Smoke screen
Pot arrests fair and square, NYPD insists
THE NYPD defended its marijuana arrests after data cast doubt on cops’ claims that they’re making the busts based on neighborhood complaints about public pot smoking.
“Have you been to (a) neighborhood meeting with a commanding officer of a precinct and heard the complaints? Or spent a couple minutes listening to the radio and hearing these calls come over the air for response by patrol officers to drug calls?” NYPD spokesman Peter Donald said in an email to the Daily News on Wednesday.
Facing questions about a big racial gap in marijuana arrests, NYPD brass testified at a City Council hearing this week that cops are making arrests in areas where residents call 911 to complain.
“Where we make the majority of our arrests are where we tend to get the most complaints,” Chief Dermot Shea said.
But according to complaint stats turned over after the hearing, of the five neighborhoods with the most arrests for criminal possession of marijuana in 2016, only one ranked in the top five for 911 calls about pot.
In 2017, two of the top five neighborhoods for arrests were also in the top five for 911 calls, but the other three were not. East Harlem had the most arrests in both years, but did not rank near the top for 911 calls. “This story has quite literally no basis in reality,” Donald said after The News reported on the complaint records. Pot arrests have dropped significantly since 2014, when Mayor de Blasio and then-Police Commissioner Bill Bratton announced a new policy to give out summonses instead of making arrests for most marijuana possession offenses. But when someone is caught smoking weed in public, they still get arrested — and some 86% of those nabbed are black and Latino, leading to criticism from pols and advocates over the racial disparity.
The high number of arrests in East Harlem, Donald said, is explained in part by the presence of a special police task force launched in the neighborhood to deal with K2, a dangerous drug sometimes called synthetic marijuana that has caused overdoses.
Donald said that besides 911 and 311 calls, cops rely on complaints made at community meetings or to officers on the beat.
The data also don’t include calls made about “smoking,” “drugs,” “intoxicated” people and other terms besides “marijuana” and “weed.”
“Our enforcement often is consistent with where we receive complaints and certainly where we observe illegal behavior,” he said. “We have an obligation — as the police — to be responsive.”