Unequal Justice

The thought of unequal justice came to me when going to a Celebrate Brooklyn concert, of Sylvan Esso, on Saturday, July 25th at the Prospect Park Bandshell. I found myself waiting in line amid a sea of young people, definitely 20 somethings, and I knew I was a bit out of my element being a mature woman, but music crosses all barriers, so I was up for the challenge. I was not at all surprised when I sat down to find that smell of weed wafting its way up my nostrils, but what did surprise me was that it was being smoked so openly, and it was everywhere, so much so, that when looking towards the stage it looked like there was a fire. I have no issue against marijuana smokers, because at this point it’s like prohibition, there is no way of putting that genie back in the bottle. My issue was that these young people were smoking so blatantly, and the vast majority of them were white. Yes, there were people of color there as well, but they were in the minority in a crowd of thousands. Where or where were the police to catch all these lawless people? I did not see a one. The NYPD has a “broken windows” policy of zero tolerance. New Yorkers are being ticketed now for marijuana possession. Well, why didn’t New York make a killing in terms of revenue off of these marijuana smokers? You tell me. Why is it that 85 percent of people arrested for marijuana possession in New York City are African American and Latinos, when studies show that whites use and sell more drugs than people of color? Let me state very loud and clear, I don’t want to see anyone arrested/ticketed for marijuana possession, because it is a failed justice practice, in the very same way that prohibition was for alcohol. What I am bringing out is that Commissioner Bratton, in April of this year, fiercely defended his “broken windows” policy, and its importance to continue to make arrests for quality of life crimes, like marijuana possession, soliciting (which means farebeating), and jaywalking to name a few. Bill Bratton’s reasoning is that arresting people frequently for misdemeanors prevents them from graduating to felonies. Where is the proof that this actually is true, besides his saying that it works. He uses the statistic that crime went down during this practice, but correlational evidence among statisticians is completely unverifiable, because any one of a myriad of variables can be responsible for this effect.

But a young people’s concert was a no brainer, in terms of where to crack down on this particular quality of life crime, so why weren’t the police there in droves? Or is justice unequally and unevenly dispensed according to the color of your skin, or better yet still your pocket book? Why aren’t they arresting young whites for possessing pot? According to a report by NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton “By applying summonses to violations and arrests to misdemeanor crimes, rather than looking the other way because these offenses are ‘too insignificant,” officers were correcting conditions early (nypost.com 4/30/15). Well there weren’t any officers that I could see to stop these people from becoming serious felons.

But this ‘broken windows” practice was in full force, and the very reason why Eric Garner was killed by the police while being arrested on July 17, 2014 for a quality of life crime. Let us not forget that Eric Garner was being arrested supposedly for selling “loosies,” (loose cigarettes), and he was tired of it, and it was going to stop today, he said. These are his words before he was arrested (transcribed from the youtube video), “Every time you see me, you wanna arrest me. I’m tired of it. It stops today. Why are you harassing me for? Everybody standing here. I didn’t do nothin. I did not sell nothing. Because every time you see me, you gonna harass me. You stop me, trying see if I sell cigarettes. I’m minding my business officer. I’m minding my business. I told you the last time Please Leave me alone.” The truth is according to the video is that Eric Garner should not even have been arrested, because the mere fact that he was standing there was not a reasonable cause for him to be attacked, arrested, and ultimately choked to death. He was being respectful and He just wanted to be left alone, but he did not want to be arrested again. He was tired of being harassed by the police. THEY WERE IN THE WRONG. This policy is in the wrong. This abuse of the law is a direct result of the “broken windows” policy, where the same people of color are arrested over, over and over again. In Bill Bratton’s report, “Arresting someone for a misdemeanor frequently prevents him from graduating to committing felonies, for which severe sanctions like prison may result” (nypost.com 4/3015). According to Bill Bratton’s report less that 1% of those arrested for misdemeanor crimes are jailed, but many are fined. In New York City and the nation at large we have become a land of the haves and have-nots, meaning that a small percentage of the people are in control of majority of the wealth, and now we are punishing individuals for just trying to get by, by forcing them to pay fines for farebeating, that are already too poor to pay the fare in the first place. Do you remember how, Jean Valjean in the book Les Miserables where he was sentenced to life imprisonment for stealing a loaf of bread, because he was too poor to buy it? When we read about it, it seems barbaric, but are we any different?

Today we fine the poor, in particular people of color and of Hispanic descent, and if they can’t pay the fine we put out a warrant for their arrest, and if they get stopped for another quality of life crime, they then get jailed. The people who can least afford to pay for these quality of life fines are the ones that are subjected to them. Why don’t we arrest the rich for making indecent profits off of slave labor here in the U.S. and abroad, why don’t we arrest corporate heads for polluting our planet, why don’t we arrest those that dispense justice unfairly and abuse the law in order to persecute African Americans, Latinos, the poor, the homeless and any other disenfranchised group? No we keep punishing the poor for being poor and the weak, because we have let the rich become too rich.

(For recent court statistics)

http://www.gothamgazette.com/index.php/opinion/5816-eric-garners-final-w...