6/7/18
By: Alice Speri
Source: The Intercept
“Police and prosecutors know that people don’t go to trial and don’t fight these cases,” said Marne Lenox, an attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund who worked at the Bronx Defenders at the time of the raid. “And for many of these individuals, the risk is far greater than the reward; once you get into federal court, you are facing mandatory minimums.”
“The NYPD and the District Attorney’s Office tout these raids and the resulting large-scale indictments as an effective policing tool,” said Lenox. “But in truth, that’s an incredible sanitized narrative that ignores the substantial harm that these takedowns inflict on communities of color and exaggerates the danger that arrested individuals pose to society.”
“The majority of people who are arrested in these takedowns are actually accused of having committed only low-level offenses and being engaged in low-level conduct,” she added. But prosecutors rely on these conspiracy statues to demonize individuals who commit petty offenses by implicating them in violent crime.”
Read the full article here.
