BRONX TIMES REPORTER, S BTR EPT. 3-9, 2021 9
from John Jay College.
“The war on drugs in
the West Coast gets talked
about for how it upended
various communities, particularly
low-income colors
of community,” said Moore.
“But there was a war on
marijuana that severely
impacted thousands of lowincome,
Black and Hispanic
New Yorkers for decades
with a fl aring need for marijuana
reform and justice.”
Moore said that one of the
non-negotiable steps to getting
MRTA passed this year
was restorative justice initiatives
including automatic
expungement of records for
those arrested for lower-level
marijuana offenses in the
past.
In May, Bronx District Attorney
Darcel Clark, a Democrat,
expunged more than
6,000 Bronx County marijuana
cases that involved the
charge of misdemeanor marijuana
possession or sale.
“The state Legislature
has decriminalized the possession
and sale of small
amounts of marijuana to
right the wrong of disproportionate
enforcement and arrests
in communities of color
like the Bronx,” Clark said
in a statement. “We had long
stopped prosecuting these offenses
because they were not
a threat
to public safety, and
they gave people a criminal
record that had negative collateral
consequences on employment,
housing, education,
and immigration.”
Rasheed Davies said he
was arrested in the Boston
Road section of the Bronx for
marijuana possession when
he was a 20-year-old in 2015.
Davies said the arrest carried
much more than a misdemeanor
offense, it carried a
Scarlet Letter that prevented
him from fi nding
long-term stable employment
or housing.
“I couldn’t get no good
housing, no good-paying jobs
for a bit, it feels like I was paying
for a mistake years after
my arrest,” Davies said. “It’s
crazy because all I did was
carry around some weed,
probably no more than some
white kid in Manhattan is
carrying around and it ruined
my life.”
Stories like Davies, are all
too common when it comes
to people with marijuana arrests,
according to Northup,
of the Bronx Defenders.
“The impact of marijuana
arrests was extremely destabilizing,
and could result in
job loss, deportation, and
the separation of children
from their families,” said
Northup. “In many cases,
one arrest for a substance
that is used across genders
and races could upend communities
due to the over-policing
in targeted communities.”
According to the John
Jay study, in 2016, a fi ne was
the most prevalent sentence
for misdemeanor marijuana
possession, constituting
35.6% (1,726) of all sentences
in New York City.
However, New York City experienced
an increase in the
proportion of misdemeanor
marijuana possession arrests
resulting in a sentence of time
served, compared to that of upstate
New York cities and the
rest of the state. Between 1990
and 2016, the proportion of misdemeanor
marijuana possession
arrests resulting in time served
increased from 15.5% to 32.9%
in NYC.
According to a study in 2002
titled “The Impact of Incarceration
on Wage Mobility and Inequality,”
researchers found
that a criminal record — regardless
of the crime related to
the record — reduces callbacks
from prospective employers by
around 50%.
Before MRTA passed in
March, advocates such as The
Bronx Defenders called on lawmakers
to elevate MRTA over
Cuomo’s proposal which maintained
criminalization in marijuana
enforcement. Cuomo, a
Democrat, resigned as governor
on Aug. 24.
“We knew that the only
way we could do marijuana
legalization right is by recognizing
and acting to reverse
the immense damage done
by its criminalization,” said
Northrup. “That means that
we needed legislation like
MRTA so that marijuana
couldn’t be used to further
disadvantage how Black
and brown communities
could gain employment and
not be punished for marijuana.”
Part 2 will examine how
MRTA’s social equity provisions
could bring economic
benefi ts of an estimated
billion-dollar cannabis
industry into certain
Bronx communities.
(photo left) Arrests for marijuana
possession in NYC increased from
1,038 arrests in 1990 to a peak of
51,589 in 2011 before declining to
18,241 arrests in 2017, according
to a study from John Jay College.
Photo courtesy Getty Image
(above) NYPD’s 52nd precinct in
the Norwood section of the Bronx
accounted for some of the highest
marijuana arrest rates in the city,
according to a decade-long study.
Photo courtesy Flickr
Photo courtesy Flickr