Whitney Tilson Calls on City Council to Reject Bill Abolishing the NYPD’s Gang Database

February 24, 2025

New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Whitney Tilson called today for the city council to reject Intro 798, a bill that would abolish the New York Police Department’s Criminal Group Database, also known as the gang database.

The bill would abolish – not reform or improve – the database the NYPD uses to track gangs/gang members. It would permanently delete all the information the NYPD has been collecting over many years on many of the most dangerous criminals in the city.

This bill is an especially bad idea at a time when New Yorkers feel increasingly unsafe, and for good reason: the seven major felonies are up 52% in the past five years and felony assaults are at a 25-year high.

“It would be hard to find a better example of why I’m running for mayor: to drag my party back from left-wing extremists who pass legislation that goes way too far, endangering us all – and costing us elections,” Tilson commented.

To address concerns that the database may include too many people who have limited contact with gangs/gang members, the NYPD has implemented more controls and shrunk the database. Today, it only has 13,000 names in it and just 160 teenagers, down from 18,000 and 440, respectively, five years ago.

In addition, the primary finding in a comprehensive 98-page report in April 2023 by the NYC Department of Investigation was that it “was not able to find evidence that inclusion in the database has caused harm to any individual or group of individuals.”

The report, however, did make 17 recommendations to “strengthen the policies and practices around the use and operation of the database.”

“Let’s fix problems with the gang database, not abolish it,” Tilson concluded. “Democrats must not repeat the mistakes that Trump and Musk are making with DOGE, using a grenade when a scalpel is called for.”