What’s That in Your Pocket?

Monday 17 May 2010 - Filed under Dumbassery + LE + Legislation + War on Drugs

Aren’t drug warriors awesome?  In a report by Radley Balko of reason magazine detailing the very shady practices of the NYPD and their has-to-be-fucking-unconstitutional “stop and frisk” program, he writes,

While only about one tenth of 1 percent of the stops yielded a gun (at present it’s nearly impossible to legally carry a gun in New York), the practice [of stop and frisk searches] has helped drive up the city’s marijuana arrests from 4,000 in 1997 to 40,000 in 2007. Marijuana for personal use was actually decriminalized in New York during that period. But you still can’t display your pot in public. So the police simply stop people, trick them into emptying their pockets, and then arrest them for displaying marijuana in public.

What.  The.  Fuck.

The people of New York are legally allowed to posess and smoke marijuana in private, or at least without fear of going to fucking jail if they choose to do so, yet people are being arrested en masse for removing marijuana from their pockets during a “stop and frisk” encounter at the request of a police officer.  Anyone who says that cops are here “to help” needs to re-evaluate your position.

2010-05-17  »  madlibertarianguy