At a latest press convention asserting a sweeping takedown of rival gangs infamous for his or her wild shootouts throughout public housing in Brownsville, Brooklyn, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch made the unsolicited level of praising the NYPD’s controversial gang database.
“Sure we definitely did use the prison group database as a part of this investigation,” Tisch stated, utilizing the division’s extra ambiguous identify for the gang checklist. Asserting that 60% of all shootings within the metropolis have some nexus to gangs or crews, she stated the database “stays a priceless device in our efforts to maintain New Yorkers protected.”
The police commissioner’s enthusiastic assist stands in distinction to her boss’s emotions: as a candidate, Mayor Zohran Mamdani repeatedly known as for terminating the database totally, embracing the rivalry promoted by some prison justice reform advocates that it targets Black and Hispanic teenagers and younger males.
The mayor not too long ago backed off from his name to tug the plug and now insists the database have to be reformed.
Whereas a blueprint for fixing the gang database has been round for years, an evaluation by THE CITY discovered that the NYPD stiff-armed or slow-walked almost a dozen reforms beneficial by the town’s ethics watchdog to deal with allegations of racial bias.
The database is probably essentially the most excessive profile of a number of areas the place Mamdani and Tisch have dramatically totally different views. Up to now he’s vowed to finish a crackdown on decrease stage high quality of life crimes and to eradicate a unit often called the Strategic Response Group that’s been criticized for heavy-handed ways throughout protests. Tisch helps each.
In two stories since 2023, the town Division of Investigation advised 30 reforms aimed toward guaranteeing that folks aren’t positioned within the gang database with out adequate purpose and aren’t stored there when there’s no proof of continuous gang affiliation.
First DOI beneficial that cops present a clearer rationalization of the proof they use to justify inserting somebody within the database, a course of often called “activation.” And so they advised making a system to repeatedly overview the police justifications and a course of for people or their mother and father to enchantment inclusion.
Whereas the NYPD adopted a few of DOI’s suggestions, with the implementation of a number of nonetheless pending, the division at one level rejected 5 outright, together with the appeals protocol and adjustments to how usually justifications are reviewed and who will get to overview them.
NYPD spokesperson Erika Tannor stated the division “continues to work on this and has made very significant progress, which DOI itself has unequivocally acknowledged.”
In the meantime, Tisch has persistently championed the database, calling it a essential weapon to scale back gun crime.
“When we’ve a taking pictures within the metropolis, we use the gang database to anticipate the place we may even see retaliatory violence, and that has helped drive our gun violence down,” she stated at a Jan. 6 press convention with Mamdani standing subsequent to her.
A key side of that effort is monitoring the conversations happening on social media that doc gang beatings and typically describe in particular element a gang’s plan to hunt revenge when a member is crushed or shot by a rival.
That was the case with the takedown of two Brownsville gangs Tisch and Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez introduced April 15, once they unsealed indictments in opposition to 36 defendants ranging in age from 16 to 27 alleging felonies from homicide to weapons possession.
The Brownsville investigation focused a gang known as WOOO and one other known as CHOO who for the final three years, prosecutors say, have engaged in a chaotic taking pictures warfare round a number of New York Metropolis Housing Authority developments. The grim rating thus far is 11 victims — together with one murder.
These battles created chaos.
The DA performed safety video displaying a 69-year-old man taking out his trash who was wounded when gunfire erupted. One other video confirmed youngsters ducking and working as gang members opened fireplace throughout a playground. A mobile phone video posted on social media depicted gang members beating up a rival in a plaza close to Metrotech Heart in downtown Brooklyn.
“That is life,” the poster is heard saying because the video captures his rival crushed and prostrate on the sidewalk.
Tisch famous that, “Of the 36 defendants, each single one in every of them was entered into that database.”
How It Works
The database consists of individuals — almost all of them Black or Hispanic youngsters or younger males — recognized by legislation enforcement as gang members. The standards to justify “activation” contains an topic “self-admitting” gang membership on social media or brazenly to police. Or, throughout an investigation, the person is recognized by two unbiased and dependable sources as a gang member.
Till not too long ago the division additionally factored in if the topic frequented “identified gang places,” flashed alleged gang hand indicators or displayed gang-affiliated tattoos on social media.
David Sarni, a retired NYPD detective who’s now an adjunct professor on the John Jay Faculty of Felony Justice, described the database as a “device that may assist outline motivations and relationships.”
The NYPD says monitoring social media chatter is especially helpful in figuring out potential deliberate retaliation and ratcheting up police oversight of gang members making particular threats.
As Michael Gerber, the deputy commissioner for authorized issues, put it throughout a Metropolis Council listening to final 12 months, “If we all know from the database {that a} taking pictures sufferer is a gang member, the identities of rival gang members, and the place these gangs are primarily based, we will instantly deploy officers in a method that can assist forestall retaliatory shootings.”
Sarni famous “activation” required a minimum of two unbiased sources, and stated the activation was imagined to be reviewed often to make sure there may be proof of ongoing gang affiliation. People can then both be “renewed” or “deactivated” — that’s, taken off the checklist.
For a number of years, cops might additionally see the names of people that had been “de-activated” however, Sarni stated, “They stopped that. We don’t preserve an individual within the system for 50 years.” That modification was in response to DOI’s critiques.
Commissioner Tisch has asserted that details about gang affiliation saved within the database will not be used to find out whether or not there may be possible trigger to arrest an individual. It primarily helps detectives “decide who’s concerned and the place retaliation is almost certainly to happen,” she has stated.
Whereas campaigning final 12 months Mamdani had a really totally different view, labeling it a “huge dragnet of New Yorkers on the idea of whether or not they exit late, the photographs they placed on social media, a lot of the details of lifetime of being a younger New Yorker.”
Tattoos and Parades
Final spring the Authorized Support Society and the NAACP filed go well with in Brooklyn federal courtroom calling the database racist and alleging it violates free speech, due course of and equal safety sections of the Invoice of Rights. In December a decide denied the town’s movement to toss the go well with but in addition rejected the plaintiff’s movement to declare it class motion litigation on behalf of anybody positioned within the database, limiting it to a few males named as lead plaintiffs.
The go well with alleges that 99% of these positioned on the checklist are Black or Hispanic. And it says that mere placement within the database can be utilized as justification to cease and query individuals.
Reviewing inner paperwork that detectives should fill out when proposing a person for inclusion, Authorized Support stated that cops have cited the whole lot from “Mexican tattoos” to what they described as “cultural touchstones reminiscent of widespread gestures utilized by Black athletes” or “being current on the Puerto Rican Day parade.”
Up to now, the checklist has included youngsters as younger as 11, the lawsuit says.
“It’s mainly youth behaviour,” stated Authorized Support employees legal professional Rigodis Appling. “Youth tradition is youth tradition. If this had been a white suburb doing these items, they’d not be placed on a gang database.”
The Authorized Support Society, whose union urged Mamdani to not reappoint Tisch, says the database can’t be fastened and that reforms the NYPD has claimed to have adopted are incremental and meaningless.
The Division of Investigation’s April 2023 and October 2025 stories on the database clarify the NYPD has moved slowly to undertake proposed fixes, rejecting some suggestions outright.
The 2023 report submitted by NYPD Inspector Normal Jeanene Barrett to then-Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell examined what proof the NYPD used to justify inserting 493 individuals on the checklist and located the character and documentation of people “self-admitting” to gang membership “various extensively.”
DOI famous that some social media postings cited to justify “activation” had been “cursory, conclusory and failed to incorporate adequate element to assist” self-admission to a gang. Examples included cops counting on “sure emojis,” or “photographs of people within the firm of identified gang members with out extra element.” Some cops famous “social media content material” with zero data on the character of the content material.
In 136 instances, cops “activated” people primarily based on what they described as “two sources” however didn’t all the time “doc the existence of two unbiased sources.” The report discovered cops in some instances merely designated whole Housing Authority developments as a “gang location.”
The NYPD beneath Commissioner Sewell agreed in precept to just accept i11 suggestions, however rejected 5 outright, together with drafting a written coverage requiring all “activated” entries be reviewed each 12 months for teenagers beneath 18 and each 18 months for adults. The division stated a overview each two years for teenagers and each three years for adults was adequate.
The NYPD additionally rejected DOI’s suggestion to create a panel to overview all activations, and shot down a suggestion to create an appeals course of for fogeys if their teenagers haven’t any legislation enforcement contact for a 12 months, contending it might compromise investigations and endanger informants.
The division at first rejected DOI’s request to let people file a public data request to see in the event that they’re on the checklist, however relented after the Authorized Support Society threatened authorized motion.
In a second overview in October the inspector normal discovered the NYPD had not absolutely adopted 5 of its suggestions.
DOI famous, for instance, that whereas the NYPD had initiated overview of “activation,” there was nonetheless no supervisory oversight of renewals and deactivations. Final week the NYPD advised THE CITY it’s engaged on fixing this.
Whereas DOI beneficial cops present an in depth narrative explaining the justification for placing somebody within the database, DOI discovered police continued to make use of “boilerplate language” to explain the supply’s “cheap perception” that the topic was a gang member.
Now, NYPD spokesperson Tannor stated, “Division coverage has been up to date to require that a person’s cheap perception have to be supported by substantive explanations that the person is a member of a prison group.”
“We now have beforehand acknowledged that our course of for making juvenile notifications was poor,” Tannor stated. “We’re working to repair that.”
DOI additionally famous that sealed arrests aren’t supposed for use to justify placement within the database, however discovered NYPD was nonetheless itemizing the highest cost of sealed arrests in complaints to justify “activation.” This coverage “is being up to date,” the division stated.
In its October report, DOI made 13 new suggestions, and in January NYPD agreed to just accept all “in precept.” The NYPD stated they need to be in place by July.
In February, almost three years after DOI’s first report, the NYPD issued the largest change to its gang database, embracing new protocols that eradicated most of the standards cops had been utilizing to justify “activation.”
The division says it not makes use of classes reminiscent of “frequent presence at a identified prison group location” or “affiliation with identified prison group members.” Scars and tattoos “related to a specific prison group” are not sufficient, neither is “frequent sporting of the colours” and “frequent use of hand indicators related to explicit prison teams.”
And so they observe that the variety of individuals within the database has dropped from 18,000 in 2019 to its present 7,700 — a 58% drop. The variety of juveniles additionally fell from 440 to 209.
