NEW YORK – Until recently, New York City police confidentially maintained fingerprints of kids detained as juveniles on record indefinitely at a division database — an illegal practice which has raised alarms about the spans that the country’s biggest police force has chosen to keep tabs on town’s youth.
The defender organization that found the practice forced it to be acknowledged by the New York Police Department threatened legal actions citing a state law prohibits authorities from stockpiling juveniles’ fingerprints.
After decades of immunity and wrangling, the NYPD said it will retain them and has purged all fingerprints documents. Additionally, it has issued the 36,000 officers telling them with bulletins.
The Legal Aid Society explained the database comprised thousands of youth’s fingerprints.
“This prohibited database has existed for decades, infringing on young New Yorkers’ rights, in apparent breach of this law,” said Dawne Mitchell, the attorney-in-charge of the Legal Aid Society’s juvenile rights clinic.
The company called to hold an immediate hearing about the use of surveillance and information collection technology of the police department. Additionally, it needs a law passed on to provide supervision over gear to the public.
"The Legal Aid Society is proud to have brought an end to this unlawful practice. We call on the New York City Council to hold an immediate oversight hearing on the ever expanding NYPD surveillance of New Yorkers," – @dawnemtchell. https://t.co/PkKD29EWUe
— The Legal Aid Society (@LegalAidNYC) November 13, 2019
Beside the fingerprint database, the Legal Aid Society’s attorney representing adult and juvenile defendants say they worried about its own database of gang members, in addition to police use of DNA group and recognition.
In the last few decades, the nation has broadened the definition of who qualifies as a juvenile, carrying billed from their criminal justice system.
Under what is called Raise the Age legislation, individuals under 18 are going to have their cases before proceeding to family court typically, while nonviolent felonies begin.
As fingerprints, state law requires that authorities destroy its records of a juvenile’s fingerprints after sending them for.
“The NYPD will affirm that the section destroys juvenile delinquent fingerprints following the prints are sent to DCJS,” department spokeswoman Devora Kaye stated.
The help society said it found that the NYPD was hoarding juvenile fingerprint documents in 2014 after a prosecutor admitted a kid’s arrest was based on fingerprints stored from the database of the police department. However after, the NYPD denied that it retained fingerprints.
Criminal justice agencies instructed the police division which it had been needed to ruin documents that were arrest-related for quite a few juveniles and intervened. In reaction, the NYPD confessed it had retained fingerprints, although not just documents for juveniles.
The practice continued. This past year, the Legal Aid Society sent a letter to the police division, threatening a lawsuit”to apply the statutory rights of people detained and fingerprinted as juvenile delinquents.”