A little pot is trouble in NYC: 50k busts a year
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NEW YORK (AP) — As the nation’s biggest city deals with threats of terrorism and a variety of violent crimes, carrying a little bit of marijuana is still a big deal.

There are more arrests for low-level pot possession in New York City - about 50,000 a year - than any other crime, accounting for about one of every seven cases that turn up in criminal courts.

It’s a phenomenon that has persisted despite more leniency toward marijuana use - the state loosened its marijuana-possession laws more than 30 years ago.

Critics say the deluge has been driven in part by the New York Police Department’s strategy of stopping people and frisking those whom police say meet crime suspects’ descriptions. More than a half a million people, mostly black and Hispanic men, were stopped last year - unfair targets, critics say. About 10 percent of stops result in arrests.

The department says that the strategy’s main goal is to take guns off the street and prevent crime, and that the tactic is a life-saving tool. But critics say officers looking for guns in pockets more often find pot and - though state law says the drug is supposed to be in open view to warrant an arrest - lock up the possessor anyway.

Half a million people who have done nothing wrong are stopped and frisked every year.