According to Westchester County District Attorney Miriam Rocah, the arrests of these defendants occurred during a 2017 narcotics operation and involved alleged sales to an undercover officer. The police arrested 32 persons. Prosecutors dismissed charges against three people; two entered into pre-trial diversion programs.

Mount Vernon, which is just north of the Bronx, has a population of about 74,000 people. About 60 percent of its residents are Black, and Mount Vernon’s police department has received numerous complaints that officers mistreated Black residents as part of the city’s crackdown on drugs.

Although the alleged misconduct tied to these dismissals occurred in 2017, an earlier event helped bring it to light. In 2015, Officer Murashea “Mike” Bovell filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against the Mount Vernon Police Department in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Bovell, who is Black, claimed that he was passed over for promotion while white officers with less experience received promotions. The complaint also alleged that several of Bovell’s fellow officers used racist language and committed misconduct while working narcotics cases. Bovell said he saw officers punch and slap Black defendants already in custody. He also said he saw officers keep money found on defendants during arrests. In addition, Bovell said he saw officers allow a confidential informant, who provided the police with information about his customers, to keep the money used in a drug buy.

A federal judge dismissed most of Bovell’s lawsuit in 2017, and he lost his remaining claims at trial in 2018.

Also in 2017, Bovell began secretly recording other officers and filed an internal complaint with the City of Mount Vernon, alleging harassment. In 2019, he gave the recordings to the district attorney’s office, which at the time was run by Anthony Scarpino.

In 2020, Bovell gave the recordings to George Joseph, a reporter with the Gothamist website. Joseph had already reported extensively on problems in the Mount Vernon Police Department, uncovering a problematic arrest where a defendant had cellphone data showing he was likely elsewhere at the time  he was said to be selling drugs to an undercover officer. Bovell had recorded an officer in 2018 saying that he had seen other officers planting drugs on suspects, entering homes illegally, and fabricating search warrants.

The officer told Bovell in the recordings that he had taken his concerns to supervisors, who referred him to the FBI. The FBI’s investigation didn’t get off the ground; the officer told Bovell that he refused to wear a recording device.

According to the website, the district attorney’s office said it was investigating the Bovell recordings, but it took no visible action. In July 2020, a month after the Gothamist’s story on the recordings, Rocah, a former federal prosecutor, defeated Scarpino in the Democratic primary for Westchester County District Attorney.

Rocah had called for an independent investigation into the allegations on the Bovell recordings and accused Scarpino of dragging his feet. She ran unopposed in the general election and took office in early 2021.

In April 2021, Rocah asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the police department for civil-rights violations. The department agreed to request in December 2021. At the time, the police department was a defendant in several federal lawsuits alleging that officers illegally conducted strip searches in instances where there was no justification for these intrusive methods.

Rocah’s office also conducted its own investigation. On May 10, 2023, her office it would seek vacations and dismissals for 27 people convicted of drug crimes tied to the discredited 2017 operation that was the subject of the Gothamist’s reporting.

In a companion report, the district attorney said it could not substantiate the allegations made in the recordings at a level required to bring criminal charges against any officers. In some instances, the report said, it was unable to get the cooperation of civilian or law-enforcement witnesses.

The report said that the district attorney’s Conviction Review Unit looked into arrests made in 2017 by members of Mount Vernon’s undercover drug squad, based in part on the Bovell recordings and also on complaints from the public. It found substantial misidentification issues and “cases [that] did not have corroborative evidence sufficient to overcome the identified inconsistencies and unreliability of the undercover and MVPD officer accounts and problematic identifications.”

These problems were spelled out further in letters sent to the attorneys of the impacted defendants.

The 16 misdemeanor cases were dismissed on September 29 in Mount Vernon City Court. The felony cases were dismissed on January 18, 2024. Only one defendant took his case to trial.

The sentences, including those for the felony convictions, ranged from probation to up to four years in prison. Rocah said none of the defendants were currently incarcerated. “I understand that people may be confused and possibly even disappointed by the lack of criminal charges after hearing the secretly-recorded conversations among certain Mount Vernon police officers,” Rocah said in a statement. “We could not rely on the allegations contained on the recordings as evidence in a court of law. Additionally, our criminal investigation was hampered by significant hurdles, such as recantations by an officer who was heard on the recordings alleging corruption, and lack of cooperation by some law enforcement and key witnesses.”

– Ken Otterbourg

Members of this group

Here are the known defendants of this group who had their charges dismissed: Sadat Yancy, Richard Overton, Lance Clark, Jonathan Long, Candace Brown, Rachel Bush, Derrick Clark, Sean Farrow, Jaquan Harris, Dwayne Pennant and Sensa Velasquez