Federal law enforcement investigators have launched an “interagency operation” to try to clean up the nightmarish jail where Sean “Diddy” Combs is being held while he awaits trial.
On Monday, investigators from the Department of Justice, federal Bureau of Prisons, and other law enforcement agencies descended on the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn as part of a pre-planned operation “designed to achieve our shared goal of maintaining a safe environment” for the prison’s inmates and employees, the bureau said in a statement.
The operation was not in response to an active threat but for safety reasons, the bureau added, though officials declined to say exactly what they were doing at the facility until the operation was over.
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Combs, 54, has been imprisoned at the jail since he was arrested in on Sept. 17 on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering. The facility is notorious for being violent, dirty, and understaffed. Over a six-month period earlier this year, two inmates were stabbed to death and another was shanked in the spine with a makeshift icepick, the Associated Press reported.
Most of the center’s 1,200 inmates are awaiting trial in federal court in Manhattan or Brooklyn, while others are serving short sentences after being convicted of crimes.
Combs is reportedly being housed in a 20-person “dormitory-style” room separate from the general prison population. The cell offers protection for high-profile inmates and for suspects who cooperate with police. Convicted crypto scammer Sam Bankman-Fried, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud, is also staying in Combs’ unit while he prepares an appeal.
The rap mogul’s attorneys filed two unsuccessful motions to get Combs released before his trial begins, citing the jail’s “horrific conditions” in one of their filings. But a judge ruled Combs was at risk of fleeing the country of threatening potential witnesses with violence, and ordered him to remain behind bars until his case goes to court.
