NEW YORK TIMES Editorial: …When Judge Shira Scheindlin of Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled a year ago that stop-and-frisk policies were unconstitutional, she ordered a pilot program for officers to wear cameras that record interactions with the public. The program will be in precincts with the most stop-and-frisk cases, including the North Shore of Staten Island, where [Eric] Garner lived. That is a promising development. So was the announcement this month by the Brooklyn district attorney, Kenneth Thompson, that he would no longer prosecute most minor marijuana cases. More than 70 percent of people arrested for marijuana have no convictions of any kind. Though whites and minorities don’t differ much in marijuana use, more than 85 percent of people arrested for marijuana in New York City are black or Hispanic.
[Mayor Bill] de Blasio is a stout defender. The tactic was embraced in the crime-plagued New York of 20 years ago. But while violence has ebbed, siege-based tactics have not. The Times reported on Friday that the Police Department made 394,539 arrests last year, near historical highs.
The mayor and the commissioner should acknowledge the heavy price paid for heavy enforcement. Broken windows and its variants — “zero-tolerance,” “quality-of-life,” “stop-and-frisk” practices — have pointlessly burdened thousands of young people, most of them black and Hispanic, with criminal records. These policies have filled courts to bursting with first-time, minor offenders whose cases are often thrown out, though not before their lives are severely disrupted and their reputations blemished. They have caused thousands to lose their jobs, to be suspended from school, to be barred from housing or the military. They have ensnared immigrants who end up, through a federal fingerprinting program, being deported and losing everything… (more)
EDITOR: Perhaps we should continue to enforce the laws, but mitigate the penalties, as is being done with marijuana offenses.
In NYC, you can imbibe in private but not in public. Nothing the matter with that.
