NYPD Commissioner Blames Legal Marijuana In Colorado For Increase In New York Shootings

By Radley Balko
Washington Post
Mar. 04, 2015

At a news conference Monday, New York Police Department commissioner Bill Bratton blamed a slight uptick in violence in the city (45 homicides at this point last year, versus 54 this year) on marijuana.
"The seemingly innocent drug that's been legalized around the country. In this city, people are killing each other over marijuana more so than anything that we had to deal with [in the] 80s and 90s with heroin and cocaine . . . In some instances, it's a causal factor. But it's an influence in almost everything that we do here."
Hyperbole at its finest. Even if this year's uptick holds through December (and it's worth noting that we're only dealing with eight weeks of data, here), New York would end the year with 383 murders. The city saw 2,245 murders in 1990.

I'm not exactly sure by what Rube Goldbergian chain of events Bratton thinks legalization in Colorado and Washington is causing homicides in New York City, but it's clear that he thinks there's a connection. Another NYPD official said the problem appears to be "ripoffs" -- not turf battles, but attempted robberies gone wrong.

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