As NYC’s DNA database swells, Queens councilman questions Black Lives Matter protest arrests
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Councilmember Donovan Richards. Photo by William Alatriste/City Council Photography
By David Brand
New York City’s vast DNA database has swollen by roughly 2,000 samples over the past six months, prompting the Council’s public safety chair to question whether police collected genetic material from Black Lives Matter protesters arrested during weeks of demonstrations.
The database, which is maintained by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, now contains DNA samples from more than 33,800 people suspected of a crime or questioned during an investigation — up from about 32,000 in February, according to information obtained by the Legal Aid Society. The spike comes after the NYPD pledged to audit the database and instruct the OCME to remove samples.
“What is the reason for this dramatic increase during a time when we should have been seeing reductions?” said Public Safety Chair Donovan Richards. “I’m hoping there’s no correlation between the protests and DNA swabs that are being entered into the system to track New Yorkers and violate human rights.”
The NYPD arrested at least 1,126 people for alleged offenses related to demonstrations and unrest between May 28 and June 7, Gothamist reported. All but 39 of the arrests were for nonviolent offenses. Another 1,349 people were issued summonses, according to Gothamist.
Dozens of people who were arrested in the Bronx on June 4 were transported to Queens Central Booking, where they waited for hours before being released. Others were taken to Brooklyn and detained.
Richards, who called the DNA increase “deplorable,” said he wants to learn whether police obtained samples from those demonstrators. He has urged the city to eliminate the database, which contains samples collected from people arrested for and convicted of crimes, as well as people merely questioned as part of investigations. “Right now, the database continues to be the wild, wild west,” Richards said.
OCME spokesperson Aja Worthy-Davis said she did not immediately know if DNA was collected from people arrested during Black Lives Matter demonstrations. She acknowledged questions about the database and said OCME works with various law enforcement agencies to store DNA samples.
“This has been an ongoing conversation and a larger conversation among many advocates in the criminal justice system,” Worthy-Davis said.
Many people included in the database submitted their samples voluntarily. Still others — including children — unknowingly gave up their genetic material after discarding an empty cup or snubbing out a cigarette inside a police precinct.
Under pressure from civil liberties advocates and several elected officials, the NYPD announced on February 20 that they would audit the database and instruct the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner to remove samples obtained from people who were not charged with a crime after two years. Officials from the NYPD and OCME testified days later at a contentious City Council hearing, where they pledged to act on the changes.
An NYPD spokesperson said the police and OCME “have been working together [on] a slate of reforms to the DNA database toward the shared mission of fairness in the criminal justice system while also ensuring the ability to solve crimes and bring justice for victims. This work is ongoing.”
The top attorney in Legal Aid’s DNA Unit, Terri Rosenblatt, said those reforms have yet to occur, despite the stated commitments from the NYPD and OCME.
“We have seen no evidence that any steps actually were taken,” Rosenblatt wrote in an Aug. 14 letter to Chief Medical Examiner Barbara Sampson. “Instead, we’ve seen less transparency, and more people being added to the DNA index every day.”
Rosenblatt also criticized OCME officials for “disturbingly” deferring to the police when questioned about whose DNA is stored in the database during the February Council hearing.
“If OCME truly wants to earn its reputation as one of the leading forensic science institutions in the country, it must stop aiding the NYPD’s voracious appetite for illegally taken DNA,” she wrote, before urging the city to disclose more information about the people included in the database.
“We demand that the laboratory immediately release information about who is stuck in it to the public, and what steps, if any, you are taking to get them out.”
Like Richards, Rosenblatt has encouraged the city to eliminate the database, which contains a disproportionate number of samples from Black and Latino New Yorkers, including hundreds of children.
“Six months ago we shared with the City our clients’ and their families’ concerns that if lawmakers refused to shut down the City’s rogue DNA index, it would only grow larger, more secretive, and more racially biased. That is exactly what has happened,” Rosenblatt said. “It is time for the city to stop secretly stealing and cataloging DNA from Black and Latinx young people.”
