NEW YORK, Aug. 8 (UPI) -- A new study says the New York Police Department targets the poor and members of minority groups for marijuana arrests.
Officials called the study conclusion a distortion.
Dr. Andrew Golub of the National Development and Research Institute in New York City, the lead author of the study, told the New York Daily News that there was a marked shift in pot busts in the early 1990s.
Before that, he said, many arrests for marijuana occurred in Manhattan below 110th Street. But later ones were scattered around the city, especially in heavily minority and poor neighborhoods in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens.
Top police officials said marijuana arrests are concentrated in neighborhoods where crime is a problem and are part of a strategy to improve quality of life.
"The study distorts reality to prop up a thinly disguised manifesto for marijuana legalization," Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne said. "More arrests of all kinds take place in areas with more crime."
The study was funded by Marijuana Policy Project and the National Institute on Drug Abuse and published in the journal "Harm Reduction."
