The Mount Vernon Police Tapes: In Secretly Recorded Calls, Officer Says Some Drug Dealers Operate With ‘Free Rein’

In hours of secretly recorded telephone conversations, police officers in Mount Vernon, New York, reveal widespread corruption, brutality and other misconduct in the troubled Westchester County city just north of the Bronx.

Caught on tape by a whistleblower cop, one officer claimed that members of the department’s narcotics unit allowed favored drug dealers to sell with impunity. In exchange, he said, the dealers, serving as confidential informants, gave them information leading to the arrests of their own low-level clients.

The allegations are just the latest in a series of scandals that have rocked the troubled city in Westchester County, just north of the Bronx. WNYC revealed Bovell’s secret tapes earlier this month, reporting on allegations that Mount Vernon officers framed innocent residents on numerous occasions.

Read the web version at Gothamist.com.