Southeast Queens To Host Marijuana Town Hall

ST. ALBANS, QUEENS -- Lawmakers think the debate over whether or not to ease up on marijuana policing should happen where a good amount of the arrests do --- in southeast Queens.

That's why several City Council members representing the region will host a town hall in St. Albans on Wednesday to talk about the consequences of a marijuana arrest and hear constituents' concerns surrounding New York City's recent push to cut down on marijuana arrests.

Last month, Mayor Bill de Blasio called on the NYPD to stop arresting people for blazing up in public and Police Commissioner James O'Neill formed a 30-day working group to review how the police force should deal with public smoking and possession of pot.

The announcement was met with mixed responses from the city's district attorneys. Some vowed to stop prosecuting the low-level offenses all together, while others - including Queens DA Richard Brown - said they didn't intend to make any drastic changes.

But missing from the conversation were the people most affected by such laws. And Southeast Queens is home to more of them than any other neighborhood in the city, lawmakers argued.

The NYPD's 105th precinct - including Queens Village, Cambria Heights, Laurelton, Rosedale and Springfield Gardens - has issued more weed-related summons than any other precinct in the city for nine out of the last 10 years, city records show. Pot-related arrests in the 103rd and 113th precincts - covering the greater Jamaica area - also ranked among the city's highest weed arrests from 2014 - 2o16.

That prompted Council Members Donovan Richards, I. Daneek Miller, Adrienne Adams and Rory Lancman to join forces with a slew of citywide organizations on a town hall.

"With 86 percent of those (low-level marijuana) arrests being Black or Latino, we feel there's too much of a discriminatory element to how people are being arrested," Jordan Gibbons, a spokesman for Councilman Richards, told Patch.

"Now that we're seeing shifting ideas and policies from the mayor and NYPD, we think it's important to have that dialogue."

That dialogue, he said, will include a panel of experts from citywide organizations like the Grand Council of Guardians, the Legal Aid Society and the Drug Policy Alliance to educate constituents on the impact a marijuana arrest can have on a someone's life, especially a person of color.

"If, say, a homeowner doesn't like kids hanging out and smoking weed in front of his house, we want to talk about what would happen to those kids if they got arrested," Gibbons said.

The panel also aims to hear, and hopefully ease, constituents concerns over what might happen if public pot smoking and possession were to be decriminalized.

"Ultimately our goal is to alleviate some concerns, share the full picture of the impacts of a marijuana arrest and talk about other ways to deal with this issue than just arresting our way out of it," Gibbons said.

The town hall will be held at the Robert Ross Johnson Family Life Center, 172-17 Linden Blvd., on June 6 from 7 to 9 p.m.

(Lead photo via Shutterstock)