Mount Vernon Council Members Accused Of Breaking Into City Hall
MOUNT VERNON, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) -- A Westchester County mayor had to change the locks at City Hall after intruders got in.
The suspects, however, had a key and it turns out they were city council members now accused of breaking in.
The mayor of Mount Vernon is speaking out about two Friday night intruders discovered at his closed city planning offices.
"It feels like Watergate, and it feels wrong," Mount Vernon Mayor Richard Thomas told CBS2's Dick Brennan.
The mayor, eight weeks into the job in this city north of the Bronx, just fired the planning commissioner and has ordered an inventory of the office for paperwork on troubled federal grants and urban renewal projects. Two men, though, let themselves in after hours before that could happen.
"There are federal documents that are confidential and we want to make sure that none of them got away from us," Rick Pogue, human resources commissioner, said.
A police report indicates the intruders were City Council President Marcus Griffith and Council Member Andre Hall.
"Sneaking around in the dark of night with their shadowy dealings," Mayor Thomas told WCBS 880's Stephanie Colombini of the incident.
They were not arrested, but locks were changed in the affected offices. Staff in the office said it looks to them as if someone had been rummaging through files.
"It's like a violation, it's like someone came up to you and took something from you. It violates your rights," Patricia Fleming, of the Mount Vernon planning department, said.
"The area which they had access to unauthorized, contained federal documents, checks a lot of different sensitive documents related to development projects in our city," Thomas said.
This includes information regarding a stalled emergency operations center at Fire Station Number 3. Hall's construction company did work on the place before he ran for City Council last year.
"Why would we ever go through a secretary's desk?" Hall said.
"You have a lawsuit against the city, they owe you $200,000," Brennan noted.
"Well that's a whole 'nother issue and believe me the paperwork's not in that office," Hall said.
The council members said they were in the office to retrieve the personal effects of the fired Planning Commissioner. The mayor said next time they want into any office other than their own, they'll have to do it during business hours.
Because the office contained sensitive federal grant information, Thomas said he's referred the incident to the inspector general's office at the Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington.
