By MARK RALSTON AND MARTIN BURROWSA New York City is one of the most dangerous places in America.
A city where nearly 1,500 police officers are shot to death each day.
A place where millions of dollars are spent every year to keep young black men in solitary confinement.
A country where millions are locked up for nonviolent offenses, often for years, and where millions more are locked away in overcrowded jails and prisons, all because the government thinks that marijuana use is a public health issue.
New York City, the home of some of the nation’s most notorious drug users and dealers, has become a war zone of sorts.
For years, police have been shooting at each other and setting off flash bang grenades in the streets.
And since the start of 2016, the city has become the focus of an unprecedented public health campaign.
The New York State Attorney General’s Office has charged more than 150 people with felonies related to marijuana use, and more than half of them are facing long prison terms.
On Monday, the New York Daily News and the New Yorker published two stories detailing how police have killed hundreds of people, including at least 10 who were unarmed.
The newspaper published a damning report on the police killings and the prosecutors charged with prosecuting them, which detailed the growing number of people killed by the NYPD.
In one case, police shot and killed an unarmed man who was unarmed and walking through the East Village.
Another time, a woman was shot and seriously injured in the Bronx.
In all of those cases, a police officer fired at least one shot at the person, then returned fire.
The NYPD is no stranger to deadly force.
The department has been accused of killing hundreds of innocent civilians and officers over the years.
Last year, a Staten Island grand jury charged five officers in the deaths of Eric Garner and Walter Scott, as well as the deaths in 2014 of Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu.
The grand jury recommended criminal charges against the officers, and prosecutors ultimately declined to file criminal charges.
In the past few months, there has been a wave of deaths in New Jersey.
A grand jury in Newark indicted five officers who shot and injured a man in September.
Two officers were arrested and charged with manslaughter in the shooting.
New Jersey State Police released videos of the officers in November, which they said showed them not following orders.
The department has denied the allegations.
The district attorney in New Brunswick, which includes Newark, has been investigating for months.
He told the Associated Press in a statement that the officers were not under the direction of his office, and that they were acting independently.
The grand jury report detailed that officers had received training that said they could not shoot a person in the back if he or she posed a threat to them.
The report also noted that officers are required to take their weapons off and are not allowed to have a gun on their person.
The officer in charge of the shooting told investigators that he thought he had to shoot the man because he thought the man was reaching for his waistband.
“There is no evidence that there was a threat, and I was not acting in self-defense,” one officer, Daniel J. Ciavarella, told the AP.
“This was a very violent situation and I thought it was necessary to protect myself.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
