Authorities launch ‘interagency operation’ at New York federal prison housing Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs

By MICHAEL BALSAMO and MICHAEL R. SISAK

NEW YORK (AP) — Investigators from multiple federal agencies launched an “interagency operation” Monday at the troubled New York City prison where Sean “Diddy” Combs is held.

Investigators from the Bureau of Prisons, the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General and other law enforcement agencies were based at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, the Bureau of Prisons said in a statement to The Associated Press.

The law enforcement 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 agency said.

Prison officials declined to provide specific details about the operation Monday morning.

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 the spate of prison-related crimes in recent months have further fueled public interest, leading to more supervision and a push from the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Prisons to solve problems and hold perpetrators accountable.

Last month, 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.

Earlier this month, an inmate was charged in 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.

In a statement on Monday, the Bureau of Prisons said the Brooklyn operation was planned in advance and that there was “no active threat.”

The agency said it would not provide additional details about what investigators were doing until the operation was complete “in an effort to maintain the safety and security of all personnel at the facility and the integrity of this operation.”

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.