TICKLISH POCKET SEARCH COULD MEAN JAIL!

TICKLISH POCKET SEARCH COULD MEAN JAIL, (The Root)

Remember the last time you were pushed up against a car, spread eagle, patted down, turned around and directed to "empty your pockets?" Neither can I, I'm white and old, the average cop on the street sees that and figures I'm to old to be doing anything illegal.

Such is the state of affairs in New York city, where blacks and browns are stopped every day because they are black or brown. They aren't waving a weapon out the window, they don't have knives, and they certainly don't have bombs, they are simply black, or brown.

Is it racial profiling.....of course it is, at it's worst, and the result is more then 50,000 arrests every year for illegal drugs. New York has the highest per capita arrest rate for marijuana of any local nationwide. The trend runs counter to what is happening around most of the country, as states begin to legalize small amounts of marijuana.

In New York State, since 1977, 7/8 of an ounce of marijuana has been punishable of a ticket and possibly a $100 fine. But if a person has the marijuana in public view, "as in empty your pockets" a misdemeanor, a criminal offense, punishable with arrest, a fine and as much as three months in jail.

One result of these "ticklish pocket searches" is that young black and brown people, aged 16 to 29 are being duped into publicly revealing their allowable marijuana and then being arrested, thereby gaining a criminal record that will follow them the rest of their lives.

In 2010 New York State had 54,000 marijuana arrests, 50,000 of them in New York City, in neighborhoods that were primarily black, Latino and low income. Do you really think that 50,000 blacks and Latinos in New York City had their weed in plain sight?

It is estimated that the New York City police spend $75 million dollars a year on these type of arrests, even though only a third of the arrests garner guilty verdicts. Marijuana arrests are an easy way for a cop to make his arrest quota, if you believe in that kind of thing, "which I do."

Because the NYPD is the nation's largest police force, often the practices that it follows are often adopted as kind of a national standard and police departments across the country tend to mimic the NYPD's lead, especially in communities of color, and that.....is a ticklish subject.