Concerns About NYC's DNA Database Spur Demand For Hearing

NEW YORK — The Legal Aid Society wants New York City lawmakers to take a closer look at a municipal DNA database that contains genetic samples from thousands of people.

In a Monday letter to council Speaker Corey Johnson, a top lawyer at the legal services group demanded an oversight hearing on the Office of Chief Medical Examiner's databank that has grown to include 82,473 DNA profiles.

Lingering concerns about how the NYPD collects the information warrant scrutiny from the council, wrote Terri S. Rosenblatt, the supervising attorney of Legal Aid's DNA Unit. The database includes 31,400 people never convicted of a crime along with samples taken from cigarettes or beverages, Legal Aid says.

"Without a hearing, New Yorkers are left not knowing who has their DNA, why it was taken, and what they can do about it," Rosenblatt wrote.

Johnson, a Chelsea Democrat, has been keeping a close eye on the issue and may call a hearing if he can't make headway in talks with the NYPD, a council spokesperson said.

"Speaker Johnson is actively working with the Police Department to ensure their data collection is fair and appropriate," the council spokesperson said in a statement. "Speaker Johnson and the Police Department will continue to have discussions. If progress is not made on this issue, the Council will consider further oversight and legislation if necessary."

Nearly 19,000 samples have been added to the city's DNA database since July 2017, Legal Aid said last week, citing information it obtained through a Freedom of Information request.

While the medical examiner's office maintains the database, NYPD officers add samples to it from crime scenes and people they arrest, police officials have said.

More than half the profiles in the database belong to unidentified people whose DNA was taken from a crime scene, while about 29,000 were collected from individuals themselves, Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea said at a council budget hearing in May.

"We are not collecting randomly anyone’s DNA," Shea said then. "If we did there would be a database of millions and millions of people."

Police officials have said the samples are used to strengthen prosecutions for sex and gun crimes and also to exonerate people.

But the NYPD's DNA practices drew scrutiny after reports that cops collected samples from at least 360 black men in the search for the culprit in the 2016 Howard Beach murder of Karina Vetrano. Chanel Lewis of East New York was convicted of the killing in April after his first trial last year ended in a hung jury.

Police have also surreptitiously collected DNA from people held for questioning for hours without a drink or a smoke, according to Rosenblatt's letter. A report in The New York Times last week highlighted the case of a 12-year-old boy who ended up in the database after police offered him a soda and took his DNA from the straw.

Shea denied in May that the NYPD conducts DNA dragnets or allows detectives to hold people for a long time to get their samples.

"That a police tactic works some of the time does not justify violating New Yorker’s rights all of the time — especially New Yorkers in communities of color who have been victim of one over-policing tactic after another," Rosenblatt wrote in her letter. "Unregulated DNA collection and storage does just that."