Ep jail is still on lockdown for gun scare

The jail where Jeffrey Epstein killed himself entered its fifth day of lockdown due to a gun scare, and the Bureau of Prisons isn’t saying when it will be lifted.

The ban on legal and family visits at MCC (inset) has been in place since Thursday after a tip from an inmate warned that a gun had been smuggled into the troubled lower Manhattan jail, a source said.

“It’s just a completely unacceptable period of time,” said David Patton, attorney in chief of the Federal Defenders of New York. “It’s gross mismanagement by the Bureau of Prisons.”

A lack of information from MCC officials exacerbated the problems facing the Federal Defenders, which represents roughly half the inmates locked up at the 12-story jail, said Patton. The only official reason given for the lockdown was “potential safety threats.”

“If there is an extraordinary emergency, the families [and] the public needs to know,” Patton said.

The in-house MCC lawyer who handled much of the communication with inmates’ attorneys is Nicole McFarland, who became infamous for her involvement in the heating crisis at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn last year.

“I see the same response we got from Ms. McFarland during the MDC debacle. A total lack of transparency and total lack of urgency commensurate to the problem,” Patton said.

MCC is suffering from crumbling infrastructure, staffing woes and low morale, the Daily News has previously reported. The Bureau of Prisons did not respond to questions from The News about why the lockdown had lasted five days or when it would end.

“MCC New York is currently on modified operations due to an ongoing investigation,” the bureau said in a statement. “From time to time the Bureau of Prisons’ correctional institutions are placed on modified operations for a number of reasons, e.g. inmate altercations or intelligence indicating potential safety threats.”