The Legal Aid Society, Legal Defense Fund, The Bronx Defenders, LatinoJustice PRLDEF, and the law firm Ballard Spahr have filed a lawsuit challenging the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) use of the discriminatory Criminal Group Database, widely known as the Gang Database.

The lawsuit outlines how the NYPD’s practices and policies related to the database almost exclusively target Black and Latino people, who comprise 99% of the people in the database and who are surveilled, harassed, and targeted.

For years, the NYPD has racially profiled and harassed countless New Yorkers, some of them children, for everyday behavior such as hanging out with their friends, walking home, liking a social media post, or for simply living in public housing. People on the database have recounted being frequently stopped and arrested for low-level offenses, such as jaywalking, only to be detained and interrogated on activities wholly unrelated to the reason given for their arrest. The database has operated without transparency and accountability at the expense of the safety of Black and Latino New Yorkers.

There is no evidence that the Database improves public safety or reduces crime.

“The NYPD’s Gang Database is a tool of racist policing — plain and simple,” said Rigodis Appling, an attorney in the Special Litigation Unit & Community Justice Unit at Legal Aid. “It has terrorized the Black and Latino communities we serve, branding the people we serve as criminals without evidence and any regard for the truth.”

“This database has robbed people of their freedom, safety, and futures,” she continued. “We are proud to stand in this fight to dismantle a system that has inflicted so much harm and demand justice for the thousands who have been unjustly targeted.”