(credit: Brandon Anderson)
An internal database used by California’s police agencies chronicles some 150,000 suspected gang members. However, the CalGang database is so riddled with errors that its authenticity, and its ability to help the authorities fight gang violence, is now being questioned by the state’s auditor.
Consider that an audit of the crime-fighting database—which points to gang member booking photographs, birth dates, race, gender, known addresses, tattoos, convictions, interactions with police, and so on—listed 42 people under the age of one as suspected gang members.
“We found 42 individuals in CalGang who were supposedly younger than one year of age at the time of entry—28 of whom were entered for ‘admitting to being gang members,'” Elaine Howle, the state’s top auditor, wrote in a recent review of the database, which is administered by police agencies across California’s 58 counties.
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Source: Ars Technica – Error-filled state gang database lists 42 people less than 1 year old