Bratton Catches Girl Smoking Pot on Street

According to Bratton, who recalled the incident during a New York Law School breakfast, he was leaving a meeting in the financial district early Thursday when he caught a whiff of something peculiar – and familiar. He said he was down near Wall Street one morning at 8:30 when he smelled marijuana.

NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton said Friday that he recently busted an embarrassed weed smoker on Wall Street. “I said, ‘What the hell?”

Bratton favors medicinal use of marijuana, but opposes legalization.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images Police Commissioner Bill Bratton gave a woman he ran into smoking pot on the street a personal lesson this week. “Directly in front of me is this young woman, happily puffing away”.

“My security officer came up on one side, I came up on the other and tapped her on shoulder”, Bratton said.

Bratton said he and one of his officers tried to figure out where it was coming from and finally encountered the culprit at a red light. She was wearing a school bag labeled with the name of a local school. “I wish I had a photograph of that face”, he said.

He and his security officer walked up to her and “politely” took the joint, which was being toked by a woman on her way to class, and flung it in the “local sewer”, and then “suggested” to the student – who recognized him – “that she might have a better academic day” without being high.

The NYPD might claim it will no longer arrest people for low-level marijuana possession, but as SNL so vividly pointed out, you can not actually smoke your marijuana in public.

The keen-nosed commissioner could have made an arrest, as well, because the joint – even though a small amount – was lit.