Queens DA Has No Plans To Stop Prosecuting Pot Charges

KEW GARDENS, QUEENS -- The Queens district attorney has no plans to stop prosecuting pot smokers, despite several local lawmakers' plea for him to join the city's push to stop arrests for low-level marijuana offenses.

Nine Queens lawmakers signed a letter to DA Richard Brown on Monday asking him to follow the lead of his Brooklyn and Manhattan counterparts, who earlier this month vowed to stop prosecuting most marijuana possession and smoking charges - including arrests and summonses for blazing up in public.

The announcements came days after Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the NYPD would come up with a plan to cut down on marijuana arrests. The Police Commissioner later formed a 30-day working group to review the NYPD's policies for marijuana offenses.

Cops currently summons, rather than cuff, people found with weed on them, but anyone found lighting it up in public is fair game to arrest.

Legislators' argued people of color are disproportionately singled out in those arrests and summonses, which they wrote could hinder school and job prospects and increase the likelihood to wind up back behind bars.

"We implore you to consider the damage suffered by the men and women of color in Queens who have been unfairly persecuted under a conspicuously biased approach to policing and embrace a policy overhaul similar to the ones currently underway in Manhattan and Brooklyn," the letter states.

They pointed out that of the 17,000 low-level marijuana arrests in NYC last year, 86 percent were either Black or Hispanic.

The NYPD's 105th precinct - covering Queens Village, Cambria Heights, Laurelton, Rosedale and Springfield Gardens - in particular has led the city's weed-related summons for more than a decade and net more than any other NYPD command last year, the letter further claimed.

Pot-related arrests in the 103rd and 113th precincts - which cover the Jamaica area - also ranked among the city's highest from 2014 to 2016 and included 82 percent of the area's Black and Hispanic populations, the lawmakers said.

The letter was signed by a slew of City Council members hailing from the affected districts, including Councilwoman Adrienne Adams (D-Jamaica) and Councilmen I. Daneek Miller (D - St. Albans), Donovan Richards (D-Laurelton), Rory Lancman (D-Fresh Meadows) and Francisco Moya (D-Jackson Heights).

Congressman Gregory Meeks, State Senator Leroy Comrie and Queens Assembly members Alicia Hyndman and Clyde Vanel also backed the letter.

But it wasn't enough to sway DA Brown, who issued a response to the plea on Tuesday.

"In my view, the wisest course for all of us at this point is to allow the Police Commissioner’s Working Group to do its job," he wrote. "I am confident that the resulting report will help shape our determination of what is best for our city."

Brown countered lawmakers' claims with stats of his own. The DA said a preliminary study done by his office over the last year found less than 3 percent of the more than 2,000 public pot smoking arrests during that time resulted in a criminal conviction.

"It is also worth noting that the ten states plus the District of Columbia that have legalized recreational marijuana and the over twenty states that have legalized medical marijuana all continue to ban the public smoking of marijuana," Brown wrote.

(Lead photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)