Follow-up Inquiry on the Chicago Police Department’s “Gang Database”
Summary
This follow-up report provides an update on the status of CPD’s collection and maintenance of gang data, as well as CPD’s progress on the commitments formally made in response to OIG’s April 2019 recommendations.
Executive Summary
In April 2019, the City of Chicago Office of Inspector General (OIG) published a report on the Chicago Police Department’s (CPD) so-called “gang database.” OIG reported that CPD captured, reported, and visualized gang data and gang affiliation designations in at least 18 different forms, records, and systems of records.
OIG found that CPD’s Gang Arrest Cards, one of the Department’s largest repositories of gang information, evidenced wide-reaching data quality concerns. OIG also found in 2019 that CPD:
- had no mechanism for informing individuals that they had been designated as a gang member;
- did not have processes for individuals to contest or appeal gang designations;
- did not have processes to regularly review or purge outdated or faulty designations; and
- had no internal mechanism to amend inaccurate gang information.
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