New Yorkers wondering if they’re in the NYPD’s gang database have a new tool to find out what police think about them.

A new Legal Aid Society website helps people ask police what their status is. It walks people through the process of filing a Freedom of Information Law request with the NYPD. Group supervising attorney Anthony Posada said the site was started because New Yorkers need honesty and transparency.

“The NYPD’s gang database is black-box of secrecy in desperate need of sunlight,” Anthony Posada, supervising attorney of the Community Justice Unit at The Legal Aid Society, said. “This website will complement our current efforts to help New Yorkers – especially those from communities of color – determine if they have been caught in the NYPD’s gang labeling dragnet.”

People who visit the site can automatically generate an official FOIL request for the NYPD by inputting personal information. The Legal Aid Society will mail the requests to the NYPD.

Each FOIL will ask for:

All records related to the person submitting the request

Whether or not the person was included in the gang database;

Information about how the person’s records were used, shared, stored, maintained or destroyed

“The NYPD maintains an Electronic Case Management System (ECMS) which contains various fields of data regarding crimes and offenders. Among the many information fields within this case management system includes membership in known criminal groups,” an NYPD spokesperson said. “The NYPD maintains among the nation’s most rigorous criteria for identifying an individual as being a member of a known criminal group.”

If you’d like to visit the Legal Aid Society’s new website, click here.