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Related Case or Issue: Policing Reform Campaign
 

Today, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) served a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request on the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office (NYDA) to gather information about New Yorkers’ inclusion in NYDA’s gang database(s). This request follows LDF and the Center for Constitutional Rights’ recent FOIL requests seeking information about the New York City Police Department’s gang policing tactics.

Specifically, the FOIL request seeks:

  • All materials that define the criteria for identifying a person as a suspected, confirmed, former, or possible member, associate, and/or affiliate of any gang or crew in any database;
  • All materials that delineate the process, if any, for an individual included in any gang database to be notified of their inclusion in the system;
  • All materials that outline NYDA’s use of the information contained in its gang database(s);
  • All internal NYDA correspondence about the existence of a gang database and the criteria for including an individual in the log;
  • All demographic information – including race, sex, age, and residence – of those included in the system;  
  • A list of all federal and New York City agencies or organizations with whom the NYDA has shared information from its database(s);
  • A copy of every NYDA press release since January 1, 2010, that mentions an individual associated or affiliated with a gang or crew;
  • All materials regarding the NYDA’s retention and/or destruction of files associated with the database.

Read LDF’s FOIL request here.

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Founded in 1940, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) is the nation’s first civil and human rights law organization and has been completely separate from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1957—although LDF was originally founded by the NAACP and shares its commitment to equal rights. LDF’s Thurgood Marshall Institute is a multi-disciplinary and collaborative hub within LDF that launches targeted campaigns and undertakes innovative research to shape the civil rights narrative. In media attributions, please refer to us as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund or LDF.

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