On Tuesday community groups held an emergency press conference at the Cook County building to announce the release of a new report into the Regional Gang Intelligence Database (RGID) and to urge the Cook County Sheriff’s Department to destroy the RGID after all 26,144 individuals whose information was included in the RGID, without due process, are notified. “When there’s a data breach at Facebook or a tech company, it’s customary for customers to be informed. When the Sheriff puts you in a racial profiling database, the consequences can be far worse and so Cook County residents should have the same basic opportunity to be informed,” said Olivia Albrecht, organizer with the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council. The new report by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and based on a FOIA request from January found that RGID contained the information of 26,144 people on January 15, 2019 when the Sheriff’s Department decommissioned the database. More than 1,000 people were added to the database after June 11, 2018— an article released by ProPublica in July 2018 stated the database contained information of 25,000. On average, five people were added to the list every day from June 2018 to January 2019. The report also concluded 367 local, state, and federal agencies had access to RGID, including ICE, FBI, DHS, ATN (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) and the Office of Veteran Affairs among others. During the press conference Jesus Salazar, community leader and whose information is included in the Chicago gang database expressed concerns regarding the Sheriff’s role in the destruction of RGID. “The Cook County Sheriff’s Office has expressed intention to destroy the RGID as soon as possible and before the public hearing required by the ordinance we passed last month. I need to know how RGID has affected me and others. The 26,144 individuals that were added to RGID deserve to know how our information was used,” claimed the organizer.