NEW YORK (WCBS 880/AP) – The Westchester County District Attorney is looking into misconduct allegations at the Mount Vernon Police Department—including illegal strip searches and excessive use of force—and is asking federal authorities to do the same.
District Attorney Mimi Rocah asked the U.S. Justice Department to investigate whether the police department is “systematically violating peoples’ civil rights,” citing “potentially unlawful conduct by several former and current” officers.
Rocah, who took office in January, raised concerns earlier this year with Mount Vernon’s commissioner of public safety about a pattern of unjustified strip searches and body cavity searches.
“This is something that is obviously a really sensitive area that has to be handled according to the law,” Rocah said.
The police department faces several lawsuits over strip searches, and four members of the department have been arrested on criminal charges over the past two years, the Westchester Journal News reported.
Rocah is doing her own criminal investigations but thinks a civil rights review by the Justice Department would help, because it is larger in scope and doesn’t need as much of a burden of proof.
“If the Department of Justice chooses to do this investigation, and that will be completely up to them, but if they do, this would be an additional sort of brick in rebuilding that wall of trust between the community and the police,” Rocah said.
She said the Justice Department would look at the overall conduct, including the practices, policies and training over time, to see if there are violations going on that can be addressed.
“This is not an indictment of the entire Mount Vernon Police Department. This is to say they’re working on improving and reforming, and hopefully these will be additional tools that will help them,” Rocah said.