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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now we'll talk about the controversy playing out in court and playing out in politics over the NYPD's gang database. This is similar to the debate at the national level over the Trump gang database being used to round people up for deportation without criminal charges or proof of gang membership in many cases, but the local New York City version.

Civil rights groups argue that the database unfairly targets Black and Latino New Yorkers, casts too wide a net, and relies on ambiguous criteria to identify supposed gang members. These critics have now taken their concerns to court, filing a lawsuit challenging the database's legality and claiming it is a tool of discrimination. Meanwhile, City Council and the Adams administration have clashed over the database's future, with the mayor defending it as a critical public safety tool, but council members considering a bill to abolish it or limit its use.

We'll hear now from two experts with different perspectives on this issue. Joining us are Babe Howell, a professor at the CUNY School of Law who has studied the impact of gang policing on marginalized communities, and Peter Moskos, professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, former Baltimore City police officer and author of a new book, Back from the Brink: Inside the NYPD and New York City's Extraordinary 1990s Crime Drop. Professor Howell and Professor Moskos, thanks for coming on today. Hi there.

Professor Howell: Good morning. Thanks for having us.

Professor Moskos: Thanks for having us.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, you're invited in, too. Do you think the NYPD gang database is a necessary tool for keeping communities safe, or is it an unfair and potentially dangerous overreach? You can help us report this story as well as debate this issue. Any members of the NYPD listening, anybody wrapped up in criminal prosecution related to the gang database, prosecutors, defense attorneys, anyone related, help us report this story and share your perspective, or anyone else. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Call or text.

Professor Moskos, I think people hear this term a lot, but a lot of people don't really know what it is. What is the intended purpose of a gang database from a law enforcement perspective? What is it actually, and what role does it play in policing?

Professor Moskos: It has a couple different roles. One is that it can help identify shooters. The 16-year-old who was shot and killed yesterday in the Bronx, there is surveillance footage, so it does allow police to quickly match the shooter because rarely is it the first time. That shooter may be in a list. It can help identify who the shooter is, which can lead to quick apprehension.

It also can prevent retaliation because you have to know if it is a gang-related dispute, then you can help both police and violence interrupters can go to the rival clique and try and calm things down. That can have a huge beneficial effect. Mostly, it's a way for, internally, the police department to communicate with each other. If there's a gang dispute in one precinct that goes into another precinct, those precincts need to be able to communicate. It's a way to keep a list of what's going on.

If this were abolished, and it's important to describe what the law actually proposes as opposed to just the theoretical or ideological issues about the gang database list, is it bans centralization and consolidation of criminal group-related intelligence. That's what police do. It's hard to imagine policing without the ability to actually communicate within the department.

Brian Lehrer: Professor Howell, same question, basically, for listeners who might not be as familiar. Anything to add about the basics of the NYPD's gang database and how it's used? I think you're going to be the bigger critic in this segment. You can respond to anything that Professor Moskos just said there.

Professor Howell: I certainly will be the bigger critic. The gang database is digital Stop and Frisk or the new, new, new Jim Crow. It targets young Black and Latino New Yorkers. It targets them based entirely on legal conduct. Not because of crime, not because somebody was a shooter before, but because of social media posts, where they live, their friendship groups. The gang database is not about gangs. It can include any group of three or more. It is secret. There is no notice and no opportunity to challenge inclusion. It includes kids as young as 12.

It is over 98% Black and Latino, and less than 1% white. It includes 13,000 individuals, but there are no white supremacists, no mafia, no Russian or Armenian gangs, no Proud Boys, almost no white people in this database. Unlike Stop and Frisk, the NYPD can target young Black and Latino New Yorkers without reasonable suspicion and with no judicial oversight. As you mentioned at the beginning of this program, this is incredibly dangerous. It puts at risk many legal immigrants who make New York great. It also puts at risk our citizens who are labeled gang members. If they are picked up and put in the system, they are denied due process, they are denied diversion programs, they are denied supports.

If we identify a particular neighborhood as one that is at high risk, then we ought to be providing the community supports that the young people in that neighborhood need, not targeting every person as a suspect.

What Professor Moskos is telling you is by, essentially, keeping track of everyone in a neighborhood, we can then identify a suspect. The NYPD is using this database not to gather intelligence; they have separate mechanisms for doing that, but to surveil young Black and brown New Yorkers without any basis and without any review. It is extremely dangerous.

Brian Lehrer: Professor Moskos, I'm sure there's a lot in there that you want to respond to, but let me focus you first on specifically how someone ends up on this list, one of the points of contention that Professor Howell raised.

Professor Moskos: I'm not in the NYPD. It is a closed list, I can't give you the specifics of that. Certainly, previous criminal activity, self-identification, social media, those are all taken into account to get on this list. There is oversight. People are removed from this list. Certainly, there needs to be oversight and perhaps a bit more transparency. Again, that's not what this law fixes. You see this often with reform is that the advocates for reform talk about one thing, but the law does another. This is a list that's focused on gun violence, and gang gun violence in particular, so there absolutely is a racial disparity compared to the city overall, but there's a racial disparity in gun violence.

I don't know how you can square that circle if you are focused on gun violence. It's going to reflect the reality of the city, which is that 95% of shooters and victims are Black or Hispanic. The law prohibits the future establishment of lists that would include white supremacists, corrupt cops, terrorists. That's why the overreach of this, to prohibit the police from establishing a future list of criminal organizations, that's what the law does--

Brian Lehrer: This is the bill in City Council that they're considering that you're referring to?

Professor Moskos: Yes. That's the issue here. If the goal is to make the list better, to make it fairer, to ensure due process, let's do that. This is an abolitionist, a police abolitionist's dream to prevent the police from keeping lists of future criminal organizations. There's nothing in the proposed bill that specifically links it to racial disparities. It prohibits all future databases.

Brian Lehrer: Overreach then, Professor Howell?

Professor Howell: I need to refer you to the Office of Inspector General's NYPD report on the Gang Database. It found that the NYPD is using illegally sealed arrest, that they do not have sufficient support, even with the non-criminal criteria. I have to correct Professor Moscow on the notion that this focuses either on guns or previous criminal activity. No criteria for the database requires either. There's essentially three sets of criteria. One is self-admission, which could include a single social media post. The NYPD's Office of Inspector General found people were added to the database based on a Happy Birthday message on social media to someone that NYPD says is a gang associate.

They found that whole NYCHA developments were designated as gang locations. They also routinely denied FOILs. They are not using the database in a legal way and having due process, giving people notice that we have put you in a database based on who you are, where you live, or who your friendship groups are is not a solution; that you could have a hearing to try to contest that your tattoos or your Bulls shirt are gang related. The NYPD says that praying hands are gang-related tattoos, that Our Lady of Guadalupe is a gang-related tattoo, that every color you can imagine is gang-related.

Across the country, we've had similar databases. In each and every case, they are misused. They include people who do not even meet the minimal criteria, and the criteria are entirely non-criminal, and routinely these focus on Black and brown people. Law enforcement has long had intelligence, and they can continue to have intelligence. You can't call it intelligence when you broadcast a secret list of totally legal activities to 30,000 patrol officers. What happens is when they run a person's name, a few 15-year-olds who lives in a NYCHA property or near it, up comes a red flag that they are in a known criminal group, that endangers the individuals. It also is likely to [unintelligible 00:12:28] [crosstalk] in the neighborhood.

Professor Moskos: How does that endanger the individuals?

Professor Howell: When a police officer stops someone and sees the red flag that they're in a known criminal group, they're likely to use force, they're likely to order them out of the car, they're likely to escalate and perceive a threat where none would exist. Labeling people as gang members is an enormous problem. In the case that was just filed last week by LDF, Legal Aid, LatinoJustice, the plaintiffs reported being stopped as often as every single week. They were kept on the database for decades. Across the country, wherever we've had a database like this, we see these kind of abuses. People in LA, the Metropolitan Police were fabricating self-admissions. Here in New York, we're seeing the OIG finding on every criteria that's used there's insufficient support.

Brian Lehrer: We can take a few phone calls or texts before the end of this segment. If anybody has any personal experience with this, on any side of it in any way, or just a question or comment. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Professor Moskos, go ahead.

Professor Moskos: I think it's important to focus on the database and how it's used in New York City. Certainly, these lists can and have been abused elsewhere. I don't think it's perfect in New York City by any means. Again, the actual issue is what the bill proposes, which prohibits a list that centralizes and consolidates criminal group-related intelligence. You have to take what the bill is actually going to do. Again, if I think many of us can agree, including people in the NYPD on best practices and how to make those.

The fundamental issue is if the list could be perfect, should it be kept then? I think a lot of people on the other side would say no, that gangs are a social construction. The gang violence is very real. People are getting shot and killed on this. The NYPD needs to have a system of consolidation of information. It's just the department is too big. You've got 78 precincts. You can't just have detectives relying on memory and handwritten notes.

Brian Lehrer: What the specific concern that Professor Howell brought up, that once you're on the list, even if you haven't committed any kind of crime, if you got on through some social media posts or identified by where you live or a tattoo, whatever, then you're on this list and any casual contact that law enforcement might have with you subjects you to greater scrutiny, more people being pulled over? This goes on for decades, she said, because it's hard to get off the list. There are consequences, she's asserting, to being on the list without having done anything.

Professor Moskos: Well, after the Department of Investigation report in 2023, there were a few thousand people removed from the list and far few people added to it. I think that is the type of oversight that can help the NYPD keep the list. Perhaps Professor Howell knows better. I think you can time off the list, though I'm not certain about that.

Brian Lehrer: Briefly, Professor Howell, do you know?

Professor Howell: They are supposed to review you at age 23 and every so often, every few years. Historically, they did not. They did remove, as Professor Moskos said, 3,000 people, which really shows that this is not a precise list if we can get rid of 25% of it in a moment. The plaintiffs in the current lawsuit have been on it for a decade without criminal conduct. You can age out, but it's almost impossible. Any police conduct contact, and they're contacting and targeting individuals on the list constantly, can serve as a renewed basis for inclusion.

Brian Lehrer: Luke in Crown Heights, you're on WNYC. Hi, Luke.

Luke: Hi, good morning. I'm calling just to bring a sense of reality to this conversation. This is so beyond the pale. Even your guest speaker talking about it, it's just incompetent at all levels. You're talking about it's actually targeting gun violence. Well, then call it that and target gun violence of convicted gun crimes. Don't blanket is as this labeling system. Being labeled a gang member, you ask, how does that hurt someone? What world are you living in? When a cop sees you as a gang member without a prior conviction, that does put you in danger. Just look around you at the world we live in. This is so beyond the pale.

You're talking about how there's some oversight. It's just so incompetent, but deadly. You're putting these people's lives at risk. You're parading around saying, "We're going to be stopping gun violence this, that--" So often these initiatives come out and they are touted as trying to achieve or working towards one end, but the actual implementation of them time and time again is just to target the same people it always targets. This is insanely racist, and it's obviously racist. Okay? Doesn't have to be shrouded in this bureaucratic language. You're targeting people who are not yet convicted, but already making them suffer the consequences of being associated with gun violence.

Brian Lehrer: Luke, let me get a response. Obviously, that was aimed at you, Professor Moskos. How about the point that he made at the beginning of the call, that if this is, in effect, being used as a gun database to stop gun violence, why don't you call it that? Why don't they call it that? And why don't they just create a gun violence database instead of calling it a gang database which has all that association, simply association to get you on the list?

Professor Moskos: Well, because gangs aren't only involved in gun violence. They're engaged in other criminal activity as well. Perhaps I'm in the minority that I think criminal gangs are a public safety problem that needs to be and should be addressed by police. If other people don't think gangs are a problem, I suspect they don't live in neighborhoods that have gang problems. I've actually policed violence and gangs. I can't relate to the idea. I know how it works in reality. It's not as lethal. In New York City, and again, I want to keep it focused here because I think there are greater problems elsewhere. Where is the lethal police violence in this, from someone just in the gang database? Even if this is a problem and I'm totally wrong about it, this is not what the bill addresses. It would be catastrophic to prevent the police from keeping lists of criminal organizations.

Brian Lehrer: Another question, this one in a text. This is a follow-up. Professor Howell, I'll throw this to you because you're the one who brought up the Proud Boys and Russian Mafia. "Why are Proud Boys and Russian Mafia not in this gang database?" asks this listener in a text.

Professor Howell: The NYPD has been asked that question in public hearings on the database, and the answer was clear as mud. I have no idea why white supremacists are not in this database or whether they keep intelligence on them.

Professor Moskos: They do.

Professor Howell: They keep some intelligence--

Professor Moskos: They're on different databases.

Professor Howell: So there's white people databases based on actual risk to society, and Black and Latino databases based on what you wear and whether you have certain emojis on your social media. We do need to put this in context, as Professor Moskos has said. The NYPD has criminal records. They have records of any open cases. They do not need a database based on appearance on social media posts based on the NYPD echo chamber saying someone's a gang member.

I do also want to say the context in New York is unique. We do not have gang violence at the level of other cities that have long tried to suppress gangs. We used social workers and outreach workers instead of law enforcement in the '60s and '70s. When the NYPD announced Operation Crew Cut, its new focus on gangs, that was when the class in the Stop and Frisk case was certified. When it became clear the NYPD were not going to be able to racially profile our young people in the streets using stop and frisk, they turn to racially profiling them digitally by sitting at computers looking at young Black and brown people instead of patrolling the streets and having relationships.

I will also say that, at that point in history, the NYPD's gang stats identified gang crime as less than 1% of all crime, 5% of homicides, 20% of shootings. The NYPD is able to manipulate these statistics. I think now they're saying it's 60%, but they'll label anything gang-related if the victim is gang labeled by them. If they label 13,000 people as gang members, then all the crimes, whether or not motivated, are reinforcing that gang members drive violent crime.

Brian Lehrer: Let me get one more caller in here, Bree in Hamilton, New Jersey, who says she has personal experience with this. Bree, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Bree: Hi, thank you for taking my call. I'm making reference to 2004. I am a white mother of interracial boys. My son, at age 16, was identified by the police as a member of the Five Percenters. I can't clarify exactly what a Five Percenter is, but it is under the category of the Crips and the Bloods. Then you have the Five Percenters and I guess some other groups. The police used to target my boys because we moved into an aging white community. They were children of color. Even my 12-year-old son had spoken to me about how he had walked past a house that the police were watching, they took him in the car, him and a classmate of his. He said, "Hi, my name is, is George," because they asked what his name was, and he goes, "Oh, aren't people like you named Tyrone?" He was only 12. He came running home to me and told me what they said. He didn't make that up. He was a child.

We also saw in the police records for my 16-year-old son, who was special ed, mind you, and went to a special education school, was identified as a Five Percenter. He didn't even know what a Five Percenter was.

Brian Lehrer: Bree, thank you for telling that story. As we run out of time in the segment, let me bounce off that to ask you, Professor Moskos, another question that a listener text, and that is, "If there are problems with the way the databases are being used, how do we fix them?" I think that question is based on if City Council does not abolish them, how do we fix them?

Professor Moskos: We fix it by making sure that internally they go over the list, remove people from the list who have not been involved, to codify how people get on the list in a stricter way. Then, they have also outside oversight as well, like the Inspector General. People can get lazy on the inside. You need oversight, you need a bit more transparency. You need the list as accurate as possible. I wish the bill did that. I wish the bill didn't prohibit the future establishment of databases. The reform also needs to acknowledge that the police department needs to keep lists of criminals. That's the overreach.

I'm trying to express some nuance here. I'm not saying that saying the list is perfect and can't be improved. The move against it is part of a greater movement to limit police officience, to limit policing.

Brian Lehrer: A challenge to you in a text message, Professor Howell, you'll get the word. Listener writes, "Tell this guest to come out to the Cypress Hills houses, where the Brownsville houses in Brooklyn--" or the Brownsville houses in Brooklyn, I guess they meant, "in the 7-3 and the 7-5, and then she can talk." I guess that listener is asking, do you think you have widespread support for your position and the abolition of gang databases in areas where gangs are prevalent?

Professor Howell: We have a great deal of support with young people in those areas. What Professor Moskos just said, police need to keep a list of criminals. That's what criminal records are for. That's the conflation. A young person like Bree's son gets a label and then is considered a criminal. Do we have support? We need more. People are very afraid of gangs, and they should be. I'm not denying that gang violence exists, but if we want to get at it, instead of labeling young people as gang members and then stopping them, making them miss school, bringing them into the precinct to debrief them, and creating trauma and a resistant identity in those young people, we would provide the community supports, wraparound services, more after-school programs, more jobs in order to disrupt the cycle. More police do not disrupt the cycle. They pour gasoline on it. [unintelligible 00:28:52] [crosstalk] database is not necessary and must be eliminated. Many, many of the young people, if you talk to them in the neighborhood, I would say, are aware that they are being targeted by the police and that the gang database is part of that.

Brian Lehrer: Babe Howell, a professor at the CUNY School of Law. Peter Moskos, professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. An all-CUNY debate or exchange on this issue. Thank you very much, both of you, for coming on and talking about the NYPD's gang database and the City Council bill that would abolish it.

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