It’s what the courts and law enforcement have determined is the best test. In practice, the test to determine what’s a regular folding knife and what’s a gravity knife depends on something called the wrist flick. Jon Campbell : So under under New York State Law a gravity knife is defined as any knife that opens with the force of gravity or with centrifugal force. Like why are laws around grabbing knives tremendously important to the lives of millions of New Yorkers and people throughout the country? Explain to us what a gravity knife is and lets sort of establish the stakes. The first one from January 23rd, “Federal Court Hears Constitutional Challenge to a New York Statute That Incarcerates Working Class People of Color.” And one from March 6th of this year, “New York Lawmaker Announces Sweeping Challenge to Gravity Knife Law.” At first sight, if someone hears about gravity knives, this may seem like (a) something that maybe seems trivial or small and (b) maybe seems like a really terrible Wachowski siblings movie. Someone who in good faith buys a knife at a hardware store, tries to test it, but it isn’t really as adept at this test as some future police officer, might find that it can be flicked open somewhere down the road.Īdam : Jon, thank you so much for joining us.Īdam : So you’ve written two articles recently for The Appeal about gravity knives. And what this Constitutional challenge is hoping to determine is that there’s really no way to tell whether your knife is actually illegal. An officer who has been doing this a while may have developed the skills to make even a brand new knife flick open when the owner himself or herself couldn’t actually do that. That’s the focus of a Constitutional challenge right now that is trying to invalidate the law based on vagueness. Jon Campbell : What opponents would say is that it’s really dependent on skill and strength. Our guest, Appeal contributor Jon Campbell, discusses recent efforts in New York to reform laws against gravity knives that when compounded with other offenses can sometimes send people to jail for five, six and even ten years. The problem is what is and isn’t a gravity knife is extremely vague and 84% of those arrested for having them are black and Latino. It may sound like a footnote in the story of NYPD harassment, but with over 3,500 arrests in 2018 alone, gravity knife prosecutions in New York are one of the top ten crimes pursued by New York authorities. You can always rate and subscribe to us on iTunes as well. Remember you can always follow us at The Appeal magazine’s main Facebook and Twitter pages. This is a podcast on criminal justice reform, abolition and everything in between. "I remain confident that our law enforcement community will continue to keep our communities safe by pursuing anyone who uses, or attempts to use, one of these knives in an unlawful manner," he said in a statement.Adam Johnson : Hi, welcome to The Appeal. Law-enforcement groups urged the governor to veto the bill, arguing a repeal would lead to a spike in knife-related crime and impact public safety. "People should not be arrested just for trying to earn a decent living and carrying around a tool they need for work," she said. "This is a victory for our brothers and sisters in labor and for criminal justice reform." In a statement, Savino said the previous gravity-knife law "unfairly targeted black and Latino workers who use these knives on job sites everyday." Diane Savino, D-Staten Island, was the legislation's Senate sponsor. "No more will unsuspecting and otherwise law abiding New Yorkers - most of them people of color - be swept up into the criminal justice system due to arbitrary enforcement of a broadly worded statute," Assemblyman Dan Quart, D-Manhattan, the bill's sponsor, said in a statement. There were 3,500 gravity knife related arrests last year, Legal Aid Society said. "Many of these individuals purchase knives at your stores and use them in their jobs as electricians, stagehands, and construction laborers to earn a living," the group said in a letter sent to retailers last month urging support of the bill. The knives were commonly mistaken for gravity blades by law enforcement, leading to unnecessary arrests, according to the Legal Aid Society, a public defenders group in New York City that urged the ban's repeal. The blades were banned in New York in the 1950s following a string of knife crimes, a memo attached to the bill said.īut lawmakers for years have tried to repeal the ban, twice passing legislation that would do so.Ĭoncerns over public safety led to both measures being vetoed by Cuomo in 20.Īt the heart of the issue were basic utility knives - small pocket knives commonly sold in hardware stores and used by construction workers and other contractions throughout the state. Gravity knives are folding blades that are opened with a press of a button and a flick of the wrist.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |