At a latest press convention saying 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.
“Yes we certainly did use the criminal group database as part of this investigation,” Tisch stated, utilizing the division’s extra ambiguous title for the gang checklist. Asserting that 60% of all shootings within the metropolis have some nexus to gangs or crews, she stated the database “remains a valuable tool in our efforts to keep New Yorkers safe.”
The police commissioner’s enthusiastic help stands in distinction to her boss’s emotions: as a candidate, Mayor Zohran Mamdani repeatedly referred to as for terminating the database solely, embracing the competition promoted by some legal justice reform advocates that it targets Black and Hispanic teenagers and younger males.
The mayor just lately 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 really helpful by town’s ethics watchdog to handle allegations of racial bias.
NYPD and the Brooklyn District Legal professional confirmed video of an alleged gang capturing in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Credit score: Screengrab by way of Safety Footage
The database is maybe essentially the most excessive profile of a number of areas the place Mamdani and Tisch have dramatically completely different views. Up to now he’s vowed to finish a crackdown on decrease degree high quality of life crimes and to get rid of a unit often known as the Strategic Response Group that’s been criticized for heavy-handed techniques throughout protests. Tisch helps each.
In two experiences since 2023, town Division of Investigation instructed 30 reforms geared toward guaranteeing that folks aren’t positioned within the gang database with out adequate purpose and aren’t saved there when there’s no proof of constant gang affiliation.
First DOI really helpful that cops present a clearer clarification of the proof they use to justify inserting somebody within the database, a course of often known as “activation.” And so they instructed making a system to repeatedly overview the police justifications and a course of for people or their mother and father to enchantment inclusion.
NYCHA’s Van Dyke Homes sit in the midst of Brownsville, Brooklyn, April 23, 2026. Credit score: Alex Krales/THE CITY
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 meaningful progress, which DOI itself has unequivocally acknowledged.”
In the meantime, Tisch has persistently championed the database, calling it a crucial weapon to scale back gun crime.
“When we have a shooting in the city, we use the gang database to anticipate where we may 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 going down 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, after 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 referred to as WOOO and one other referred to as CHOO who for the final three years, prosecutors say, have engaged in a chaotic capturing warfare round a number of New York Metropolis Housing Authority developments. The grim rating thus far is 11 victims — together with one murder.
The NYPD positioned floodlights in a Brownsville park after a capturing, Aug. 9, 2019. Credit score: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
These battles created chaos.
The DA performed safety video exhibiting a 69-year-old man taking out his trash who was wounded when gunfire erupted. One other video confirmed youngsters ducking and operating as gang members opened hearth throughout a playground. A cellphone video posted on social media depicted gang members beating up a rival in a plaza close to Metrotech Heart in downtown Brooklyn.
“This 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, every single one 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 regulation 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 just lately the division additionally factored in if the topic frequented “known gang locations,” 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 School of Legal Justice, described the database as a “tool that can help define motivations and relationships.”
The NYPD says monitoring social media chatter is especially helpful in figuring out attainable deliberate retaliation and ratcheting up police oversight of gang members making particular threats.
Individuals stroll by way of Brownsville, Brooklyn on an early fall day, Oct. 10, 2025. Credit score: Alex Krales/THE CITY
As Michael Gerber, the deputy commissioner for authorized issues, put it throughout a Metropolis Council listening to final 12 months, “If we know from the database that a shooting victim is a gang member, the identities of rival gang members, and where those gangs are based, we can immediately deploy officers in a way that will help prevent retaliatory shootings.”
Sarni famous “activation” required no less than two unbiased sources, and stated the activation was speculated to be reviewed commonly to make sure there’s 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 may additionally see the names of people that had been “de-activated” however, Sarni stated, “They stopped that. We don’t keep a person in 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 is just not used to find out whether or not there’s possible trigger to arrest an individual. It primarily helps detectives “determine who is involved and where retaliation is most likely to occur,” she has stated.
Whereas campaigning final 12 months Mamdani had a really completely different view, labeling it a “vast dragnet of New Yorkers on the basis of whether they go out late, the photos they put on social media, so much of the facts of life of being a young New Yorker.”
Tattoos and Parades
Final spring the Authorized Help Society and the NAACP filed swimsuit 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 town’s movement to toss the swimsuit but additionally 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 swimsuit 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 Help stated that cops have cited every thing from “Mexican tattoos” to what they described as “cultural touchstones such as common gestures used by Black athletes” or “being present at the Puerto Rican Day parade.”
Up to now, the checklist has included youngsters as younger as 11, the lawsuit says.
NYPD and Brooklyn District Legal professional officers confirmed video of an alleged gang capturing subsequent to a Brownsville, Brooklyn playground. Credit score: By way of Safety Footage
“It’s basically youth behaviour,” stated Authorized Help employees legal professional Rigodis Appling. “Youth culture is youth culture. If this were a white suburb doing these things, they would not be put on a gang database.”
The Authorized Help Society, whose union urged Mamdani to not reappoint Tisch, says the database can’t be mounted and that reforms the NYPD has claimed to have adopted are incremental and meaningless.
The Division of Investigation’s April 2023 and October 2025 experiences 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 “varied widely.”
Members of the GANGS coalition protest on July 27, 2021, outdoors the NYPD’s inspector common’s workplace in Decrease Manhattan. Credit score: Eileen Grench/THE CITY
DOI famous that some social media postings cited to justify “activation” have been “cursory, conclusory and failed to include sufficient detail to support” self-admission to a gang. Examples included cops counting on “certain emojis,” or “photos of individuals in the company of known gang members without more detail.” Some cops famous “social media content” with zero data on the character of the content material.
In 136 instances, cops “activated” people based mostly on what they described as “two sources” however didn’t at all times “document the existence of two independent sources.” The report discovered cops in some instances merely designated complete 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 regulation enforcement contact for a 12 months, contending it may compromise investigations and endanger informants.
Will Mamdani Tame the NYPD?
The division at first rejected DOI’s request to let people file a public information request to see in the event that they’re on the checklist, however relented after the Authorized Help Society threatened authorized motion.
In a second overview in October the inspector common 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 really helpful 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 “reasonable belief” that the topic was a gang member.
Now, NYPD spokesperson Tannor stated, “Department policy has been updated to require that an individual’s reasonable belief must be supported by substantive explanations that the individual is a member of a criminal group.”
“We have previously acknowledged that our process for making juvenile notifications was deficient,” Tannor said. “We are working to fix that.”
NYPD officers guard a criminal offense scene in Greenwich Village, Jan. 9, 2026. Credit score: Alex Krales/THE CITY
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 updated,” the division stated.
In its October report, DOI made 13 new suggestions, and in January NYPD agreed to just accept all “in principle.” 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 most important 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 similar to “frequent presence at a known criminal group location” or “association with known criminal group members.” Scars and tattoos “associated with a particular criminal group” are not sufficient, neither is “frequent wearing of the colors” and “frequent use of hand signs associated with particular criminal groups.”
And so they be aware 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.
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