NEW YORK– Investigators seized drugs, homemade weapons and electronic devices this week in an “interagency operation” aimed at cleaning up the troubled federal prison in New York City, where Sean “Diddy” Combs is being held, the Bureau of Prisons said Friday.
The contraband was identified and seized during a multi-agency cleanup that began Monday at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. The weeklong operation involved the Bureau of Prisons, the Justice Department’s inspector general and other local, state and federal law enforcement agencies.
The law enforcement operation was “pre-planned and coordinated to ensure the safety and security” of staff and inmates at the facility, the agency said. It was part of a “larger safety and security initiative and not in response to any specific threat or intelligence.”
The action was not related to Combs’ detention, which has sparked public interest in the prison. No criminal charges have been filed in connection with the sweep.
Combs’ attorneys have highlighted a litany of prison horrors — including squalid conditions, rampant violence and multiple deaths — as they have repeatedly tried to have him released on bail as he awaits trial on sex trafficking charges next May.
The hip-hop mogul’s detention and a spate of prison-related crimes in recent months have put MDC Brooklyn in the spotlight, leading to more supervision and a push from the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Prisons to solve problems and hold perpetrators accountable.
In September, Federal prosecutors have charged nine inmates in a wave of attacks from April to August at the Metropolitan Detention Center, the only federal prison in New York City. The charges detailed serious safety and security issues at the prison, including charges after two inmates were stabbed to death and another stabbed in the spine with a makeshift ice pick. A correctional officer was also accused of shooting at a car during an unauthorized high-speed chase.
In October, an inmate was charged in connection with a murder-for-hire plot that led to the death of a 28-year-old woman outside a New York City nightclub last December. Prosecutors say the inmate used a smuggled cellphone to orchestrate the plot from behind bars as he awaited sentencing for directing another shooting years earlier.
The criminal charges provided insight into the violence and dysfunction that has rocked the prison, which houses about 1,200 people, including Combs and Sam Bankman-Friedthe founder of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX. The total is down from more than 1,600 in January.
The facility, in an industrial area on Brooklyn’s waterfront, is used primarily for post-arrest detention of people awaiting trial in federal courts in Manhattan or Brooklyn. Other prisoners are there to serve short sentences after convictions.
Those held at the Brooklyn jail have long complained of violence, squalid conditions, severe staff shortages and widespread smuggling of drugs and other contraband, some of which is facilitated by employees. At the same time, they say they are regularly locked down and are not allowed to leave their cells for visitors, phone calls, showering or exercising.
Combs was denied bail twice and is now asking the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals to grant his release. Arguments are scheduled for November 4.
Combs attorney Mark Agnifilo, who had previously tried to have him transferred to a New Jersey prison, said at an Oct. 10 hearing: “We are going to target the MDC. The MDC has helped us very well.”
Another Combs attorney, Anthony Ricco, told reporters outside the courthouse afterward: “He’s doing well. It’s a difficult circumstance. He makes the best of the situation.”
But Ricco added: “No one is okay with staying in jail for now.”