White privilege in nyc.
A Smell of Pot and Privilege in the City
By JIM DWYER
Published: July 20, 2010
The Bloomberg administration has quietly been fixing up its sons and daughters with cool summer internships, as reported Tuesday in The New York Times. Which is probably fine: It is hard to see nepotism as much of a sin when it is really just another chapter of Darwinism, the drive possessed by all creatures to finagle a better future for their offspring.
Related
No matter how much Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg preached about meritocracy, no one expected that the laws of nature would be repealed when he was elected.
Sure enough, a Freedom of Information Act request showed that tucked among hundreds of summer interns picked through a competitive process were dozens of the children of City Hall insiders or of Mr. Bloomberg’s friends. They reflected the mayor’s social and political circles: mostly white, many quite wealthy, coming from private high schools and Ivy League colleges.
In short, these are not residents of Stop and Frisk New York.
Mayor Bloomberg promised to lead a government that looked like the city; in reality, he leads one that looks like his mirror, an administration in which key managers are overwhelmingly white and male. It is one thing if this means the annual crop of interns is heavily salted with young Bloombergians.
It is quite another when those managers are shaping policies that wind up leading to the deprivation of liberty of people who do not look like them.
Among the biggest but least discussed expansions of government power under Mr. Bloomberg has been the explosive increase in arrests for displaying or burning marijuana.
No city in the world arrests more of its citizens for using pot than New York, according to statistics compiled by Harry G. Levine, a Queens College sociologist.
Nearly nine out of ten people charged with violating the law are black or Latino, although national surveys have shown that whites are the heaviest users of pot. Mr. Bloomberg himself acknowledged in 2001 that he had used it, and enjoyed it.
On the Upper East Side of Manhattan where the mayor lives, an average of 20 people for every 100,000 residents were arrested on the lowest-level misdemeanor pot charge in 2007, 2008 and 2009.
During those same years, the marijuana arrest rate in Brownsville, Brooklyn, was 3,109 for every 100,000 residents.
That means the chances of getting arrested on pot charges in Brownsville — and nothing else — were 150 times greater than on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
No doubt this is, in large part, a consequence of the stop-and-frisk practices of the Police Department, which Mr. Bloomberg and his aides say have been an important tool in bringing down crime.
Nowhere in the city is that tactic used more heavily than in Brownsville. On average, the police conducted one stop and frisk a year for every one of the 14,000 people who live there, an analysis by The New York Times found. More than 99 percent of the people were not arrested or charged with any wrongdoing.
Brownsville has the highest marijuana arrest rate in the city. The top 10 precincts for marijuana arrests averaged 2,150 for every 100,000 residents; the populations in those precincts are generally 90 percent or more nonwhite.
Mr. Bloomberg’s neighborhood has the lowest rate of marijuana arrests; the 10 precincts with the lowest rates averaged 67 arrests per 100,000 residents. The population in most of those neighborhoods was 80 percent white.
A few weeks ago, Mr. Bloomberg talked about proposals that would allow marijuana to be distributed for putatively medical purposes.
He said it was a Trojan horse for complete legalization.
“I mean, the idea of medical marijuana, we all know what that means: It means everybody is going to qualify,” he said. “The worst thing is the hypocrisy of saying it’s medical marijuana. If you want to legalize it, let’s have that debate, but that’s what you’re really talking about. It has nothing to do with medicine.”
In truth, in New York, the debate was over before it began.
For blacks and Latinos, it is very, very illegal.
But not in Mr. Bloomberg’s neighborhood.
E-mail: [email protected]
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/nyregion/21about.html?ref=nyregion
By JIM DWYER
Published: July 20, 2010
The Bloomberg administration has quietly been fixing up its sons and daughters with cool summer internships, as reported Tuesday in The New York Times. Which is probably fine: It is hard to see nepotism as much of a sin when it is really just another chapter of Darwinism, the drive possessed by all creatures to finagle a better future for their offspring.
Related
No matter how much Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg preached about meritocracy, no one expected that the laws of nature would be repealed when he was elected.
Sure enough, a Freedom of Information Act request showed that tucked among hundreds of summer interns picked through a competitive process were dozens of the children of City Hall insiders or of Mr. Bloomberg’s friends. They reflected the mayor’s social and political circles: mostly white, many quite wealthy, coming from private high schools and Ivy League colleges.
In short, these are not residents of Stop and Frisk New York.
Mayor Bloomberg promised to lead a government that looked like the city; in reality, he leads one that looks like his mirror, an administration in which key managers are overwhelmingly white and male. It is one thing if this means the annual crop of interns is heavily salted with young Bloombergians.
It is quite another when those managers are shaping policies that wind up leading to the deprivation of liberty of people who do not look like them.
Among the biggest but least discussed expansions of government power under Mr. Bloomberg has been the explosive increase in arrests for displaying or burning marijuana.
No city in the world arrests more of its citizens for using pot than New York, according to statistics compiled by Harry G. Levine, a Queens College sociologist.
Nearly nine out of ten people charged with violating the law are black or Latino, although national surveys have shown that whites are the heaviest users of pot. Mr. Bloomberg himself acknowledged in 2001 that he had used it, and enjoyed it.
On the Upper East Side of Manhattan where the mayor lives, an average of 20 people for every 100,000 residents were arrested on the lowest-level misdemeanor pot charge in 2007, 2008 and 2009.
During those same years, the marijuana arrest rate in Brownsville, Brooklyn, was 3,109 for every 100,000 residents.
That means the chances of getting arrested on pot charges in Brownsville — and nothing else — were 150 times greater than on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
No doubt this is, in large part, a consequence of the stop-and-frisk practices of the Police Department, which Mr. Bloomberg and his aides say have been an important tool in bringing down crime.
Nowhere in the city is that tactic used more heavily than in Brownsville. On average, the police conducted one stop and frisk a year for every one of the 14,000 people who live there, an analysis by The New York Times found. More than 99 percent of the people were not arrested or charged with any wrongdoing.
Brownsville has the highest marijuana arrest rate in the city. The top 10 precincts for marijuana arrests averaged 2,150 for every 100,000 residents; the populations in those precincts are generally 90 percent or more nonwhite.
Mr. Bloomberg’s neighborhood has the lowest rate of marijuana arrests; the 10 precincts with the lowest rates averaged 67 arrests per 100,000 residents. The population in most of those neighborhoods was 80 percent white.
A few weeks ago, Mr. Bloomberg talked about proposals that would allow marijuana to be distributed for putatively medical purposes.
He said it was a Trojan horse for complete legalization.
“I mean, the idea of medical marijuana, we all know what that means: It means everybody is going to qualify,” he said. “The worst thing is the hypocrisy of saying it’s medical marijuana. If you want to legalize it, let’s have that debate, but that’s what you’re really talking about. It has nothing to do with medicine.”
In truth, in New York, the debate was over before it began.
For blacks and Latinos, it is very, very illegal.
But not in Mr. Bloomberg’s neighborhood.
E-mail: [email protected]
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/nyregion/21about.html?ref=nyregion
Comments
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Should anyone really be surprised?
-
I read somewhere that Bloomberg has one of the least diverse staffs of any major US city.
It's pathetic.
And our drug laws continue to remain awful, especially if you're poor and non-white. -
perhaps more people on the UES sit inside their apartments and smoke. Not too many hangin on the street. Also dealers are more into delivery and not street sales. Hence lower arrest rates.
Crime stats for violent crimes and illegal guns are probably pretty low up there too so I guess there would be less call for a stop and frisk.
I get that stop and frisk mostly affects black and latinos and add to that lower income neighborhoods (where crime is much higher) and commited by the some of the residents who are , dare I say, black and latino.
So if more brownsvillers stayed inside to smoke and didnt carry their stash or guns with them, maybe those stats would go way down. -
The wildly imbalanced ratio of non-white drug offenses (despite drug use being equal or higher in the white community) cannot be explained by how many fewer UES residents smoke inside instead of out.
There's no way THAT many more people smoke outside in places like Brownsville. -
I'm not so sure about that.
If you have...
1) dealing out in the open, on stoops and corners
2) people shot for dealing on the wrong corners and other turf war violence
3) other gang-related activity, and gang-related drug distribution providing an insight into overall gang management structure (and believe it or not, there are some areas where Bloods and Crips work *together* as recent busts revealed)
Then you will have a call for police to do something about all this, and internal mandates within the police department to make arrests and pursue stop-and-frisk policy (for better or for worse) to try to build a database dragnet to track major offenders (and others, unfortunately).
And sure, plenty of dealing happens out in the open in traditionally non- or less-white neighborhoods, right under cops noses. But people can't complain that police aren't doing enough, and then also go right on to complain that arrests for non-whites are way higher.
Since all of the above happens more in areas that are not the UES, in neighborhoods where dealing and turf war violence happens out in the open, it is hardly surprising to me that the numbers in the article are what they are.
And if you had a limited number of police, would you have them posted up in numbers making arrests in areas with less dealing and violence out in the open?
Or would you have have them posted up in numbers making arrests in areas with more dealing and violence out in the open?
Another thread here discusses the potential removal of the Impact Zone from Crown Heights, and the increased police presence, increased offense monitoring and public safety levels that brings.
In that thread a grass-roots public letter-writing and phone calls campaign was discussed to help keep this important level police presence in the neighborhood.
Yes, this will mean more arrests of the knuckleheads. That's *exactly* what people are trying to preserve...eliminating threats to public safety.
That means more arrests of offenders, not less.
So I get that there are gross imbalances elsewhere in the system, but based on the above:
Exactly how is it that people can say this neighborhood absolutely needs
- more police protection and activity
but somehow
- less arrests than other neighborhoods where open drug dealing and violent turf wars are not as prevalent?
Statistics can be made to show a lot of things, absent context. I am not convinced that these particular statistics by themselves accurately point to some of the conclusions being made here. -
It is not just the smoking outside, its hanging outside on the street, its the high crime levels and the Stop and frisk, which the Times articles states:
"No doubt this is, in large part, a consequence of the stop-and-frisk practices of the Police Department, which Mr. Bloomberg and his aides say have been an important tool in bringing down crime.
Nowhere in the city is that tactic used more heavily than in Brownsville. On average, the police conducted one stop and frisk a year for every one of the 14,000 people who live there, an analysis by The New York Times found. More than 99 percent of the people were not arrested or charged with any wrongdoing"
I agree it is a humiliating experience to be stopped and frisked, but it would be interesting to see what the breakdown of arrests were for during these stop and frisks. Armchair warrior? or any other computer savvy dudes or gals? anyone else want to dig up those stats? -
here on nytimes a interactive map of http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/07/11/nyregion/20100711-stop-and-frisk.html?ref=nyregion
and the article itself. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/12/nyregion/12frisk.html?_r=1
it shows the amount people were arrested to stop and frisk which is very low.
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