Talia Kamran, Staff Attorney in the Seizure and Surveillance Defense Project, testified before the New York City Council Committee on Public Safety in support of Introduction 798, which would permanently abolish the NYPD’s gang database. She detailed how the database operates as a tool of racialized surveillance, disproportionately targeting Black and Latine youth, subjecting them to unconstitutional policing, and funneling them into the criminal legal system without due process. BDS urged the Council to dismantle this system of mass surveillance and reinvest in real community-based safety solutions.

"The NYPD’s gang database is part of the technological evolution of broken windows policing—transforming a regime of racially disproportionate street stops into one of racially disproportionate data collection."

...

"The gang database is not just a flawed policing tool—it is a driver of racially disproportionate mass incarceration. It operates as a self-fulfilling cycle: by labeling young people of color as gang members without due process, it pushes them into the legal system, subjects them to harsher prosecution and sentencing, and ensures their continued surveillance and exclusion from rehabilitative pathways even after incarceration."

Read the full testimony here.