Nine months ago, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly issued a memorandum directing police officers not to make misdemeanor arrests for possession of small quantities of marijuana that were discovered as a result of an officer ordering someone to empty his pockets during a stop-question-and-frisk encounter. But according to a civil lawsuit filed Friday by the Legal Aid Society, police officers have continued to unlawfully charge New Yorkers with crimes - rather than with non-criminal violations - for low-level marijuana possession, despite Mr. Kelly's directive. "It's certainly a sad commentary that the commissioner can issue a directive that reads well on paper but on the street corners of the city doesn't exist," said Legal Aid's chief lawyer, Steven Banks. The 28-page lawsuit, (see below), filed in state Supreme Court in Manhattan against the city and Police Department, seeks a court order that declares the practice illegal and bars officers from violating the state's marijuana laws. The Police Department would not immediately comment on the lawsuit. Legal Aid lawyers brought the suit on behalf of five New Yorkers who Legal Aid says were the victims of "gotcha" police tactics. The five men - all arrested since mid-April, four in Brooklyn and one in Staten Island - were charged with misdemeanor possession after small amounts of marijuana were discovered on them during a police stop. In each case, the marijuana became visible only after officers searched or asked them to empty their pockets, according to the lawsuit. Under state law, possession of marijuana is a misdemeanor offense when the drug is burning or "open to public view." Possession of less than 25 grams of marijuana out of public view - for example, inside an individual's pocket or backpack - is a violation, warranting only a ticket. "These five individuals are New Yorkers who were essentially victimized by unlawful police practices," Mr. Banks said. The lawsuit is aimed at stopping a pernicious police practice, which is harming thousands of New Yorkers a year and clogging up the court system with one out of seven criminal cases and diverting resources and attention from more serious criminal matters. One plaintiff, Juan Gomez-Garcia, said he was waiting for a food order outside a Kennedy Fried Chicken restaurant in the Bronx on May 16 when an officer approached, began to question him and asked if he had any drugs on him. Mr. Gomez-Garcia, 27, said that after he admitted to the officer that he had marijuana in his pocket, the officer reached inside Mr. Gomez-Garcia's pocket and removed a plastic bag containing a small amount of the drug. He was arrested and charged with "open to public view" possession for having marijuana "in his right hand." He spent about 12 hours in a jail cell and was let go after he pleaded guilty to a disorderly conduct violation, according to the lawsuit. In New York City, many of the tens of thousands of misdemeanor marijuana arrests that occur each year have been the result of stop-and-frisk encounters in which the drugs hidden on a person are brought into public view only because of a police officer's frisk or instructions that a person empty his or her pockets, according to lawyers in the suit. In an effort to end these prosecutions, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo sought this month to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana in public view. The Legislature did not act on the proposal. Critics of the Police Department's enforcement policy said that the police officers have been willfully misinterpreting the state's marijuana laws for more than a decade in order to produce more arrests. Earlier this month, testifying before City Council, Mr. Banks presented statistics that he said showed that officers had also been ignoring Mr. Kelly's order, issued in September 2011. In August 2011, 4,189 people were arrested in New York City for misdemeanor marijuana possession, Mr. Banks said. While the arrests dipped below 3,000 in December, the "decline was only temporary," he said, adding that by March, the number of arrests had risen to 4,186, nearly the same level as before the order. Legal Aid Stop-and-Frisk Marijuana Lawsuit (PDF) Legal Aid Stop-and-Frisk Marijuana Lawsuit (Text)