City faces suit over gang list
FOR THE NYPD, it seems, there’s no such thing as an ex-gang member.
The department keeps a database of 17,500 gang members, classified by affiliation, territory and nationality. Getting on the list could be as easy as wearing the wrong clothes. Getting off, however, is a mystery.
For many immigrants, being put on the Police Department’s database of street crew and gang members puts a deportation target on their back.
The Legal Aid Society plans to sue the department for refusing to release records on how to clear their clients from the list.
“We still feel far too many people are listed in the database,” said Anthony Posada, of Legal Aid’s Community Justice Unit. “And we still don’t know anything about how they go about purging names from the database.”
The NYPD on A MAN was shot to death in the hallway of a Queens housing project early Wednesday, cops said.
The 41-year-old victim was found sprawled out in the second-floor hallway of a building on Guy R. Brewer Blvd. in the Baisley Park Houses in South Jamaica around 2 a.m., police said.
The man had a gunshot wound in his head. His name was not immediately disclosed.
Detectives believe the killing could be related to a drug deal. Wednesday still wouldn’t answer that question.
The hot-button issue has taken on urgency recently given the federal government’s aggressive posture toward illegal immigrants.
Recently, a Manhattan federal judge ordered the release of an undocumented 16-year-old Honduran suspected of being a MS-13 member in Suffolk County. Judge John Keenan disagreed with law enforcement’s assertion that he was a “likely” gang member, based on what he was wearing.
The NYPD does not cooperate with federal authorities on immigration matters — unless the person in question has committed one of 170 listed felonies and the feds have a warrant.
But Posada and other advocates said that hasn’t stopped Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents from busting suspected gang members, regardless of the validity of the classification and sometimes despite the lack of recent contact with police.