Sept. 13 (UPI) -- Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. dropped more than 3,000 pending marijuana possession cases on Wednesday.
Vance said the dismissals will improve relations between New Yorkers and police while eliminating the barriers having an open case for a low-level misdemeanor can have on a person.
"By vacating these warrants, we are preventing unnecessary future interactions with the criminal justice system, and removing all of the collateral consequences -- for one's job prospects, school attendance, housing applications, and immigration status -- associated with an open Criminal Court case," Vance said in Manhattan Criminal Court. "And in so doing, we're taking one small step toward addressing the decades of racial disparities behind the enforcement of marijuana in New York City."
Vance's office said 79 percent of the defendants in the dismissed cases were non-white and 46 percent were 25 years of age or younger at the time of their arrest.
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Recreational marijuana is not yet legal in New York. But Vance's move was made less than two months after he announced he would no longer prosecute marijuana possession cases, making possession of marijuana all but decriminalized in Manhattan.
"If anyone was brought in on one of these warrants, my Office would dismiss the case," Vance said. "So dismissing these cases proactively is a matter of judicial economy, which preserves court and prosecutorial resources to focus on more serious crimes."
The New York Police Department has also been changing its approach on how to handle people caught in possession of marijuana.
In 2014, the department began issuing summonses instead of making arrests for people caught in possession of the drug, the Daily News reported.
And since the beginning of this month, NYPD policy is to give a summons -- rather than an arrest -- to people caught smoking in public.
