The NYPD has purged an illegal database of youth fingerprints following years of delays, offici🐟als confirmed Wednesday.
The Legal Aid Society challenged the NYPD practice of holding onto the records for those 16 and under — a violation of state law under the Family Court Act — five years ago, and the department confirmed Wednesday it finally cleꩲared all youth fingerprints from its Automated Fingerprint Identification System this week.
“This illegal database existed for years, infringing on young New Yorkers’ rights, in clear violation of the laꦇw,” said Dawne Mitchell, attorney-in-charge of juvenile rights at the Legal Aid Society.
The defense attorney group first becam🌱e 💟aware of the practice in 2014, after a juvenile was arrested using fingerprints the department had on file, according to correspondences reviewed by The Post.
The group also contacted the New Yor🐼k State D✃ivision of Criminal Justice Services, sparking an internal review that found it too had held onto thousands of juvenile fingerprints.
The DCJS ordered all police dᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚepartments statewide, including the NYPD, to destroy all youth records, a letter dated April 27, 2016, reads.
Just over two years later, the NYPD♔ deputy commissioner of legal matters issued a memo to all commands reminding officers of the state law.
The last records were deleted this weeꦆk after a 16-month purging of the fingerprint dataಌbase, according to the Legal Aid Society.
“The NYPD can confirm that the Department destroys juvenile delinquent fingerprints after the prints have been transmitted to DCJS,” an NYPD spokeswoman said in a statement.
Councilman Donovan Richards, an outspoken critic on the issue who chairs the Law Enforcement Committee that oversees the NYPD, said the news was a “welcome step.”
“As we all know having juvenile fingerprints in a system like this only ensures they will continue to be criminalized for the rest of their life,” he said. “I’m glad the NYPD has agreed to take juveniles out of their systems, but there’s still more work to be done to ensure transparency in all the databases maintained by the NYPD.”
The Bronx Defenders legal aid group has also accused the NYPD of illegally maintaining a database of people’s sealed arrests, according to a lawsuit.