When authorities announced they weren’t going to go after the average marijuana smoker, they weren’t kidding — arrests have dropped 12.6 percent.
Police busted 6,227 pot puffers this year between Jan. 1 and March 20 — 901 fewer than the 7,178 arrested during the same period in 2013.
A top police official disclosed the new figures Friday and pointed out that the drop came after a sharp decrease last year.
“In 2013 we had a significant decrease in those types of arrests,” Chief of Department Philip Banks III testified at a City Council hearing.
Police arrested 28,649 people on pot charges last year, down nearly 30 percent from the 40,661 nabbed in 2012.
Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, who took command when the de Blasio administration took power in January, attributed the steep decline to the NYPD’s shift in arrest tactics. Marijuana arrests were closely tied to the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk program during the Bloomberg administration.