MOUNT VERNON, NEW YORK — A suburban New York police department has routinely violated residents’ civil rights, including by making illegal arrests and conducting unnecessary searches, according to a new report from the U.S. Department of Justice.
The report about a pattern and practice of police misconduct at the department in Mount Vernon, just north of New York City, is one of the 12 studies opened by the DOJ since 2021 to local law enforcement, including those sparked by the killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Kentucky.
No incident prompted the investigation into Mount Vernon’s approximately 160-man force. But the 2020 illegal strip search of two women, one 65 years old and the other 75 years old, was emblematic of the department’s shortcomings, said the report, which was released Thursday.
The officers were arrested on suspicion of buying drugs. They searched the woman’s car, found nothing and dragged her in handcuffs to a police station, the report said. Supervisors there approved a completely naked search by detectives, who “told them to duck and cough.”
After an internal investigation found that the officers had lied about the couple buying drugs, those involved were given a few days off, the report said.
The police union representing officers in the department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
According to the report, until at least the fall of 2022, it was Mount Vernon law enforcement’s practice to search every person arrested. Officers also searched people they had not arrested, detained and interrogated people without formally arresting them, and arrested people for verbally criticizing police officers.
The illegal search for strips and cavities continued until at least 2023, the report shows. The researchers said that while the practice was “curtailed” during the investigation, “we are not confident that these practices have ended.”
Under a catalog of unconstitutional arreststhe DOJ identified a case in which officers took a shooting victim’s mother to a police station and questioned her even as her dying daughter was rushed to the hospital. The daughter, struck by a stray bullet, died while her mother was in custody. Officers were unable to provide a possible reason for her arrest.
Officers also arrested people for taunting police and violating their right to free speech, the DOJ said.
The department also suffered from financial mismanagement, which exacerbated widespread human rights abuses resulting from illegal policies and a lack of training, the report said. It noted that low salaries make it difficult to attract and retain quality officers, train staff and pay bills, depleting the supply budget.
The report notes that the city is already taking steps to improve its policing. It offered a series of recommendationsincluding executive actions “to ensure that unconstitutional strip and body cavity searches do not occur.”
Mount Vernon Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard said in a statement that the city would work with the DOJ to address its findings.
“We wholeheartedly support our good officers while at the same time will not tolerate or punish unconstitutional policing,” said Patterson-Howard, a Democrat.
The statement noted that three police officers and two civilian employees were fired following an investigation in 2021. A spokesperson for the mayor did not immediately respond to questions about when and why those people were fired.