There Was a Marijuana Farm Next to the Barclays Center But It Caught Fire Sunday
It seems like Colorado isn’t the only place with a flourishing marijuana industry, via DNAInfo, Prospect Heights is also getting in on the action. So, you know, put down your chardonnay and put on your green corduroy jeans, and party like you’re Maureen Dowd.
This weekend, “a 45-year-old man was arrested Sunday after an extension cord he used to power a set of plant-growing lights over his 40 marijuana bushes sparked a fire, drawing a team of firefighters who noticed the illegal pot farm,” which was located on Vanderbilt between Dean and Pacific, about two blocks from the Barclays Center. Police arrested suspect Antonio Dow (no relation to Maureen Dowd) on charges of criminal drug possession and intent to sell, and “found a collection of loose bullets in the apartment, along with a rifle cartridge with seven .38 caliber Winchester bullets, but no gun.”
It’s also worth noting that Dow’s arrest on marijuana charges was one of probably scores that happened this weekend. Gothamist reports today that marijuana arrests (including low-level charges) have gone up under Mayor de Blasio and Police Chief Bratton. And while this seems to fly in the face of de Blasio’s progressive agenda (though actually fits in perfectly with Bratton’s “broken window” philosophy of police work, as well as the general spike in ticketing for quality of life violations like jaywalking), perhaps even worse is the following statistic: “86% of those arrested for cannabis possession from January through April of 2014 were blacks and Latinos, 29% of them teenagers—79% of all the arrestees were between the ages of 16 and 34.”
The more things change, the more they stay the same, right? That “progressive” agenda of de Blasio’s is apparently reserved for ferret owners. Well, now we know.
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