MOUNT VERNON, N.Y. — On one side of City Hall, Richard Thomas, the former and possibly still-current mayor of Mount Vernon was in his office on Tuesday, the door guarded by two police officers.

On the other side of City Hall, another possibly current mayor of Mount Vernon, Andre Wallace, occupied a different office.

And in a jail cell across the street sat a third man, who may or may not be the city’s police commissioner. He had just been appointed to the post by Mr. Wallace, only to be arrested on suspicion of trespassing when he showed up for his first day of work that morning at the police station — an arrest ordered by Mr. Thomas, the former and possibly current mayor.

“This is the worst day of my adult life!” the reputed police commissioner, Shawn Harris, said as he was released from jail at 5:30 p.m. on that same day. “And it’s been the worst first day of work that I ever had!”

To say that Mount Vernon, the third largest city in Westchester County, is in disarray would barely scratch the surface. And at the core of the turmoil is Mr. Thomas, a self-described young disrupter who promised to bring fresh perspective to the government.

His tenure, however, was often rocky, and the tipping point came in 2018, when he was accused of stealing more than $12,000 from his campaign committee. Mr. Thomas pleaded guilty to charges related to misuse of his campaign funds earlier this month.

As part of his plea agreement with the New York attorney general’s office, Mr. Thomas must vacate office no later than Sept. 30. But the Mount Vernon City Council did not want to wait that long: Citing the City Charter, which held that Mr. Thomas’s guilty plea automatically disqualified him from office, the Council quickly appointed Mr. Wallace, the Council president, as acting mayor.

One tiny glitch: Mr. Thomas has not budged, claiming his plea agreement permits him to remain mayor.

“This is a fight against dirty politics,” Mr. Thomas said, contending that the agreement with the attorney general’s office superseded the Council’s authority. “I said O.K. to the attorney general saying Sept. 30.”

Outside his office, police officers stood guard near the oak doors, with “Mayor’s Office” detailed in gold lettering. Mr. Thomas sat ensconced inside, a glass chessboard and pieces in front of him, an oil painting of the rapper Nipsey Hussle — who was murdered earlier this year while under investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department — just above him on the wall.

Mr. Thomas said the criminal charges had been the result of a vast conspiracy. He said he was railroaded into pleading guilty to a crime he did not commit: “I plead to it because I had two young children, a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old, and I did not trust I would get a fair trial,” he said.

Mr. Thomas pleaded guilty on July 6 to two misdemeanors, including attempted grand larceny after a joint investigation by the attorney general’s office and the state comptroller found he had used campaign donations to finance his lifestyle. Mr. Thomas was found to have used a total of $12,500 to pay for things like restaurant meals, vacations and a Chanel purse.

During the interview, Mr. Thomas — a Democrat who graduated from New York University’s Stern School of Business — seemed to suggest he may have absent-mindedly spent his donors’ money on himself.

“I’m 30-something years old, I’m putting stuff on my credit card, I’m not rich like Chelsea Clinton, I don’t have it,” he said. “I’m a poor kid from the South Side of Mount Vernon, so I used everything I had.”

Mr. Thomas was fined $13,000 and sentenced to a conditional discharge of one year, in which he is prohibited from running for office — all the more reason, perhaps, for him to stay in office as long as he can.

His criminal defense lawyer, Michael Pizzi, said the Council was wrong in its interpretation, and that Mr. Thomas had every right to remain in office until Sept. 30.

Lawrence Porcari, the city’s corporation counsel, concurred, issuing a memo outlining what should be the city’s legal position. “Pursuant to the charter and pursuant to law, Mr. Thomas is the mayor, and he is going to be the lawful mayor until or unless some court of competent jurisdiction decided otherwise,” he said in an interview on Wednesday.

“I cannot explain or go into whatever might be motivating the City Council, but our belief is what most of what they engaged in or did in the past weeks was unlawful.”

Then again, Mr. Porcari’s impartiality could be in question: He was arrested and indicted by the attorney general’s office in May on charges that he directed $365,000 away from the Mount Vernon Board of Water Supply to pay Mr. Thomas’s legal bills, and hire a public relations firm.

Controversy has dogged Mount Vernon, a small exurban city that credits itself as the inspiration of the Bill of Rights, and is about 65 percent African-American. The promised cleanup of its decaying sports park, Memorial Field, has been in limbo for over a decade; last year, the Justice Department sued the city for violating federal law for its sewer system that dumps raw sewage into the Bronx and Hutchinson Rivers.

In 2014, Mr. Thomas’s predecessor as mayor, Ernest D. Davis, pleaded guilty to federal charges for failing to file personal and corporate tax returns, but the City Council did not invoke the charter’s rules then, and he was permitted to finish out his term. At the time, Mr. Thomas called for Mr. Davis to be removed from office.

But little compares to the drama currently seizing the city government, where things were in such flux that staff members in the City Clerk’s office needed to print out organizational charts as they tried to explain who in the administration is currently who.

And Mr. Wallace was forced to spend a significant part of Tuesday scuttling across Roosevelt Square between City Hall and City Court, trying to figure out how to get Mr. Harris, his appointed police commissioner, out of jail.

“The police chief was sworn in, and he was out to do his duty, he was following the charter and following the laws and following the rules,” Mr. Wallace said.

A call came in on his cellphone, interrupting a back-and-forth with some court officers outside City Court. “Mayor Wallace speaking,” he said into his Bluetooth earpiece.

The uncertainty over who is actually mayor even tripped up Mr. Harris’s lawyer, as he condemned the circuslike scenario that led to the jailing of his client.

The lawyer, Jeffrey P. Chartier, aimed his ire at “Mayor Thomas,” before quickly correcting himself. “I mean former Mayor Thomas,” he said.

“I find it unbelievably disrespectful that a man who is currently squatting at City Hall, has the gall to direct the Police Department to arrest a veteran, and public servant for over two decades for trespass, while he is trespassing every day in the mayor’s office,” Mr. Chartier said.

On Wednesday, the impasse seemed at a lull. The two would-be mayors were both back in City Hall. Mr. Harris had stayed home from the police station on his lawyer’s advice.

No charges have been filed against Mr. Harris yet by the Westchester district attorney’s office: It cannot yet make a determination, according to a spokeswoman, because it is still unclear who, in fact, is the mayor.

Sarah Maslin Nir covers breaking news for the Metro section. She was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her series “Unvarnished,” an investigation into New York City’s nail salon industry that documented the exploitative labor practices and health issues manicurists face. @SarahMaslinNir

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