Bill O'Reilly Opposes Marijuana Decrim Because it Might Reduce Racial Profiling

This week's exciting news that Gov. Cuomo and Mayor Bloomberg are backing an effort to end New York City's mindless marijuana arrest crusade didn't exactly result in a round of applause at the FOX News studios. Here's Bill O'Reilly babbling about it.

O'Reilly says the cops "know who the wise guys are," and they're only bothering people who deserve it. That sounds reassuring, oh, except for the fact that NYPD has already searched more young black men than they even have in the entire city. So yeah, they might be catching some of these "wise guys" as O'Reilly so eloquently describes them, but only because they're also searching every other young black man in the city. There is no clever strategy behind it. They're just searching all the black dudes. Stop trying to make it sound sophisticated, Bill.

But the real problem with O'Reilly's logic, and it also highlights the irony of whole ridiculous situation, is that there's no component in this new marijuana decriminalization proposal that would actually require police to stop constantly racially profiling everyone they see. That's not even what this is. 

Simple possession is already decriminalized in New York. The measure in question would simply downgrade the more serious charge of "possession in public view" so that racial profiling victims would no longer be charged with the public display of marijuana as a result of police ordering them to empty their pockets. The policy of police racially profiling people and illegally searching them remains intact under this plan. You just get off the hook if any pot is found during the course of police committing misconduct against you.

I'm still in favor of the reform – anything that might stop all these pot busts is great – but it's insane that they're actually going so far as to legalize "public display" of marijuana simply because they can't stop the cops from yanking pot out of people's pockets and then lying about it. New York's marijuana law wasn't really even the problem here and shouldn't actually need to be changed to prevent the racially abusive enforcement and prosecution scheme that's been going on in New York for the past decade.

These were false arrests to begin with and the most appropriate solution would be for police and prosecutors to stop systematically violating people's rights. But apparently that is more difficult than reducing the penalties for marijuana. Wow.