Seeking to represent more than 128,000 documented gang members and “future” individuals that will be listed as gang members in Chicago, the MacArthur Justice Center and a group of community organizations and individuals filed a class-action lawsuit against the city for managing an unconstitutional and error-ridden database.
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The lawsuit criticizes the “unlimited discretion” given to the Chicago Police Department (CPD) to label people in the street based solely on their race and neighborhood, disproportionately targeting black and brown youth, even when interactions with police officers do not result in arrest. Often, the topic of gang membership does not even come up during police encounters.
Gang-labeled people “are not provided any due process protections,” the lawsuit alleges, like being notified of their inclusion in the gang list or given the opportunity to appeal, and the label becomes a stain in their records for the rest of their lives with no mechanism to have it removed.
While 95 percent of Chicago’s documented gang members are black or Latino, “the gang database undercounts white gang members,” the lawsuit claims, such as those belonging to biker gangs, white supremacy groups, and surviving white street gangs such as the Insane Popes, Simon City Royals, and 12th Street Players.
CPD’s CLEAR electronic system, which houses the gang database, stores information that goes back to the 1980’s, when CPD kept paper records, and has allegedly not been property revised or audited since, thus “failing to ensure the accuracy of gang designations” when they are entered or shared with third parties, the lawsuit states.
At least 500 partners and government agencies have direct access to CLEAR, including the Illinois Concealed Carry Licensing Review Board, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Homeland Security, hurting people’s eligibility for employment, I-Bonds, concealed carry, immigration relief, and parental rights.
Officers create a CLEAR profile for each gang member that contains extensive personal information, such as criminal histories, social media activity, gang territory, and allies and rivals. Their website states that users can “quickly search a database of over 3 million arrests with as little as a suspect’s nickname, tattoo, street name or any other data variable on file”.
The over-inclusive gang database harms individuals mistakenly in it, the plaintiffs claim. Tomas “Nico” Gaete is a 19-year-old who was falsely labeled as a “Two Six” gang member years ago due to his race and attendance at Little Village Lawndale High School. He learned of his designation when he was arrested and wrongfully accused of a gang-related shooting that was later dismissed.
A gang designation can immediately escalate a situation and prompt officers to draw their weapons during a routine stop. Residents in the database are targeted by CPD for “unreasonable searches and seizures in violation of the Fourth Amendment” and are subjected to enhanced surveillance, unwarranted stops and harassment by police officers at any given time, the lawsuit claims.
The gang database is currently under scrutiny by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) in Chicago. In 2017, the city was involved in two separate lawsuits by undocumented men from Southwest Side neighborhoods who say were falsely detained and placed in deportation proceedings on the basis that they were gang-affiliated.
A handful of cities and states are already completely eliminating or implementing serious reforms to their databases. Portland, Oregon became the first city to abolish its gang list and, last year, California passed a bill to stiffen the criteria for adding someone to the CalGang database and to regularly audit the list. A person can remove their name after five years if there is no evidence to prove they are still active in a gang.