EFF has joined a coalition of civil rights, immigration, and criminal justice reform organizations to demand the California Department of Justice (CADOJ) place an immediate moratorium on the use of the state’s gang database, also known as CalGang.
For years, EFF has stood beside many of these organizations to advocate for reforms to the CalGang system, which has tarnished the records of countless Californians—largely Black and Latinx—by connecting them to gangs based on the thinnest of evidence. Indeed, sometimes the information has been falsified, as was revealed to be the case with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) earlier this year. In previous legislative sessions, we supported multiple pieces of legislation by Assemblymember Shirley Weber to overhaul CalGang. However, the CADOJ has missed many of the deadlines created by these statutes, so it’s clear that simply hoping for reform isn’t enough. Just as LAPD suspended its use of gang databases this month, use of CalGang must come to a dead stop until, at minimum, CADOJ fully implements reforms required by existing legislation. EFF also supports the abolition of CalGang altogether.
