The War On Black People… I Mean ‘Drugs,’ Is Going Really Well

This morning, we told you how Jeff Sessions is, uhh, pot-committed to bringing back the “war on drugs,” in all of its evil and ineffective ways.

Jeff Sessions is a racist elf who sneaks into your house at night to punch holes in your diaphragm before being spirited away on the backs of his slaves. Remember, Jeff Sessions’s only problem with the Ku Klux Klan is that they’re soft on drugs. It’s easy to accept that a guy like that is going to have some retrograde views on drug enforcement.

But it would be a mistake to think that only Southerners who spent 1850 to 1960 in cryo-stasis have entirely racist approaches to the prosecution of drug crimes.

Here in New York, we have a mayor who ran on a campaign of ending the divisive and racially motivated unequal enforcement of drug laws. Many people, my own idiot-self included, voted for him specifically because we thought he’d drag New York, kicking and screaming, into a 21st Century approach to drug enforcement.

Well, meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Mayor Bill de Blasio’s report card is in, and he’s getting an ‘F’ for “ofay.” From the Daily News:

There were more than 60,000 marijuana possession arrests in the first three years of Hizzoner’s term — 86% of them targeting blacks and Latinos, according to the report commissioned by the Drug Policy Alliance.

The number is down substantially from the first three years of former Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s tenure — when there were 112,000 such arrests — but is well above the 18,000 arrests over the same period under Rudy Giuliani, 3,000 under David Dinkins, and 6,000 under Ed Koch.

And the racial disparity hasn’t budged, the group found.

This will come as a shock to white people over here from Stormfront looking for a Kayleigh column, but there are more white people in New York City than blacks and Latinos. Even more shocking for the Alt-Right crows and no one else, young white people are MORE likely to smoke weed than black people.

This statistical comparison kind of ties the whole room together:

In the overwhelmingly white Upper East Side, cops made only 14 marijuana possession arrests in 2016. By contrast, West Harlem, which had the highest arrest rate in the city, saw 677 arrests, even though its population is a third of the size.

I had friends from out of town come visit me on the Upper East Side who said that they didn’t know “there were so many skunks in Manhattan.” In related news, the Mephitidae population on the Upper East Side is actually quite small and they’re not silently making their way to Asphalt Green on a Saturday afternoon.

When you have 677 arrests in West Harlem and 14 arrests on the Upper East Side, you’re seeing racism. You’re seeing racism expressed in mathematical terms.

For its part, the NYPD blames the selective enforcement not on departmental racism, but on the ridiculous notion that black people want the cops to terrorize their communities, while white people are just more chill about drug enforcement.

An NYPD spokesman said “much quality of life‎ enforcement is in direct response to specific and repeated complaints from members of the community, often in high-crime neighborhoods.”

WELL THEN ARREST PEOPLE FOR CRIMES, and stop oppressing the black community with selective enforcement!

Obviously, if there’s a Democrat who wants to run AGAINST Bill de Blasio with a plan to actually implement criminal justice reform, I’d like to vote for you. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that any Democrats have the spine it takes to actually stand up to and break the culture of racism in the police force.

And since the choice is usually between a weak Democrat and a racist fruit bat who pulls human skin over his form to secure the GOP nomination, I feel it’s likely I’ll get fooled again.

Cops cuffed 60,000 people for pot possession in de Blasio’s first three years as mayor [New York Daily News]

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Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at [email protected]. He will resist.

Earlier

https://abovethelaw.com/2017/07/jeff-sessions-hasnt-learned-the-lessons-of-the-80s/