The New York City Council\u2019s Committee on Public Safety last week held hearings on the New York Police Department\u2019s ongoing anti-gang crackdown, known as \u201cOperation Crew Cut\u201d \u2014named for the local slang word \u201ccrew\u201d used to refer to the city\u2019s street gangs. Things got emotional when the discussion turned to the NYPD\u2019s \u201cgang database\u201d that tracks hundreds of city residents.<\/p>\n
Council member Laurie Cumbo choked back tears at the idea of a database almost exclusively targeting black and Latino people. \u201cTo hear about the fact this database exists, on first sight, on first hearing \u2014 it seems very problematic,\u201d she said. \u201cThey are people. They are our community. They\u2019re valuable. We can\u2019t continue to look at people as casualties.\u201d<\/p>\n
NYPD\u00a0Chief of Detectives tried to reassure her. \u201cWe work diligently to ensure that we do not accidentally ensnare innocent people into the database,\u201d he said. \u201cThe numbers back that up\u2026 In fact, the average person in the database has been arrested 11 times, five of which are for felonies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Protesters outside City Hall complained that being listed in the database could follow you around for the rest of your life. Karess Taylor-Hughes of the\u00a0Black Youth Project 100\u00a0<\/a>told the\u00a0New York\u00a0Daily News<\/a>: \u201cJust because someone is falsely accused of gang allegations they can lose their housing. Their families can lose their housing. These are permanent impacts on young black lives.\u201d<\/p>\n And despite Shea\u2019s assurances, it turns out that the supposedly progressive administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio\u2019s NYPD has added names to the database at nearly three times the rate of the previous 10 years \u2014 now about 342 people per month. As of February 2018, there were 42,334 names in the database, a 70 percent jump since de Blasio took office in January 2014,\u00a0according to data-crunching<\/a>\u00a0by\u00a0the Intercept. Kids as young as 13 have been added to the database.<\/p>\n And much of the focus on \u201ccrew\u201d activity seems to come back to cannabis.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n A commentary<\/a>\u00a0in the\u00a0Daily News noted one of the high-profile prosecutions to emerge from\u00a0the federally assisted 2016 raids on the Eastchester Gardens housing complex in the Bronx\u2014the biggest in the city\u2019s history. The defendant \u201cspent nearly two years in solitary confinement as he was moved to several federal facilities waiting for his day in court, according to his mother. With none of the media hoopla that accompanied the raid and indictments in 2016, his charges, which included offenses originally dismissed by local prosecutors, were quietly dropped to marijuana-related charges months ago. Weed.\u201d<\/p>\n The\u00a0Daily News itself<\/a>\u00a0at the time of the Eastchester Garden raids\u00a0said that police \u201cnabbed 87 suspects\u2026 in a lethal nine-year reign of violence and drug-dealing in Bronx housing projects.\u201d There was initially some outrage over the heavy-handed tactics used in the raids. Numerous families had their doors broken down in the middle of the night by armored, heavily armed cops and federal agents \u2014 later resulting in protest demonstrations under the banner \u201cHands of Our Youth<\/a>.\u201d But there was little media follow-up as the cases wound their way through the court system.<\/p>\n An investigation by\u00a0City Limits<\/a>\u00a0noted that many of those busted in the raids faced \u201cconspiracy\u201d charges under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Evidence submitted in support of these RICO charges included engaging in \u201cspecialized greetings\u201d \u2014 and selling marijuana.<\/p>\n The database controversy follows similarly\u00a0heated City Council hearings<\/a>\u00a0earlier this year on the continuing racial disparities in cannabis arrests in the New York City. The new controversy indicates that actual marijuana busts may be only one aspect of the problem. The \u201caverage\u201d number of convictions cited by Shea aside, no conviction is actually required to get on the gang database. Placement on the list can seemingly arise merely from allegations of dealing cannabis, and could lead to youths facing a lifetime of stigma and discrimination.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>,\u00a0do you think cannabis should be decriminalized?<\/p>\n The post NYPD \u2018Gang Raids\u2019 Only Bring Back Convictions for Cannabis Possession<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The New York City Council\u2019s Committee on Public Safety last week held hearings on the New York Police Department\u2019s ongoing anti-gang crackdown, known as \u201cOperation Crew Cut\u201d \u2014named for the local slang word \u201ccrew\u201d used to refer to the city\u2019s street gangs. Things got emotional when the discussion turned toContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4626,50,4312,4627,3629,4370,4628,81,4629,319],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27031"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27031"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27032,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27031\/revisions\/27032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: NYPD \u2018Gang Raids\u2019 Only Bring Back Convictions for Cannabis Possession<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"