NEW YORK (AP) — The federal Bureau of Prisons says it has increased staffing in recent months to make up for staggering shortfalls at the troubled New York City jail where Sean “Diddy” Combs is awaiting trial after pleading not guilty Tuesday to sex trafficking charges.
The agency’s push to fix the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn comes as detainees, advocates and judges have continued to raise alarms about “dangerous, barbaric conditions," rampant violence and multiple deaths. Some judges have refused to send people to the jail, the only federal lockup in the nation’s biggest city.
Combs’ lawyers are pushing to have him moved to a jail in New Jersey, arguing that the Brooklyn jail, known as MDC Brooklyn, is unfit for pretrial detention. Combs, 54, is being kept in the facility’s special housing unit, confined to his cell up to 23 hours a day with around-the-clock monitoring. His lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, said that's routine for high-profile new arrivals.
MDC Brooklyn is getting needed attention thanks to a group of senior Bureau of Prisons officials known as the Urgent Action Team, which is focusing on bringing the facility back to adequate staffing levels and ensuring it is in good repair.
The agency said Friday that it has increased staffing at the jail by about 20%, bringing its total number of employees to 469. Even so, there are still 157 vacant positions. The new hires include correctional officers and medical staff. Before the surge, the facility was operating at about 55% of full staffing, according to court filings.
At the same time, the facility’s inmate population has dropped from about 1,600 at the start of the year to about 1,200 as of Friday.
A senior Bureau of Prisons official told The Associated Press that members of the Urgent Action Team have made repeated visits to MDC Brooklyn and meet weekly to address issues at the jail. Top agency leaders are giving the jail “sustained attention” and “sustained leadership focus” to mitigate issues at the lockup, the official said.
The official was not authorized to publicly discuss the ongoing review and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
In addition to hiring, the Bureau of Prisons says it has been tackling a substantial maintenance backlog at the Brooklyn jail. Over four weeks in the spring, agency workers completed more than 800 work orders for repair and infrastructure improvements. They included electrical and plumbing upgrades and repairs to food service and heating and air conditioning systems.
MDC Brooklyn has been plagued by problems since it opened in the 1990s. Part of the facility, near the waterfront in the borough’s Sunset Park neighborhood, is a century-old former Navy warehouse. The Bureau of Prisons closed its other New York City jail, the Metropolitan Correctional Center, in 2021 after Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide there shone a spotlight on lax security, crumbling infrastructure and dangerous, squalid conditions.
MDC Brooklyn detainees have long complained about frequent violence, horrific 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 during which they've been barred from leaving their cells for visits, calls, showers or exercise.
MDC Brooklyn isn’t the only federal prison facility beset by staffing and other problems.
The Bureau of Prisons has struggled to retain correctional officers at its prisons and jails across the U.S. — but the problem has been even more pronounced in New York City, in part because of city's high cost of living and starting salaries that are far lower than other law enforcement agencies.
In the last few years, MDC Brooklyn officers have been forced to work repeated overtime shifts because of staffing shortages, raising safety concerns. To stanch the departure of experience staff, the agency has increased retention bonuses to hike salaries for workers at the Brooklyn jail.
Still, problems have persisted. At least six MDC Brooklyn staff members have been charged with crimes in the last five years. Some were accused of accepting bribes or providing contraband to inmates such as drugs, cigarettes, and cellphones, according to an AP analysis of agency-related arrests.
In the last few months, inmates have also claimed that food served at the jail contained maggots. The senior Bureau of Prisons official who spoke to the AP about the Urgent Action Team’s work said all food at the jail was evaluated after that claim and no maggots were found. An assistant warden also taste tests meals before they are served, the official said.
The agency’s focus on fixing MDC Brooklyn comes amid increase scrutiny from Congress and a new law overhauling oversight of the beleaguered federal prison system. Combs’ detention at MDC Brooklyn has only further galvanized public interest.
An ongoing AP investigation has uncovered deep, previously unreported flaws within the Bureau of Prisons, an agency with more than 30,000 employees, 158,000 inmates, 122 facilities and an annual budget of about $8 billion.
AP reporting has revealed dozens of escapes, chronic violence, deaths and severe staffing shortages that have hampered responses to emergencies, including inmate assaults and suicides.
In April, the Bureau of Prisons said it was closing its women’s prison in Dublin, California, known as the “rape club,” giving up on attempts to reform the facility after an AP investigation exposed staff-on-inmate sexual abuse.
In July, President Joe Biden signed a law establishing a new oversight paradigm for the Bureau of Prisons, including an independent ombudsman to field and investigate complaints and risk-based inspections by the Justice Department’s inspector general of all 122 federal prison facilities.
A construction worker walks past the Metropolitan Detention Center in the Sunset Park neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough of New York, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
The Metropolitan Detention Center is seen through barb wire in the Sunset Park neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough of New York, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
BEIRUT (AP) — Israel launched a rare airstrike that killed a senior Hezbollah military official in a densely populated southern Beirut neighborhood on Friday. It was the deadliest such strike on Lebanon’s capital in decades, with Lebanese authorities reporting at least 14 people killed and dozens more wounded in the attack.
The Israeli military’s chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said the strike on Beirut's southern Dahiya district killed Ibrahim Akil, a commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, as well as 10 other Hezbollah operatives.
“We will continue pursuing our enemies in order to defend our citizens, even in Dahiya, in Beirut,” said Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, describing the Israeli strike that targeted Akil as part of “a new phase of war.”
Several hours later, Hezbollah confirmed Akil's death. In a statement, the Lebanese militant group described Akil as “a great jihadist leader” and said he had “joined the procession of his brothers, the great martyr leaders, after a blessed life full of jihad, work, wounds, sacrifices, dangers, challenges, achievements, and victories.”
Akil served on Hezbollah’s highest military body, the Jihad Council. He was sanctioned by the United States for his alleged involvement in the 1983 bombing that killed more than 300 people at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and the U.S. Marine Corps barracks.
Last year, the U.S. State Department posted a $7 million reward for information leading to his identification, location, arrest or conviction, citing his role in the embassy bombing and in the taking of American and German hostages in Lebanon in the 1980s.
The strike came as a new cycle of escalation between the enemies raised fears of a full-out war erupting in the Middle East.
Hours before the Israeli strike, Hezbollah pounded northern Israel with 140 rockets as the region awaited the revenge promised by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah over this week’s mass explosions of pagers belonging to members of the Shiite militant group.
The Israeli military did not provide the identities of the other Hezbollah commanders allegedly killed in its strike on the crowded neighborhood just kilometers from downtown Beirut.
Lebanon's Health Ministry said at least 14 people were killed and 66 others were wounded in the attack, which leveled the apartment building where the Israeli army claimed Akil had been meeting with other militants in the basement. Nine of the wounded were in serious condition, the ministry added.
Local networks in Lebanon broadcast footage showing first responders sifting through the rubble of a collapsed high-rise in the Jamous area in the heart of Dahiya, where Hezbollah conducts many of its political and security operations.
Friday's airstrike — the deadliest such attack on a neighborhood of Beirut since Israel and Hezbollah fought a bloody, monthlong war in 2006 — hit during rush hour, as people were leaving work and children heading home from school.
At Beirut's St. Therese Hospital near the scene of the airstrike, crowds flocked to donate blood for those wounded in the attack.
“We are all together in this situation, so it’s my obligation,” said Hussein Harake, who lined up to donate blood.
From Israel, Gallant said he briefed senior military officials on the strike and vowed Israel would press on against Hezbollah "until we achieve our goal, ensuring the safe return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes.”
The strike came after Hezbollah launched one of its most intense bombardments of northern Israel in nearly a year of fighting, largely targeting Israeli military sites. Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system intercepted most of the Katyusha rockets. The few that got through sparked small fires but caused little damage and no Israeli casualties.
Hezbollah described its latest wave of rocket salvos as a response to past Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon — not as revenge for the mass explosions of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies on Tuesday and Wednesday that killed at least 37 people - including two children - and wounded 2,900 others in attacks widely attributed to Israel.
Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in this week's sophisticated attacks, which signaled a major escalation in the past 11 months of simmering conflict along the Israel-Lebanon border.
Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire regularly since Hamas’ Oct. 7 assault on southern Israel ignited the Israeli military’s devastating offensive in Gaza. But previous cross-border attacks have largely struck areas in northern Israel that had been evacuated and less-populated parts of southern Lebanon.
The last time Israel hit Beirut was in a July airstrike that killed senior Hezbollah commander Fouad Shukur.
“The attack in Lebanon is to protect Israel,” Hagari said at a news conference following Friday's strike, describing both Shukr and Akil as the two military officials closest to Hezbollah leader Nasrallah.
Hagari also accused Akil of plotting a series of attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians dating back decades, including a never-realized plan to invade northern Israel in a similar way to the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks.
After Friday's Israeli airstrike, Hezbollah announced attacks on northern Israel, two of which it said targeted an intelligence base from where it claimed Israel directed assassinations.
Israel remains on edge, with Nasrallah vowing Thursday to keep up strikes on Israel despite the humiliating “blow” he said Hezbollah suffered in the sabotage of its communication devices.
“We are in a tense period,” Hagari told reporters Friday. “We are prepared on high alert both offensively and defensively.”
In recent days, Israel has sent a powerful fighting force to the northern border, designated as an official war goal the return of tens of thousands of displaced residents to their homes in northern Israel and ordered citizens near Israel's border with Lebanon to stay close to bomb shelters. Hezbollah has maintained that it will only halt its fire when there is a cease-fire in Gaza.
Hamas, which continues to fight Israel in Gaza, condemned the Israeli strike targeting Akil as a “new crime” and “violation of Lebanese sovereignty.”
Even as the world's attention turns to the surge in Israel-Hezbollah tensions, Palestinian casualties in the besieged Gaza Strip continued to mount.
Palestinian health authorities early Friday reported that 15 people, including children, were killed in Israeli strikes that targeted a family home and a group of people on the street in Gaza City. Israel's campaign in Gaza has already killed at least 41,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza-based Health Ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between fighters and civilians.
In response to a request for comment on the latest Gaza strikes, the Israeli military insisted on Friday that it took “feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm” and accused Hamas of endangering civilians by operating in residential areas.
Israel's bombardment and invasion of the Gaza Strip — launched in response to Hamas killing 1,200 people and taking 250 hostage in southern Israel on Oct. 7 — has wreaked vast destruction and displaced about 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million.
People stand on top of a damaged car at the scene of a missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
People gather near a damaged building at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
A woman checks the scene of a missile strike from her damaged house in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
Rescuers carry a body at the scene of a missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
Ambulances arrive at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
People stand on top of a damaged car at the scene of a missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
People and rescuers gather at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
People gather near a damaged building at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
People gather at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
People gather at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
Israeli Iron Dome air defense system fires to intercept a rocket fired from Lebanon, in northern Israel, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
