Report Finds Blacks In NYC Still Arrested 8X More Than Whites On Low-Level Marijuana Charges

Written by Ann Brown

According to government surveys, Black and white people smoke marijuana at about the same rate, yet Black people in New York City are 8 times more likely to be arrested on marijuana possession charges than whites.

NYC police explain this disparity by saying there are more complaints about smoking in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods. But an analysis by the New York Times found that this explanation isn’t correct as even in neighborhoods where residents made complaint calls about marijuana at the same rate, the police still arrested Black residents are higher rates.

While arrests have dropped overall, people of color remain disproportionately unchanged. “Mayor Bill de Blasio said in late 2014 that the police would largely give summonses instead of making arrests for carrying personal marijuana, and reserve arrests mainly for smoking in public. Since then, the police have arrested 17,500 people for marijuana possession on average a year, down from about 26,000 people in 2014, and issued thousands of additional summonses. Overall, arrests have dropped sharply from their recent peak of more than 50,000 during some years under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg,” the New York Times reported.

However, approximately 87 percent of those arrested in have been Black or Hispanic, and this has stayed the same for decades, according to research headed by Harry G. Levine, a sociology professor at Queens College.

Take for example, Brooklyn. In Canarsie, where the residents are 85 percent Black, there are four times more arrests than in the largely white area of Greenpoint (only 4 percent of the residents are Black), even though residents call 311 and 911 to complain about marijuana at about the same rate, found the Times.

Although police data do show Black and Hispanic neighborhoods generate more 311 and 911 complaint calls about marijuana, criminal justice reform advocates say this is because people in poor neighborhoods tend to the police since they are less likely to have a responsive landlord, building superintendent or co-op board member who can they can turn to for complaints.

In part because of this wide gap in arrests for marijuana, New York Gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon suggested that Black neighbors be given greater consideration for legal marijuana licenses when marijuana becomes legal in the state. Nixon said this could be a form of reparations, an idea that was met with major backlash.

The NYT analysis looked at how marijuana arrests were related to the marijuana-complaint rate, race, violent-crime levels, the poverty rate, and even homeownership data in each precinct.

 

Illustration via Flickr user DonkeyHotey

[Read how we crunched the numbers to reveal the racial disparity in arrests.]

 
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