The Chicago Police Department’s “gang database” isn’t so much an effective crime-fighting tool as it is a disorganized hodgepodge of outdated and often unverified information, according to a blistering report released Thursday by the Office of the Inspector General.
In fact, according to the OIG, the “database” label is something of a misnomer as the CPD has collected and stored gang data in more than a dozen places in just the last decade.
“OIG found that CPD has captured, reported, and visualized gang-related data in at least 18 different forms, records, and systems of records in the past 10 years, although CPD was not able to definitively account for all such information in its possession and control,” the 160-page audit reads.
Announcing the release of the report at a City Hall press conference Thursday morning, Chicago Inspector General Joe Ferguson noted the collateral damage a person can face once they’re designated a gang member by the CPD.
“The impact that it has on these individuals extends far beyond the intended law enforcement purposes for which CPD collects and utilizes this information,” Ferguson said.
The report notes that, in its current form, the CPD’s gang data collection and storing methods exacerbate the already strained relationship between law enforcement and minority communities.
The OIG also said that, as it stands now, the CPD’s gang membership collection practices also have an adverse impact on those involved in immigration proceedings.
The audit called for the City Council to consider amending Chicago’s Welcoming City Ordinance, which says that city agencies will not ask for or disclose a person’s immigration status to federal authorities unless that person has been identified as a known gang member either in a law enforcement agency’s database or by their own admission.
Thursday, Ferguson also called for the City Council’s Public Safety Committee to have a hearing on the CPD’s gang data practices.
Karen Sheley, director of the ACLU of Illinois’ police practices project, said in a statement:
“The city will have a lot of work to do in cleaning up its act on this database. Before it starts, the City Council should call hearings to examine why the department rejected some of the Inspector General’s recommendations and only partially accepted others.
“The CPD has outright refused to work with impacted communities in developing a fix to this problem and has also refused to place additional safeguards for juveniles labeled as gang members. Chicagoans deserve to know why.”
Among its findings, the OIG noted:
• the department “lacks sufficient controls” for creating, storing and sharing gang-related data
• the CPD’s gang information practices “lack procedural fairness protections”
• the methods by which people are designated gang members “raise significant data quality concerns”
• the department’s practices and lack of transparency regarding its gang designations strain police-community relations
Chicago’s gang structure has changed dramatically in the past 20 years. The days of groups following a strict hierarchical structure are largely gone, having given way to smaller, splintered factions. And while the drug trade still fuels many gang conflicts in the city — especially on the West Side — interpersonal conflicts among various gang members also drive a substantial portion of the city’s gun violence.
The CPD has been slow to adjust to the shifting gang landscape, according to the OIG.
The audit listed more than two dozen recommendations that could help the department catch up. Among them:
• evaluating whether the people and groups designated as gangs meet the legal criteria
• inventorying all gang-related data collection points
• more closely monitoring the CPD’s data sharing policy with other law enforcement agencies
• requiring officers undertake more training in gang-related data collection
• requiring the inclusion of “specified types of evidence required to support the proposed gang designations”
• notifying people that they are on the list of gang members and providing them a way to appeal that designation
Between January 1997 and November 2018, more than 134,000 people were designated as gang members by Chicago police. Eighty-eight percent of those designations were made because an arrestee told police about their gang affiliation. However, “there were 15,648 individuals for which CPD has never listed a reason for gang designation,” according to the OIG.
Additionally, “OIG’s analysis of Gang Arrest Card data found that Black, African American, and Latinx persons comprise 95% of the 134,242 individuals designated as gang members during arrest, and are designated at both younger and older ages as well as issued more Gang Arrest Cards per person than White gang designees.”
For its part, the Chicago Police Department, with a few exceptions, largely agreed with the OIG’s recommendations and signaled its intent to create and implement a new system to track gang membership in Chicago. No timetable was established for the new system, and the department said that the current gang data storing methods would remain in place, according to the OIG.
“CPD acknowledged that its gang information policies, practices, and technology had impeded the Department’s ability to maintain updated and relevant information,” the audit reads. “It should be noted that these proposed controls and reforms do not apply to the gang information currently maintained by the Department and that this unverified, outdated information will remain available to any officer or department that currently has access to this information.”
The OIG also suggested the department engage with community stakeholders and publicly evaluate whether collecting gang membership data “services CPD’s violence reduction efforts.”
In an April 5 letter to Joseph Lipari, the city’s deputy inspector general for public safety, police Supt. Eddie Johnson disagreed, saying: “CPD does not concur that a public evaluation is necessary, and further asserts that such an evaluation could put certain gang crime strategies or information at risk and negatively impact the public and officer safety.”
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