Operation launched at jail in New York housing Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs

Investigators have launched an “inter-agency operation” at the troubled jail in New York City where Sean “Diddy” Combs is being held.

Officials from the Bureau of Prisons, the Justice Department’s inspector general’s office and other US federal law enforcement agencies descended on the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn on Monday, authorities said.

The law enforcement operation is “designed to achieve our shared goal of maintaining a safe environment for both our employees and the incarcerated individuals housed at MDC Brooklyn”, the Bureau of Prisons added.

The move comes as the jail faces increasing scrutiny over horrific conditions, rampant violence and multiple deaths and amid a push by the US Justice Department and Bureau of Prisons to fix problems at the jail and hold perpetrators accountable.

Last month, federal prosecutors charged nine inmates in connection with a spate of attacks from April to August at the Metropolitan Detention Centre, the only federal jail in New York City.

The allegations made public last month 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 ice pick.

A correctional officer was also charged with shooting at a car during an unauthorised high-speed chase.

Earlier this month, an inmate was charged in connection with 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 mobile phone to orchestrate the plot from behind bars while awaiting sentencing for directing a different shooting years earlier.

The criminal charges offered a window into violence and dysfunction that has plagued the jail, which houses about 1,200 people, including Combs and Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the collapsed FTX cryptocurrency exchange.

The Bureau of Prisons said its operation in Brooklyn was pre-planned and that there is “no active threat”.

The facility, in an industrial area on the Brooklyn waterfront, has about 1,200 detainees, down from more than 1,600 in January.

It is used mainly for post-arrest detention for people awaiting trial in federal courts in Manhattan or Brooklyn. Other inmates are there to serve short sentences following convictions.

Those held at the Brooklyn jail have long complained about rampant violence, dreadful conditions, severe staffing shortages and the widespread smuggling of drugs and other contraband, some of it facilitated by employees.

At the same time, they say they’ve been subject to frequent lockdowns and have been barred from leaving their cells for visits, calls, showers or exercise.