The Office of the Inspector General (OIG-NYPD), a Department of Investigation (DOI) agency, started to probe the Criminal Group Database—NYPD’s “secret” gang database—in 2018, but there’s still no official report on the furtive list today, despite Commissioner Jocelyn Strauber’s projection of a release by the end of 2022 during a City Council hearing last spring. She said a draft was already in progress at the time.
“DOI is diligently working on its examination of the NYPD’s criminal group database and is hopeful to issue its report early this year,” said a department spokesperson, who could not comment further.
Last Thursday, Jan. 5, public defense provider Legal Aid Society and the anti-database consortium Grassroots Advocates for Neighborhood Groups & Solutions (G.A.N.G.S.) Coalition jointly denounced the city’s failure to release the report by the end of last year. In his statement, Anthony Posada, supervising attorney for the Legal Aid Society’s Community Justice Unit, demanded the “broken promises must end now.” He later told the Amsterdam News the report would shed some much needed light on one of the NYPD’s most uncharted tools.
“There are inherent due process concerns that the database does not adhere to so that people are never given a chance to challenge their inclusion in the database and they also are subjected to staying on there perpetually because there’s no mechanism to get off of it,” said Posada. “It just adds to the layers of secrecy under which this system operates, and it’s more of the reason why we really need the Office of Inspector General to issue a report that gives New Yorkers clarity and transparency about how the system operates.
“How many people are on it? How many of those people on it are minors? How many people on there have never even committed a crime?”
What is known is the list overwhelmingly tallies non-white New Yorkers, as pieced together by the Legal Aid Society’s Freedom of Information Law requests and ex-NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea’s own admission—the former police leader said in 2018 around 99% of the people in the gang database are Black or brown.
Yet race is no qualifier for gang participation and the percentages indicate the frequent exclusion of white supremacists, who U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas declared the “greatest domestic threat” in 2021.
Those who are keyed in are not informed and there’s no way of knowing if someone is logged without a public records request. The little available information leads opponents like the Legal Aid Society and City Councilmember Tiffany Cabán to call the database a “dragnet,” presumed to broadly categorize, criminalize and surveil Black and brown youth from the city’s most vulnerable communities. To understand its full scope, the city’s delayed report is necessary.
“The vast majority of the mechanics and the ability to identify patterns, or errors within it, all lie in the hands of the NYPD, so we really need the function and the authority that exists within the OIG office for a report like this to be produced,” said Posada.
Posada also said there are adverse effects for New Yorkers secretly tagged as gang members: It can lead to different treatment during police stops, and the label can hurt someone’s chances in court, whether during a child custody battle or in setting bail.
Last November, groups like the Legal Aid Society and the G.A.N.G.S. Coalition protested outside the OIG-NYPD’s office, demanding the report’s release.
The NYPD says entry in the database does not prove criminal behavior and that information can only be accessed by authorized police personnel to help solve crimes. Beyond arrest records, the intelligence-gathering tactics largely focus on location and personal relationships, which seem to be a root cause in the dragnet accusations.
Beyond the report, a bill to abolish the database and ban any subsequent attempts to resurrect or rebrand it was introduced to City Council. The OIG-NYPD would also be mandated to inform those entered that they were listed, and the floated law could allow those whose rights were potentially violated by the database to seek legal restitution.
Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member and writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.