The Nassau County Police Department in Long Island said Monday that it will change an internal system that uses the letter “Y” to denote Asian personnel, according to The New York Post.
NBC News New York reported that the discovery was made by the New York Civil Liberties Union. The NYCLU discovered the letter “Y,” which stands for yellow, was being used by the Nassau County Police Department when they reviewed documents that were part of a Freedom of Information Law request.
The Nassau County Police Department confirmed to NBC that it used single letters to denote the race of its sworn personnel: “W,” stood for white; “B,” for black; “H,” for Hispanic; “I,” for Indians and Native Americans; and “Y” for yellow, or Asian.
According to Det. Lt. Richard LeBrun, commanding officer of the Nassau County Police Department public information office, the department is immediately changing the outdated notations.
“In this particular situation, this computer program was developed over a quarter century ago and in no way has the use of these letters reflected any bias toward our Asian American or Native American residents,” LeBrun said in a statement.
Still, the discovery of the denotations has sparked concerns about the police department’s ability to serve and protect all members of its community.
“These derogatory denotations don’t only represent slurs against members of the department, they also raise questions about the way the police department thinks about Asian Americans and the communities they are sworn to protect,” Michael Sisitzky, NYCLU’s lead policy counsel, said in a statement.
The notations were just a part of the NYCLU’s bigger report on police departments in New York. The NYCLU acquired over 15,000 pages of documents and data from police departments around the state of New York. The findings from their Freedom of Information Law request were made public on Wednesday in a report titled “Behind the Badge.”
“Too many police departments in New York resist transparency, keeping the rules hidden on everything from when officers use weapons to how they handle misconduct,” NYCLU executive director Donna Lieberman said in a statement to the NY Post.
Local Chinese American activist Doug Lee told NBC he found the denotations funny, saying “I do not see any ill intent here, just a lapse of literacy.”
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