The Legal Aid Society and the Innocence Project joined for a letter to the editor in the New York Daily News in response to a recent op-ed from NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill in defense of the City’s rouge DNA database. Legal Aid, other defender organizations, criminal justice advocates, and community groups have been pushing a bill pending in the Legislature that would abolish municipally maintained DNA databases in New York State.

“Pending legislation won’t slow down crime-solving. It will protect communities by halting DNA dragnets while allowing regulated testing — not genetic stop-and-frisk,” said David Loftis, Attorney-in-Charge of Post-Conviction and Forensic Litigation at The Legal Aid Society.