Criminal Justice

There has been a double-barreled challenge this week to the NYPD and its heavy-handed policing. On the one hand, the department and the city are being sued in federal court over their stop-and-frisk program, which is aimed predominantly at young men of color. On the other, the NYPD is facing the glare of publicity over a new report that contends it has wasted as much as a million man-hours over the past ten years arresting low-level marijuana offenders.

Under the stop-and-frisk program, which the city touts as a crime-fighting effort, more than 531,000 people were stopped last year and nearly five million in the past decade. Some were stopped only for questioning, some had their bags or backpacks searched, some were subjected to full pat-down searches. Only 10% of those stops resulted in arrests -- including arrests for public marijuana possession after police tricked or intimidated people into pulling out their baggies (possession is otherwise decriminalized in the state) -- and only a tiny number resulted in the seizure of weapons.

The massive number of annual stop-and-frisks, five times the number a couple of decades ago, raises questions itself. But who is being stopped-and-frisked is raising even more questions and concerns. While blacks make up a quarter of the city's population, they accounted for 51% of all stop-and-frisk encounters, being stopped at a rate twice what would be expected with color-blind enforcement. Whites, on the other hand, make up 44% of the population, but accounted for only 11% of stop-and-frisk encounters.

Many of the stop-and-frisks are illegal and the enforcement is racially biased, argued attorneys in the class action lawsuit in federal court this week. In the case, which began Monday, attorneys for the plaintiffs -- people who were subjected to stop-and-frisk searches -- are seeking a court-appointed monitor to oversee changes in police practices.

They are not seeking to ban stop-and-frisk searches because they have been found legal. But US District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin, who has expressed deep concerns over the tactic in previous rulings, could order reforms. The trial could last for up to a month.

NYPD is doing illegal stops and must reform its practices, said Center for Constitutional Rights attorney Darius Charney, who is representing the plaintiffs. The stops are "arbitrary, unnecessary, and unconstitutional" and a "frightening and degrading experience" for "thousands, if not millions" of New Yorkers, Charney argued. He said plaintiffs will present "powerful testimonial and statistical evidence" that residents are stopped for no good reason.

On Monday, the first plaintiff witnesses took the stand. Devin Almonor, 16, the son of a police officer, testified that he was stopped when he was 13, handcuffed and thrown against an unmarked police car as he made his way home. David Floyd, now a 33-year-old medical student, testified that he was stopped twice without cause.

Attorneys for the city responded that in a city that large, large numbers of stop-and-frisks should not be unexpected and that the NYPD went where the crime was.

"The New York Police Department is fully committed to policing within the boundaries of the law," said Heidi Grossman, an attorney for the city. "Crime is not distributed evenly across the city. Police are given an awesome responsibility, one of which is to bring crime down and keep people safe."

Given those awesome responsibilities, a new report from the Drug Policy Alliance and the Marijuana Arrest Research Project is raising eyebrows. The report's main finding is clear from its title: One Million Police Hours: Making 440,000 Marijuana Possession Arrests in New York City, 2002-2012. The report was authored by CUNY sociology professor Dr. Harry Levine, an expert on marijuana possession arrests, at the request of members of the city council and the state legislature.

While marijuana possession offenders typically faced only fines once they had their day in court, the report found that the arrests themselves inflicted immediate pain. Those 440,000 arrests resulted in five million hours of police custody, an average of more than 10 hours per person of being held in the city's notorious holding cells, often overnight.

"We cannot afford to continue arresting tens of thousands of youth every year for low-level marijuana possession," said Alfredo Carrasquillo, civil rights organizer with VOCAL-NY. "We can't afford it in terms of the negative effect it has on the future prospects of our youth and we can't afford in terms of police hours. It's shocking that the same mayor who has been taking money away from youth programs and cutting other social services, is wasting tens of millions of dollars locking youth up through the NYPD's marijuana arrests crusade. We need legislative action to fix this madness."

"This report shows that people arrested for marijuana possession spend an average of 12-18 hours, just in police custody, and the vast majority of those arrested are young Black and Latino men from seven to ten neighborhoods in NYC," said Chino Hardin, field coordinator and trainer with the Center for NuLeadership on Urban Solutions. "This is not just a crisis, but a frontline civil rights issue facing urban communities of color in the 21st century. We are calling on Governor Cuomo to do the right thing, and exercise the moral and political will to address this injustice."

While Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly last fall announced changes it how the NYPD processes marijuana arrests and the number of pot possession busts have begun to decline slightly, advocates are calling on the legislature and the governor to change the state's 1977 decriminalization law to remove law enforcement's "in public view" loophole, the provision NYPD has used to great effect.

"For years, New Yorkers from across the state have organized and marched and rallied, demanding an end to these outrageous arrests. And now we learn that the police have squandered one million hours to make racially biased, costly, and unlawful marijuana possession arrests. This is scandalous," said Gabriel Sayegh, New York state director for the Drug Policy Alliance. "I’m sure we can all think of more effective things for the police to spend their time on -- imagine if NYPD committed one million hours to working with communities to stop gun violence or to pursue unsolved serious crimes. We stand with the caucus and other leaders in Albany -- both Democrats and Republicans -- in demanding reform. The hour of change is upon us, and reform is long, long overdue."

Whether it is the massive stop-and-frisk policing program or the practice of turning marijuana possession tickets into misdemeanor arrests complete with post-booking jail time and criminal records, NYPD is coming under increasing scrutiny and criticism..

A Customs agent, a Texas deputy, and a small-town California cop all go down this week. Let's get to it:

In Yuma, Arizona, a US Customs and Border Patrol officer was arrested last Thursday on money laundering charges. Officer Lauro Tobias, 59, went down in a sting operation last August in which he transported a bag containing a large amount of cash he believed to be drug profits from Las Vegas to Phoenix. He was snared by the Southern Arizona Corruption Task Force, made up of numerous federal agencies and prosecutors.

In Fresno, California, a former Hanford police officer was sentenced last Wednesday to six months in jail for selling drugs while in uniform. Ernesto Servin went down after prosecutors received an anonymous tip he was selling drugs on the job, and undercover investigators found drugs in his patrol car. During his trial, prosecutors said he was stealing drugs from dealers and selling them to addicted women with whom he hoped to have relationships.

In Houston, Texas, a former Harris County's sheriff's deputy was sentenced Monday to 46 months in federal prison for conspiring to steal drug loads from dealers and split the proceeds with others. Richard Nutt, 45, had pleaded guilty last month. He went down in a 2010 sting after the Houston Police heard that members of law enforcement were robbing drug shipments in the area. Nutt agreed to conduct a bogus traffic stop of what he thought was a drug dealer's car and pretend to arrest him, while his co-defendants took the vehicle with the drugs. He was arrested after the rip-off went down and found with the package of fake cocaine stolen in the rip-off.

Snitch is a Hollywood action thriller with a message, and it’s a message that is so far playing well with audiences and theaters across the land. The $15 million crime and justice pic starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Susan Sarandon has already done more than $32 million in gross box office receipts, and its being held over for a fourth week in select theaters around the country.

Based on a 1999 PBS Frontline documentary of the same name, Snitch tells the story of trucking company owner John Matthews (Johnson), whose estranged son is set up by a friend in trouble with the law. The son accepts delivery of a package of Ecstasy, and is then raided and arrested by the DEA. Matthews' hired attorney explains to the stunned parents that their son is looking at a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence, and the only way out is to snitch on somebody else.

The son bravely refuses to rat out his friends and is kept behind bars, where he is brutalized, but Matthews feels it is nobler to save his son and decides to intercede on his behalf. Using his business connections, he wrangles a meeting with hard-hearted, politically-driven US Attorney Joanne Keeghan (Sarandon) and offers to set up dope dealers himself if that can get his son out of trouble.

From there, it's typical action thriller material, with dangerous, desperate dope dealers (who already have two strikes and aren't about to go down for a third), tormented ex-cons trying to go straight, duplicitious (but kind hearted) DEA agents, and bloodthirsty Mexican cartels. There is danger, suspense, shoot 'em ups, and car chases before the movie resolves with junior getting out of jail and the family disappearing into the witness protection program.

But running throughout the nearly two-hour movie are the twin themes of snitching and mandatory minimum sentencing. Snitch lays bare the workings of the drug war's informing imperative, scratching at the surface of the moral contradictions involved, and subtly brings to life the mindless cruelty of imposing lengthy mandatory minimums on nonviolent drug offenders, but it manages to do so in the middle of a mainstream cinematic entertainment vehicle.

That's just what director Ric Roman Waugh wanted, he told Drug War Chronicle in a phone interview Wednesday from Austin, where he is attending the SXSW festival. Once merely a music showcase, SXSW is now a playland for all sorts of artistic endeavors, including Hollywood action films with a message.

"The move is really a first testament to how far you go to protect your kids," said Waugh. "In the documentary, he didn't just talk the talk, he walked the walk. He got the US Attorney to sign off and reduce his kid's sentence for a bigger bust. That really happened, and we wanted to open that up."

When he was offered the chance to rewrite the script for the movie, he jumped at the offer, he said.

"They sent me the original script and the Frontline documentary, and it was that core message that really jumped out, and we turned that into a first-person point of view movie," the stuntman turned director said. "The snitching and the mandatory minimums were integral to what we wanted to talk about. The message of the movie is that you can be for or against the war on drugs, but watch what this father went through and then think about these controversial mandatory minimums. When you walk out of the theater and realize nonviolent drug offenders are doing longer sentences than rapists and people who committed manslaughter, that's something to think about."

Snitch was screened last week at an event hosted by Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) in Washington, DC, but the film has been generating buzz among the broader public as well.

"The response has been tremendous," Waugh said. "There is a core audience that will go see a movie with a message, but that's a relatively small audience. But when you can put that message in the body of bigger action thriller and you're not hitting them over the head with it but just allowing them to experience the controversies, they're coming out and talking about it. They're talking about the world of informants, the liar's club, if you will, and what you would do if your life or the life of your child was on the line. It's created a lot of dialog, and that's what we intended.

Unlike documentaries, which typically play to art house audiences and die quiet, largely unlamented deaths, this Hollywood treatment of the issues has demonstrated some staying power.

"It's been playing for three weeks and will continue for quite awhile," said Waugh. "We've exceeded expectations for movies this size, lots of theaters are keeping us over for the fourth week, and we're even adding a few screens. People are able to relate to this in their own lives. What would happen if their kids were in harm's way? The movie tries to look these draconian laws and the system as a whole and get people to ask where they stand on them. We're only halfway there, and it's already a success. That's a real testament that you can do a message movie, you can do a commercial action thriller that's about something."

As noted above, even though Snitch opened on February 22, it's still being held over in theaters across the land. If you have an interest in drug war issues or if you get off on action flicks in general or flicks starring The Rock in particular, or better yet, if you have a friend or family member who's gaga for The Rock or a sucker for car chases, but has displayed no particular interest in or awareness of issues like snitching or mandatory minimums, it's time to have a movie date while Snitch is still on the big screen.

There is action in various state houses, Michiganders continue to tussle over their medical marijuana law, and there's an investigation going on in Maine. Let's get to it:

California

Last Thursday, the California Coastal Commission approved Imperial Beach zoning law changes that banned dispensaries from operating in the city. The city had approved the ban in July 2011, but action was delayed while opponents of the ban sought unsuccessfully to overturn it with a municipal initiative last November. The change in local zoning will not impact the ability for up to three people to form a collective to cultivate marijuana in Imperial Beach.

Maine

Last Friday, state officials said they were investigating a cultivation center that supplies the state's largest dispensary operator. The grow operation supplies Wellness Connection of Maine's four dispensaries, which all closed last week. A Wellness Connection spokesperson said the state was conducting "a comprehensive regulatory inspection" and that there was no connection between the investigation and the dispensary closings. State officials had no further comment.

Maryland

Last Friday, the governor's office suggested he would support a pending medical marijuana bill. Joshua Sharfstein, Gov. Martin O’Malley’s secretary of Health and Mental Hygiene, testified before lawmakers on Friday that a bill sponsored by Del. Dan K. Morhaim (D), a Baltimore County doctor, contained most of the provisions the governor could support. The bill would allow academic medical centers in the state to operate "compassionate use programs" beginning in 2016.

Massachusetts

Last Friday, the Massachusetts Medical Society called for research on marijuana's medical uses. The move signals an evolution in the thinking of the doctors' group, which had publicly opposed passage of the state's medical marijuana initiative last year. The group called for research to ensure that marijuana is subjected to the same rigorous testing as prescription drugs.

Michigan

Last Tuesday, a circuit court judge ruled that medical marijuana users can collect unemployment benefits. Ingham County Circuit Judge William Collette overturned a decision by a state commission that found a state-approved medical marijuana user, who was fired from her job after failing a drug test, was not eligible for the benefits. Collette ruled that the worker had already informed her employer of her medical marijuana use and the drug test "merely demonstrated what she had informed her employer of prior to the test -- that she uses medical marijuana."

Last Wednesday, police in Grand Rapids raided three dispensaries. Dispensaries were ruled illegal by the state Supreme Court last month, and the state attorney general has given local prosecutors the go-ahead to start shutting them down. At least one dispensary has already reopened, with the proprietor arguing that it is not violating the law because it requires caregivers to be present with patients during transactions. No charges have been filed yet.

Last Friday, a circuit court judge ruled that dispensaries are bound by local zoning laws. Washtenaw County Circuit Court Judge Archie Brown made the ruling in refusing dismiss a complaint against two Ypsilanti Township residents who are accused of growing more marijuana than the town's zoning ordinance allows. Under the Michigan Medical Marijuana Act, caregivers can grow up to 72 plants for patients, but township code only allowed the 12 plants approved for an individual patient. The case was the first court challenge to zoning laws restricting medical marijuana in the state.

Minnesota

On Wednesday, a Public Policy Polling survey found that 65% of state voters support medical marijuana. The results of the statewide survey come as state lawmakers prepare a bipartisan bill that would make it legal for Minnesota residents with debilitating medical conditions, such as cancer, multiple sclerosis, and HIV/AIDS, to access and use medical marijuana if advised to do so by their physicians. Its introduction is expected within the next two weeks, at which time details of the proposal will be made available. The poll found a strong majority (54%) of voters in the state would disapprove of their county sheriff or county attorney working to defeat such a bill, while only 24% would approve.Two-thirds (66%) think Gov. Mark Dayton should sign it if it is approved by the legislature.

Missouri

Last Friday, a medical marijuana bill was reintroduced in the state legislature. The bill, House Bill 688, would allow patients with debilitating conditions, such as HIV/AIDS, cancer, and multiple sclerosis, to use and possess marijuana for medical purposes if their doctors recommend it. The bill would put the question to voters on the November 2014 general election ballot.

New Hampshire

Last Thursday, a medical marijuana bill advanced in the House. The Health Human Services and Elderly Affairs Committee voted 14-1 to recommend that the full House pass the bill after amending it to block out of state patients from buying marijuana at the five dispensaries the bill envisions. Out of state patients could bring up to two ounces of their medicine with them. The amended bill also lowers the number of plants allowed from four adults to three and reduces the area of a legal grow site from 100 square feet to 50.