New York City eases public drinking and urination laws before St Patrick's Day

(msnnews) - On Thursday, hundreds of thousands of partiers will take to New York City streets, awash in a sea of green beer, novelty T-shirts and cheap plastic beadsto follow long-held St Patrick’s Day tradition. But for the first time in recent history, those who decide to consume alcohol or relieve themselves on the streets won’t be risking arrest in the process, according to the city.

Under a new joint initiative between the New York police department and the Manhattan district attorney’s office, so-called quality of life violations like public urination and public consumption of alcohol will no longer expose citizens to the possibility of criminal charges. Instead, these crimes will be handled exclusively by issuing offenders a summons. The plan was announced on 1 March, and went into effect 7 March, just 10 days before the notoriously spirituous and rowdy holiday.

The DA’s office described the policy as one that will allow “the NYPD to devote its resources to investigating serious crimes, while further reducing the backlog of cases in criminal court”. An internal review by the office determined that it could keep as many as 10,000 New Yorkers out of the system annually.

New York City mayor Bill de Blasio called the plan “an intuitive and modern solution” that would “help safely prevent unnecessary jail time for low-level offenses”.

Even New York police commissioner Bill Bratton, the pioneer of so-called “broken windows” policing that targets minor crimes as a tactic to prevent larger ones, expressed support. “This new policy in Manhattan will save valuable police resources … without jeopardizing the public safety,” Bratton said.

The announcement came just a few weeks after city council speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito announced a sweeping criminal justice reform proposal in her state of the city address that would decriminalize quality of life offenses citywide and purge as many as 1.5m old summons warrants from the city’s books. (Full Story)