A suburban New York police department routinely violated residents’ civil rights, including making illegal arrests and using unnecessary strip and cavity searches, according to a new US Department of Justice report.

The report on a pattern and practice of police misconduct at the department in Mount Vernon, just north of New York City, is one of 12 investigations opened by the DOJ into local policing agencies since 2021, including those sparked by the killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Kentucky.

No single incident prompted the investigation into Mount Vernon’s approximately 160-officer force. But the illegal strip search in 2020 of two women, one age 65 and the other 75, were emblematic of the department’s shortcomings, said the report, which was released Thursday.

Arrested on suspicion of buying drugs, officers searched the women’s car, found nothing, and hauled them into a police station in handcuffs, the report said. Supervisors there approved a fully nude strip search by detectives who “told them to bend over and cough.”

After an internal investigation found that the officers had lied about the pair buying drugs, those involved were docked a few vacation days, the report said.