Exploring the Complexity of the NYPD Gang Database

Civil rights groups in New York City have filed a lawsuit challenging the NYPD's gang database, which these groups call discriminatory. Meanwhile, City Council and the Adams administration have clashed over the issue. Babe Howell, professor at CUNY School of Law, and Peter Moskos, professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, former Baltimore City police officer and author of Back from the Brink: Inside the NYPD and New York City's Extraordinary 1990s Crime Drop (Oxford University Press, 2025), debate the efficacy of the gang database