NEW YORK — Investigators seized drugs, homemade weapons and electronic devices this week during an ''interagency operation'' aimed at cleaning up the troubled New York City federal jail where Sean ''Diddy'' Combs is being held, the Bureau of Prisons said Friday.
The contraband was identified and confiscated during a multi-agency sweep that began Monday at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. The operation, which continued throughout the week, involved the Bureau of Prisons, the Justice Department inspector general and other local, state and federal law enforcement agencies.
The law enforcement operation was ''preplanned 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 particular threat or intelligence.''
The sweep was not connected to Combs' detention, which has galvanized public interest in the jail. No criminal charges have been filed in connection with the sweep.
Combs' lawyers have highlighted a litany of horrors at the jail — including deplorable conditions, rampant violence and multiple deaths — as they've made repeated attempts to get him released on bail while he awaits trial next May on sex trafficking charges.
The hip-hop mogul's detention and a rash of crimes connected to the jail in recent months have shined a spotlight on MDC Brooklyn, leading to increased scrutiny and a push by the Justice Department and Bureau of Prisons to fix problems and hold perpetrators accountable.
In September, federal prosecutors charged nine inmates in a spate of attacks from April to August at the Metropolitan Detention Center, the only federal jail in New York City. The allegations detailed serious safety and security issues at the jail, including charges after two inmates were stabbed to death and another was speared in the spine with a makeshift icepick. A correctional officer was also charged with shooting at a car during an unauthorized high-speed chase.
In October, an inmate was charged in a murder-for-hire plot that led to the death of a 28-year-old woman last December outside a New York City nightclub. According to prosecutors, the inmate used a contraband cellphone to orchestrate the plot from behind bars while awaiting sentencing for directing a different shooting years earlier.
