Pubdate: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 Source: International Herald-Tribune (France) Copyright: International Herald Tribune 2000 Contact: 181, Avenue Charles de Gaulle, 92521 Neuilly Cedex, France Fax: (33) 1 41 43 93 38 Website: http://www.iht.com/ Page: 6 Author: David Rohde, New York Times Service A PUFF IN NEW YORK SUBWAY CAN MEAN NIGHT IN JAIL NEW YORK - Some police officers enforcing Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's continuing crackdown on quality-of-life crimes in New York are focusing their efforts on a new public menace, according to defense lawyers and prosecutors. This spring, a dozen people have been arrested and jailed overnight for smoking cigarettes on Manhattan subway platforms. The formal charge is disorderly conduct. The arrests come as defense lawyers say that the city's quality-of-life crackdown, which has long taken aim at turnstile jumpers and marijuana smokers, is continuing apace and broadening. While city officials credit that approach with driving down crime by allowing document checks, defense lawyers assail it as expensive and unfair overkill that frequently involves racial profiling. Police officers, they contend, are arresting growing numbers of people for increasingly petty offenses. Mundane offenses that resulted in a summons or a warning in the past, defense lawyers said, now result in a night in jail until people have been checked and arraigned. The one-night jail terms usually be come the only punishment for the crime, because most defendants in such cases are sentenced to time served. If they had been given summonses and appeared in court later, they would probably have been fined but not sentenced to any time in jail. Defense lawyers cited a string of arrests this spring as examples. In interviews, three men recently apprehended for smoking on subway platforms expressed astonishment at what had happened to them. One man, arrested by Officer Richard Nenadich at I a.m. Wednesday at the 137th Street station of the Seventh Avenue line, said he could not believe he had spent a night in jail for smoking a cigarette "This is ridiculous," he said. David Kapner, the Legal Aid Soci ety's Manhattan arraignment super visor, said smoking was the latest pretext the police were using to stop people and check them for warrants or weapons. "Last spring, they were arresting people for taking up too much space on park benches," he said. Quality-of-life arrests involve a host of petty offenses. On Feb. 5, for example, Officer John O'Reilly arrested a 27-year-old man in Manhattan for selling tamales on the street without a license, according to court papers. The man was held overnight. - --- MAP posted-by: Derek