilty. Under state statutes, the penalty was only a $100 fine, and though Mr. Lemaine had been caught with a small amount of marijuana years earlier as a teenager, that case had been dismissed.

But Mr. Lemaine, a legal permanent resident, soon discovered that his quick guilty plea had dire consequences. Immigration authorities flew him in shackles to Texas, where he spent three years behind bars, including 10 months in solitary confinement, as he fought deportation to Haiti, the country he had left at age 3.

by Mike Meno, Marijuana Policy Project

After years of lobbying by MPP, patients, physicians, and other allies, New York State may finally be on the verge of passing a medical marijuana law.

A Senate budget resolution that passed last night includes a provision that supports including the legal sale of medical marijuana in the state budget. We hope that as the budget process continues, this language will also be included in the final legislation and will be passed as part of the budget process.

Senate Democrats estimate that licensing fees from dispensaries could generate up to $15 million that could go toward closing the state’s $9 billion budget gap.