Lawyers say the NYPD is hesitant to promise demographic transparency of the DNA database.

Three years after promising transparency about the NYPD’s 32,000 DNA profiles, police officials still haven’t released demographic information about the database’s contents, an omission that civil liberties advocates say makes it difficult for minorities to trust the police.

The pledge was made at a City Council hearing in February 2020, in which elected officials raised concerns that the database contained too many profiles of New York City blacks and Hispanics, including minors. Many people with DNA in the database have not been convicted of a crime or even arrested.

Pictured August 18, 2020, then-Chief of Detectives Rodney Harrison.

Then-NYPD Chief of Detectives Rodney Harrison, citing “demographic transparency”, said the NYPD planned to track “the age, gender, and ethnicity of individuals entered and removed from the database to monitor and analyze differences.”

But since then, no such data has been published.

“This hearing was just full of empty promises — and of course, this is just one of them,” said Albert Fox Kahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Surveillance Project (STOP). “I expected the information to be published a long time ago. It would take them about an hour if they cared enough.

Albert Fox Kahn June 10, 2017

The NYPD said in a statement that the department is doing its best to provide greater transparency.

“This process requires a review of profiles that were obtained and developed as early as the late 1990s, and demographic information on a significant percentage of these profiles is unknown,” an NYPD spokesman said in a statement.

“Based on our preliminary review where demographics are known, the demographics of the deleted profiles correlate with the historical demographics of crime suspects. … The NYPD has developed a process to improve demographic tracking for new profiles in the future.”

But the spokesperson did not say why the tabulated demographics were not released to the public.

“We believe that transparency on this matter is important, and as such, we are very sorry that the NYPD did not deliver on their promise to collect this information and make it publicly available,” said Phil Degrange, Legal Services supervising attorney. Aid Society.

What is the NYPD hiding here? Desgrange added. “If their methods don’t create problems for the communities of color they are also trying to build relationships with, then disclose the demographic information that you collect and store in this index. When there is a shroud of secrecy, people are only going to fill that void with their own suspicions.”

Phil Degrange of Legal Aid.

The DNA information that the police release has been posted on the NYPD website six times since September 2020. The latest publication shows that the database contains 32,350 suspect profiles. So far, according to the NYPD, they have reviewed 29,489 profiles and have decided that 25% of them, or 7,331 profiles, should be removed.

In March 2020, NYPD First Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Tucker said that about 8,000 profiles – also about 25% of the total – would be deleted “in the next year or so.”

The remaining 22,158 profiles verified by the police must remain in the database, according to the NYPD. About 19,585 of those remaining profiles — about 66% of the total viewed — are samples taken from people who have been convicted of crimes.

2,448 profiles of individuals not convicted of crimes were collected either from cases under investigation or from cases pending in court. The remaining profiles also include 125 people whose guilt cannot be established because, for example, victims or witnesses refuse to cooperate with the police.

At the 2020 Council hearing, the NYPD also pledged to change the rules under which it collects and uses DNA samples.

Legal Aid filed a class-action lawsuit last year, calling the database unconstitutional and arguing that it should be shut down entirely, noting in part that the state database already exists and that DNA profiles were introduced after criminal convictions.

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