It does no city any good when individuals sworn to uphold the law signal that they will do so selectively.
Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson has done just that. This week, he announced his office would stop prosecuting most first-time offenders arrested with small quantities of pot — including those with a “very minimal criminal record.”
Police Commissioner Bill Bratton promptly turned around and said cops would still be enforcing the law.
Then Mayor de Blasio confused matters even further by declaring Thompson and Bratton were both right.
It’s true DAs have broad discretion in disposing of arrests, just as cops do when dealing with infractions (not everyone speeding gets ticketed). But it’s dangerous for a prosecutor to announce publicly that certain lawbreakers have nothing to fear from arrest.
Thompson’s approach here runs directly counter to the “broken windows” policing that helped turn around crime in New York starting in the early ’90s.
The gist of this theory is that a city winking at smaller crimes and dysfunction is inviting larger crimes and greater dysfunction.
The DA’s announcement, of course, comes in the midst of a national debate over marijuana. Just this week, Gov. Cuomo made New York the 23rd state to allow medical marijuana, albeit under strict limits. In two other states, pot is fully legal.
If Ken Thompson believes New York’s laws on marijuana are wrong or ineffective, the answer is to persuade Albany to fix them. A law that varies from The Bronx to Brooklyn is a prescription for chaos.