The New York City Police Department's practice of using information from dismissed and sealed cases for everyday law enforcement operations, as well as sharing the information with fellow law enforcement agencies, violates state law, according to a suit filed on Tuesday.

The Bronx Defenders and attorneys from Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton filed the proposed class action in Manhattan Supreme Court, alleging that the NYPD is violating a New York law passed in 1976 that was intended to prevent stigmatization of defendants who were charged with felonies and misdemeanors, but not convicted.

The use of sealed information disproportionately affects black and Hispanic defendants, the suit alleged, and the scope of the issue is potentially expansive: from 2014 to 2016, the suit stated, the department made 820,000 arrests in which it collected sensitive personal information like addresses, Social Security numbers and photographs and that more than 400,000 of those arrests should be sealed.

In the same time frame, the suit stated, there were more than 330,000 arrests of black and Hispanic defendants that should be sealed, compared with about 50,000 arrests of white defendants.

The information the NYPD collects is stored in several different databases, the suit alleged, and is used for criminal investigations and for various everyday police decisions, such as whether or not to arrest someone who would otherwise receive a civil summons and whether an arrestee should be labelled as a recidivist.

Information from sealed cases is also shared with prosecutors and sometimes the media, the suit alleged. Information from sealed cases might be used to shape plea agreements for defendants, the plaintiffs alleged, but that defense attorneys are often left in the dark as to whether or not sealed information about their clients is being relied upon until the eve of trial.  

In a news release, Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, deputy director of The Bronx Defenders' impact litigation practice, said the NYPD's database “marks people for life,” even if they haven't been convicted of a crime.

“The NYPD's use of sealed records violates a law that protects privacy and the presumption of innocence. We seek to enforce the law and end an NYPD practice that places people of color at risk of heightened surveillance and harsher punishment based merely on allegations.”

A spokesman for the city's Law Department said in a brief statement that it would review the suit and respond in litigation.

New York's sealing statute, contained within Criminal Procedure Law §160, was later expanded to include defendants convicted of noncriminal offenses.

The statute requires law enforcement agencies to seal records of arrests that did not result in convictions and destroy or return photographs and fingerprints taken in the commission of those arrests.

Law enforcement agencies are required to get a court order to retain the information from arrests that do no ultimately turn out a conviction, the suit alleged, but the NYPD has failed to do so.

Over the last four years, the suit stated, the department has made 1.1 million arrests, of which more than 750,000 were for misdemeanors.