Excellent article by Jon Campbell for the Village Voice about New York City’s zeal for arresting people on charges of possessing so-called “gravity knives” – knives whose blade can be opened without the assistance of a second hand, and then be secured in place for use. Used in countless trades and occupations, knives fitting this description are sold at hardware, sporting, and work-gear stores from coast to coast. But New York City routinely prosecutes persons in possession of them even in the absence of any indication that the holder was up to no good or knew they violated local law. Excerpt:
For years, New York’s gravity-knife law has been formally opposed by a broad swath of the legal community. Elected officials call the statute “flawed” and “unfair.” Defense attorneys call it “outrageous” and “ridiculous” – or worse. Labor unions, which have seen a parade of members arrested for tools they use on the job, say the law is woefully outdated. Even the Office of Court Administration – the official body of the New York State judiciary – says the law is unjustly enforced and needs to change. They’ve petitioned the legislature to do just that.
A move in Albany to revamp New York’s law to cover possession of such a knife only when accompanied by “unlawful intent” failed, due in part to opposition from some quarters in the law enforcement community, where collaring some poor guy walking home from the subway for a “GK” (gravity knife) is known as an easy way to boost arrest numbers:
A poster on Officer.com, a verified online message board for law enforcement officers, put it bluntly in 2013 when he advised a rookie to be on the lookout for “GKs”: “make sure they have a prior conviction so you can bump it up to that felony!!!”
New York’s controversial stop-and-frisk policies are one reason it has such a high number of knife charges:
a Village Voice analysis of data from several sources suggests there have been as many as 60,000 gravity-knife prosecutions over the past decade, and that the rate has more than doubled in that time. If those estimates are correct, it’s enough to place gravity-knife offenses among the top 10 most prosecuted crimes in New York City.
More recently, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance in 2010 deployed the law as a municipal money-maker by charging Home Depot and other hardware and sports chains for selling what many of them had assumed were lawful knives, and extracting large “restitution” payments as part of the ensuing settlements.
In much of the rest of the country, fortunately, the law is on a sounder path as Arizona, New Hampshire, and other states revamp outdated laws to respect the peaceful ownership and carrying of knives. (The national group Knife Rights monitors and advances this progress.) Read the whole Voice piece here.