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MDC BROOKLYN RAID ENDS

I noted last week that BOP had just experienced the second law enforcement raid on a prison this year, as the DOJ Inspector General, DEA, FBI and other agencies descended on MDC Brooklyn apparently searching for contraband, drugs, guns and cellphones in the mother of all shakedowns. 

Now a little more on that…

BOP spokesman Donald Murphy said in a statement released last Monday that “the operation was preplanned and there is no active threat” at the facility where 1,176 people are held.

Reports of sexual assaults and inhumane conditions at the MDC, as well as two inmate murders this year, have prompted vehement criticism from judges, activists and inmate families. In 2017, mistreatment of pregnant inmates caused a federal judge to say the MDC sounded more like “a prison in Turkey or some third-world country” than a US federal prison in the United States. A year later, a former lieutenant was convicted of raping detainees. In 2019, power failures left those inside without heat in the middle of a January cold snap.

In August, a U.S. district judge said that MDC conditions were so appalling that he would sentence a 75-year-old to home confinement rather than send him there. In September, a BOP correctional officer was charged with violating civil rights after he was said to have chased a car he saw in the MDC parking lot at high speed for five miles, during which he fired his BOP-issued weapon at the vehicle, wounding one occupant.

Last month, an inmate was charged in an 18 USC § 1958 murder-for-hire plot that led to a 28-year-old woman being killed last year. The inmate allegedly used a contraband cellphone to set the plot in motion while awaiting sentencing for directing a different shooting years earlier.

On Friday, the BOP issued a statement that the “multi-agency operation” had concluded, having “confiscated a number of electronic devices, drugs and associated paraphernalia, and homemade weapons.”

The agency press release “thank[ed] the participating agencies for their support and partnership in this effort to create a safe and secure environment at our facilities.”

C’mon. That’s like the owner of a cockroach-infested restaurant thanking health inspectors for shutting the place down for a thorough cleaning.  Is there no institutional shame that MDC Brooklyn is the shining bag of animal droppings atop BOP’s pile of institutional garbage?

Unlike much of what BOP Director Colette S. Peters has been cleaning up, the MDC Brooklyn mess – inmate murders and BOP officers racing through the streets of Brooklyn shooting at people – has happened and is happening on her watch.

You own this one, ma’am.

The New York Times, US Officials Sweep Troubled Brooklyn Prison Where 2 Were Killed (October 28, 2024)

Associated Press, Authorities launch ‘interagency operation’ at federal jail in New York housing Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs (October 28, 2024)

BOP, Multi-Agency Operation Concludes at MDC Brooklyn (November 1, 2024)

– Thomas L. Root