The Legal Aid Society is calling to scrap the NYPD’s controversial gang database following the release of a report by the New York City Department of Investigation’s Office of the Inspector General for the NYPD earlier today.

The database is currently estimated to hold records on more than 16,000 New Yorkers, some as young as 11-years-old. 99 percent of those in the database are Black and Latinx.

“The Inspector General’s report makes clear that the NYPD’s gang database is overtly racist, procedurally indefensible, and makes little to no contribution to public safety,” said Anthony Posada, a Supervising Attorney in the Community Justice Unit at The Legal Aid Society. 

“Further investment in this irredeemable project would be a step backward,” he continued. “We need investment in communities not investment in failed, racist, guilt-by-association policing.”

Legal Aid is calling on the New York City Council to pass Int 0360, critical legislation sponsored by Assemblyperson Carlina Rivera, that would abolish this poorly managed and misguided database and preclude the NYPD from creating a replacement that replicates the database’s racist underpinnings.