NYC jail housing Sean "Diddy" Combs target of "interagency operation," feds say
NEW YORK -- The New York City jail where Sean "Diddy" Combs is being held was targeted with an interagency operation Monday, federal prison officials said.
The Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn is currently housing Combs on sex trafficking and racketeering charges. Other high-profile inmates, from R. Kelly to Sam Bankman-Fried, have been held there over the years.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons told CBS News in a statement the operation was "designed to achieve our shared goal of maintaining a safe environment for both our employees and the incarcerated individuals housed at MDC Brooklyn."
The statement added there is no active threat at the facility.
The bureau partnered with the U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General and other law enforcement agencies for the sweep.
Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn's history of complaints
The operation comes as MDC Brooklyn faces increased scrutiny over deaths, violence and dismal conditions. The Bureau of Prisons and the Justice Department have been pushing to fix the problems and hold perpetrators accountable.
Last month, nine inmates were charged in a series of attacks at the troubled jail. Federal prosecutors shared serious safety and security concerns, including two inmates being stabbed to death and a correctional officer shooting at a car during an unauthorized chase.
MDC Brooklyn is the only federal jail in the city since MCC New York -- where Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide -- closed in 2021. The waterfront industrial complex houses 1,200 people, mainly those awaiting federal trial in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Inmates at MDC Brooklyn previously won a $10 million class action settlement over frigid conditions during an eight-day blackout in 2019.
Kelly sued the jail for wrongly putting him on suicide watch after his sentencing in 2022, and Bankman-Fried's attorney said he survived on bread, water and peanut butter after the jail failed to provide vegan food while he was there last year.
Ja Rule also stayed at MDC Brooklyn for a brief time on gun charges, and Rev. Al Sharpton went on a hunger strike while serving a 90-day sentence there in 2001 for protesting the U.S. Navy bombing of the island of Vieques, in Puerto Rico.