A suburban New York police division had a follow of routinely violating residents’ civil rights, together with making unlawful arrests and utilizing pointless strip and cavity searches, in response to a brand new US justice division report.
The report on a sample and follow of police misconduct on the division in Mount Vernon, simply north of New York Metropolis, is considered one of 12 investigations opened by the Division of Justice into native policing companies since 2021, together with these sparked by the killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Kentucky.
No single incident prompted the investigation into Mount Vernon’s roughly 160-officer pressure. However the unlawful strip-search in 2020 of two ladies, one age 65 and the opposite 75, had been emblematic of the division’s shortcomings, stated the report, which was launched on the finish of final week.
Arrested on suspicion of shopping for medication, officers searched the ladies’s automotive, discovered nothing, and hauled them right into a police station in handcuffs, the report stated. Supervisors there accredited a totally nude strip-search by detectives who “informed them to bend over and cough”.
After an inside investigation discovered that the officers had lied concerning the pair shopping for medication, these concerned had been docked just a few trip days, the report stated.
The police union representing officers within the division didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Till at the very least the autumn of 2022, it was the Mount Vernon pressure’s follow to strip-search each particular person it arrested, in response to the report. Officers additionally strip-searched individuals they didn’t arrest, detained and interrogated individuals with out formally arresting them, and arrested individuals for verbally criticizing cops.
Unlawful strip and cavity searches continued into at the very least 2023, the report discovered. The investigators stated that whereas the follow was “curtailed” throughout its investigation, “we’re not assured that these practices have ended”.
Amongst a catalog of unconstitutional arrests, the justice division recognized a case the place officers took the mom of a capturing sufferer to a police station and interrogated her, at the same time as her dying daughter was rushed to the hospital. The daughter, struck by a stray bullet, died whereas her mom was in custody. Officers didn’t articulate possible trigger for her detention.
Officers additionally arrested individuals for cursing at police, violating their proper to free speech, the justice division stated.
The division additionally suffered from monetary mismanagement, which exacerbated pervasive human rights violations rooted in unlawful insurance policies and lack of coaching, the report stated. It famous that low salaries make it exhausting to draw and retain high quality officers, practice workers and pay its payments, ravenous its provide price range.
The report famous that the town is already taking steps to enhance its policing. It supplied a collection of suggestions, together with implementing measures “to make sure that unconstitutional strip and physique cavity searches don’t happen”.
In a press release, Shawyn Patterson-Howard, Mount Vernon’s mayor, stated the town would work with the justice division to handle its findings.
“We wholeheartedly help our good officers and on the similar time is not going to tolerate and can punish unconstitutional policing,” stated Patterson-Howard, a Democrat.
The assertion famous that three cops and two civilian staff had been fired after an investigation in 2021. A spokesperson for the mayor didn’t instantly reply to questions on when and why these individuals had been fired.
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