tHe War on MariJUana in BlacK anD WHite

several times for having marijuana. Sometimes, he said, it was after the
police stopped him on the street and frisked him for no reason. Other
times, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time when the police were
doing security checks in and around a building in public housing.
That is what happened the last time the police arrested Mr. Carrasquillo,
about a year and a half ago. It was a summer evening, and he and a group of
friends were in the courtyard of the housing project where one of his friends
lived.
“A lot of times, that’s where we hang out, because there aren’t many places
for us to go. As a big group, we can’t all go up to somebody’s house,” he
said. Besides, it was hot and everybody wanted to be outside.
The police asked everyone to put their hands on their heads, and began
searching them. The search, as Mr. Carrasquillo remembers it, “went
from being a pat-down to going into our pockets. Whatever we had [in our
pockets] they pulled out.”
Most of what the police pulled out, they gave back. Except that day, Mr.
Carrasquillo had a five-dollar bag of marijuana in his pocket. “And [the
police officer] was like, ‘you know what? I’m going to have to take you in for
that.’”
Mr. Carrasquillo said the police arrested him and he then spent three days
in jail. He was arrested on a Friday and not released until Monday. He was
strip-searched at the precinct, then held at Bronx Central Booking, where,
Mr. Carrasquillo says, “People are literally shoulder to shoulder. The toilet is
in the cell and you have to use it in front of other people. There are rats and
roaches all over, the walls are dirty, and there is food left over on the floor.”
When Mr. Carrasquillo was finally brought to court, he pled guilty, and was
ordered to pay $120 in court fees and stay out of trouble for one year.
Mr. Carrasquillo is angry, but also resigned. “It’s the price you pay to smoke
[marijuana] and be a person of color,” he said. “Let’s be honest. It’s not just
about smoking. It’s also about race.”
28 | The <strong>War</strong> on Marijuana in Black and White