For more than a decade, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) has maintained a “gang database,” formally called the Criminal Group Database, that labels more than 16,000 NYC residents as “members of criminal groups and street gangs.” Residents are placed into this database based on vague and racialized criteria. And this happens without their knowledge.
Under the guise of what it calls “precision policing,” the NYPD has subjected the people in this database—who are primarily Black and Latinx teenagers and young adults—to sustained surveillance and harassment. The NYPD has claimed that the database is a necessary crime-fighting tool, but has provided no evidence linking the database with crime reductions or public safety improvements. In fact, according to the NYPD’s own data, gang-motivated incidents represent only 0.1% of crime incidents in the city annually.2
In this piece, LDF’s Thurgood Marshall Institute (TMI) presents new research showing that the recent elimination of gang databases in Portland, Oregon, and Chicago, Illinois, did not result in an increase in reported crime. These findings suggest that gang databases do not reduce crime or improve public safety, and therefore support the elimination of the gang database in New York City, which the New York City Council is currently considering. Below, TMI takes a deeper dive into how gang databases are used, what these research findings show, and why now is the time to put an end to the NYPD’s gang database and the pervasive racial discrimination that comes along with it.
The NYPD’s gang database is a secret digital list of NYC residents whom the NYPD labels as gang members. Other cities have similar gang databases, including Boston, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C.
In New York City, entry into the gang database is not tied to actual criminal activity or threats to public safety. Instead, the NYPD targets groups of people, predominantly informal groups of teens and young adults, who live in the same neighborhoods, go to the same schools, or dress similarly—in other words, friend groups. Police add individuals to the database without their knowledge and for reasons that are imprecise and innocuous, like what they wear or where they hang out. When adding people to the database, officers have classified entire public housing developments, which can take up multiple blocks with thousands of families, as “gang locations.” The NYPD can even put an individual in the database simply for posting “Happy Birthday” on the Facebook page of someone who was already included.
Considering these vague criteria, it would seem that anyone could end up in the NYPD’s gang database. However, gang databases across the country, including in New York City, routinely have stark racialized disparities due to the systematic targeting of young Black and Latino men. Police use the vague criteria to exercise significant discretion over who gets added to the database, creating opportunities for racial bias and discrimination in these decisions. As a result, ninety-nine percent of people in the NYPD gang database are Black and/or Latinx, and half of them are under twenty-three years of age. Ten percent of the people in the database are minors, including children as young as eleven years old.
The people in the database, who are predominantly young Black and Latino men, report being intensely surveilled and harassed by police. Traumatic experiences like these are reminiscent of the height of New York City’s stop-and-frisk program in the 2000s and 2010s, when thousands of men of color suffered from routine police abuse. Once the NYPD flags someone as a gang member, that person can face elevated charges (such as felony charges for graffiti), higher bail, and longer prison sentences.
Given the harms associated with this invasive police surveillance of young Black and Latinx New Yorkers, a coalition of community members and advocates has been pushing to eliminate the NYPD gang database. Because supporters of the gang database argue that it is necessary for crime prevention and reduction, TMI tested these claims by examining what happened to crime rates in Portland and Chicago after they eliminated their gang databases.
TMI used a statistical method called interrupted time series modeling, which tests for differences before and after a one-time intervention while accounting for trends prior to the intervention. In this case, the intervention was the elimination of a city’s gang database. The key assumptions of this approach are: 1) if the database had not been eliminated, trends in crime rates would have continued unchanged; and 2) there were no other interventions that occurred at the same time that would have impacted crime trends. For both cities, TMI analyzed trends in total crime incidents reported to police, violent crime incidents, and property crime incidents. To read more about the data sources and statistical methods we used, visit our GitHub repository here.3
In September 2017, the Portland Police Bureau announced it would purge and shut down its gang database and end the practice of designating people as gang members, effective October 15, 2017, after sustained concerns raised by community members. To determine whether eliminating the Portland gang database changed reported crime rates, TMI analyzed daily crime data from October 15, 2016, (one year prior) through October 15, 2018 (one year after).
The results show that eliminating the Portland gang database was not associated with any statistically significant changes in the slope (rate of change) of total crime, violent crime, or property crime (Figure 1). The slopes of total crime incidents and property crime incidents stayed flat (no change) from October 15, 2016, through October 15, 2018. The rate of violent crime incidents increased over this time period, but this increase began one year prior to the elimination of the database and stayed consistent, meaning that the elimination of the database was not associated with any change in the slope. The only statistically significant change associated with abolishing the database was a drop in violent crime incidents immediately following the intervention date, which likely occurred due to seasonal trends in crime following a cyclical pattern.4 While these findings do not suggest that eliminating the gang database caused a reduction in violent crime, they do clearly refute claims that the Portland gang database was an effective or necessary crime prevention tool. Had that been true, crime trends would have increased after the elimination of the gang database, which clearly did not occur.
On September 7, 2023, after years of organizing led by the Erase the Gang Database Coalition, Chicago’s Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability voted unanimously to abolish the city’s gang database and scrap the development of a new database. To analyze whether eliminating the Chicago gang database resulted in any changes in reported crime rates, TMI analyzed daily crime data from September 7, 2022, (one year prior) through September 7, 2024 (one year after).
The results show that eliminating the Chicago gang database was not associated with any statistically significant changes in the slopes of total crime, violent crime, or property crime (Figure 2). Overall, trends in crime in the year following the elimination of the database mirrored trends in the year prior. The only statistically significant changes associated with abolishing the database were drops in total crime and violent crime immediately following the intervention date—again, likely due to seasonal, cyclical patterns in crime. Similar to the results in Portland, there is no evidence that eliminating the Chicago gang database was associated with increases in total, violent, or property crimes.
TMI’s analysis demonstrates that the elimination of gang databases in Portland and Chicago was not associated with an increase in crime, suggesting that the databases had no discernable crime prevention benefits and therefore did not advance public safety.
These two gang databases were eliminated because they were deeply flawed and harmed residents. The NYPD’s gang database shares the same flaws as these now-defunct databases, which are highlighted below:
Gang databases across the country are being used to surveil and criminalize Black and Latinx kids who are simply living their lives, based primarily on law enforcement’s use of subjective, broad, and racialized notions of what constitutes a “gang.” Portland and Chicago took the positive step of ending this practice, with no negative impacts on crime and safety—setting an important example for other cities, including New York City.
The New York City Council is currently considering a bill (Int. 798) that would abolish the NYPD gang database and prohibit any new gang databases from taking its place. The City Council now has an opportunity to follow the example set by officials in Chicago and Portland by eliminating the city’s discriminatory gang database once and for all. It is time for elected leaders to follow the evidence, listen to community members, defend the rights of Black and Latinx residents, and vote to eliminate the database permanently. For up-to-date information about the bill to eliminate the NYPD gang database, visit EraseTheDatabaseNYC.com.
To find out if you are in the NYPD gang database, you can submit a Freedom of Information request to the NYPD. You can begin that process by visiting LegalAidFOIL.backspace.com. If you have been impacted by gang policing, please email JusticeinNY@naacpldf.org.
We all deserve to live in neighborhoods that are free from violence, including police violence. To achieve that goal, it is imperative that cities invest in non-discriminatory strategies that advance public safety, rather than employing discriminatory and counterproductive tactics that criminalize Black and Latinx children, which can cause lifelong harms. New York City can—and must—do better.
1. While the NYPD uses the term “Hispanic” in their materials, LDF uses the term “Latinx” as a gender-neutral alternative to “Latino” and “Latina.” See https://www.edi.nih.gov/blog/communities/understaning-latinx-latine-a-move-toward-inclusivity.
2. This calculation is based on data provided by the NYPD to LDF in response to a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request. According to the NYPD’s historical crime data reports, there were 379,008 total crime incidents in NYC in 2021. FOIL data provided by the NYPD indicate that, in 2021, there were only 535 “gang-motivated” incidents. “Gang-motivated” incidents are defined as incidents of unlawful conduct by a gang member or suspected gang member that is done primarily: a) to benefit or further the interests of the gang, or b) as part of an initiation, membership rite, or act of allegiance to or support for a gang, or c) as a result of a conflict or fight between gang members of the same or different gangs.
3. GitHub is a platform on which researchers can share data and analytic code for the public to view. In the GitHub repository for this analysis, viewers will find a README file describing the data, methods, and results of this analysis, along with the R code used to analyze the data.
4. Research suggests that crime trends are impacted by seasonality. For example, data consistently show that violent crime rates are higher in the summer, potentially due to higher temperatures. See David McDowall et al. (2012) Seasonal Cycles in Crime, and Their Variability, J Quant Criminol, https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Colin-Loftin/publication/257594455_Seasonal_Cycles_in_Crime_and_Their_Variability/links/64822576b3dfd73b776dd8ee/Seasonal-Cycles-in-Crime-and-Their-Variability.pdf.
LDF’s Framework for Public Safety outlines our affirmative vision for a just public safety system. that centers the dignity and humanity of individuals and communities while creating conditions to reduce crime on a sustained basis and avoid the harms associated with the current system of law enforcement.
Through litigation, policy advocacy, and community organizing, LDF works to ensure protestors can fight for change without police violence. LDF has supported the use of peaceful protest to advance civil rights and racial justice for Black communities. Defending the right to protest is a central piece of LDF’s history.
This brief by LDF and the Bazelon Center examines the incarceration, institutionalization, and police violence that Black people with mental illness, and all people with mental illness, face in law enforcement encounters when community-based mental health services are not available to respond to their needs.
This resource includes information about the dangers of Cop City, the community opposition towards the project, efforts to stop it, and more. Cop City will perpetuate current failed systems of public safety in Atlanta that rely almost exclusively on law enforcement.
For decades, qualified immunity has protected law enforcement officers and other government officials from being held accountable when they violate people’s constitutional rights. We’ve compiled answers to frequently asked questions about qualified immunity.
The myths that are used to justify qualified immunity are numerous and egregious, and its dangers are clear. It’s critical to explore both in order to raise awareness about qualified immunity’s detrimental impacts, particularly on communities of color, and why it is a danger to public safety.
