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NYC Department of Investigation chief questioned about overdue report on NYPD gang database
By
Isidoro Rodriguez
Published Mar 8, 2023
Modified Mar 8, 2023
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Screen shot / City Council hearing livestream
By
Isidoro Rodriguez
Published Mar 8, 2023
Modified Mar 8, 2023
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The head of the city’s Department of Investigation faced questions Tuesday about a long overdue report explaining the controversial NYPD gang database – a policing tool advocates say unfairly exposes Black and Latino men to surveillance and policing.
Commissioner Jocelyn Strauber had first promised to deliver the report by the beginning of 2023. At the hearing, she said staff shortages have prevented her from keeping that promise. She said her office now expects to publish the report in the next three months.
“When we have a smaller number of people trying to accomplish the same amount of work, things can take more time,” said Strauber.
Critics argue that the NYPD has been secretive about how the database is used, who is on it, and how anyone on the database can be removed from it. The NYPD has not provided a racial breakdown of the roughly 18,000 people on the current list, but in 2018, then Police Commissioner Dermot Shea revealed that 99% of people in the database at that time were Black and Latino men.
In addition to demanding more transparency about the list, criminal justice advocates at the Legal Aid Society, LatinoJustice, and other local public defender and advocacy groups have called on the City Council to pass a bill that would abolish the database and prevent police from replacing it.
In places like California, Chicago and Boston, audits of police gang databases found widespread inaccuracies and evidence of racial discrimination.
Ivey Dyson, a lawyer at the nonpartisan law and policy institute the Brennan Center for Justice, spoke at the hearing and expressed frustration that the Office of the Inspector General for the NYPD, which handles investigations into the police department, has not been given sufficient attention and priority.
She pointed out that the position of inspector general, which is ultimately responsible for the report and whose office represents a division of Strauber’s department, has been vacant since 2021. That office's staff has been reduced by more than half, and has published only two reports since 2020.
Strauber said her office is still able to perform its duties. But she said delays are inevitable as long as funding gaps prevent her from filling the roughly 30 vacant positions in her department, including the inspector general position.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misstated the name of the reporter who wrote it. It was written by Isidoro Rodriguez.
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gang database
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Department of Investigations
budget hearing
Isidoro Rodriguez
Isidoro Rodriguez is a former Gothamist reporter.
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