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NYCLU Says New NYPD Stop-and-Frisk Database Raises Major Privacy Concerns (2/5/2007)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: media@aclu.org
NEW YORK - The New
York Civil Liberties Union today raised major concerns about the revelation that
the New York City Police Department is compiling a massive new database of
law-abiding New Yorkers, mostly black and Hispanic, who have been stopped by the
police. The NYCLU demanded that the NYPD take immediate steps to protect
the privacy rights of persons who are stopped and frisked but not convicted of a
crime.
"In the coming days we will review in detail the
newly-released data on the demographics of the people whom the police stopped
and frisked in 2006," said NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman. "But the
revelation that these individuals' names are being improperly collected and
retained by the police is an added source of concern. The NYPD's collection and
retention of this information represents a violation of the privacy rights of
New Yorkers, may be illegal, and - given that the individuals stopped are
disproportionately black or Hispanic - raises major concerns about racial
profiling. People who have done nothing wrong should not be in a police
database."
The NYCLU learned of the database from an internal NYPD
operations order, dated 2006 (and now available on the NYCLU's website), that
mandates that "stop-and-frisk worksheets," which officers fill out after
stopping and frisking any individual, be submitted for inclusion in a new
database. According to sources with first-hand knowledge of the database, the
names of persons stopped are included in the database and can be obtained
through a query of the system.
Initial reports state that in 2006,
the Department completed stop-and-frisk forms on 508,540 individuals. Of that
number, only 50,436 were arrested or received summonses, leaving 458,104 people,
or 90 percent of all people stopped, found to have engaged in no unlawful
activity. According to the Department, 85.7 percent of all persons stopped
were black or Hispanic.
New York State Penal Law (Section 160.50)
requires that police records of people who are arrested and whose cases are
later dismissed must be sealed so as to protect their privacy rights. The
massive new stop-and-frisk database circumvents those legal protections by
including hundreds of thousands of people who have never been arrested or given
a summons. And for those people who were arrested and whose cases were
dismissed, unsealed retention of their names in the NYPD database would directly
violate this law.
The NYCLU's letter to the NYPD and the
NYPD operations order are available online at: www.nyclu.org/nypd_stop_and_frisk_ltr_020507.pdf
The
NYCLU's palm card, "What To Do If You're Stopped By The Police," is available
online at: www.nyclu.org/bust_card.html
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