Three months ago, New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly told the city's cops to stop manufacturing misdemeanors by tricking pot smokers into "displaying" marijuana and then arresting them for what would otherwise be a citable offense (possession of up to 25 grams). Since then, according to numbers released today, the number of minor pot busts has fallen by 13 percent compared to the same period last year. That may sound like good progress, except that research by Queens College sociologist Harry Levine, which forced Kelly's hand by highlighting what had been a little-noticed crackdown on pot smokers, indicates that most marijuana possession arrests in New York during the last decade and a half—a lot more than 13 percent—were trumped up in ways that Kelly himself now says are illegal. The Drug Policy Alliance, which published some of Levine's research, says it shows "the vast majority of the marijuana arrests in New York City—up to 75 percent in some precincts—are the result of illegal searches and false charges."

Levine found that the arrests typically emerged from "stop and frisk" encounters during which officers either instructed people to take out their marijuana or removed it themselves. According to Kelly's September 19 directive, "the public display of marijuana must be an activity undertaken of the subject's own volition," and the charge is not legally appropriate "if the marijuana recovered was disclosed to public view at an officer's discretion." After routinely flouting the law for more than a decade, the NYPD must do more than try to follow it a little more often. "The crusade continues regardless of the 13% drop," says Chino Hardin of the Institute for Juvenile Justice Reform and Alternatives. "When we see the numbers decrease by 80%, then we will know that the NYPD is meaningfully following and upholding the law."

In September I discussed Kelly's belated acknowledgment of his officers' blatant lawlessness in the New York Daily News: