The New York Police Department regularly faces criticism over the disproportionate number of Black and brown people who are arrested for marijuana possession. The department’s constant refrain has been that officers go where they are called. They respond to complaints to the city’s 311 assistance line or calls to 911. Arrests, they say, flow naturally from those calls to action.

But a New York Times analysis published this month threw that contention into serious doubt. As the paper reported, “among neighborhoods where people called about marijuana at the same rate, the police almost always made arrests at a higher rate in the area with more black residents.” An analysis by Politico New York in March also reached a similar conclusion. These reports have energized the campaign to legalize marijuana in the state.

The disproportionate impact that marijuana arrests have on communities of color in New York City, the state, and the rest of the country is profound — and exceptionally well-documented. Nationwide, Black people are almost four times more likely than their white neighbors to be arrested for marijuana possession, despite similar rates of consumption across racial and ethnic groups. In New York state, which has some of the harshest enforcement practices in the country, more than 80 percent of people arrested for marijuana possession were Black or Latino. [Read more @ ACLU.org]