Smuggled Other Clothes
Loaded gun found weapons, drugs turn up were washed in toilet
New accounts emerged Friday of the urgent hunt for a gun inside a lower Manhattan federal jail that remains on lockdown.
The Metropolitan Correctional Center inmates’ descriptions of strip searches, cold food and clothes washed in toilets were shared with the Daily News as the Bureau of Prisons confirmed an eight-day search had uncovered a loaded firearm in a housing area.
“No hot food for three days. Getting bologna and salami sandwiches. On at least one occasion, the meat was frozen and inedible,” one MCC inmate told his attorney.
“On Saturday, a SWAT team came and made everyone lie down on the floor.
Inmates were taken one at a time to be strip-searched, and then brought to the visiting room while the guards tore the place apart, left everything a mess and broke the urinal. There is now only one toilet for the 26 people on the dorm. Other inmates’ sheets and blankets were taken. No one has had clean clothes, and client washes his clothes in the shower,” the inmate said to his lawyer.
Another inmate told his legal team he’d been locked in a two-person cell since the start of the lockdown on Feb. 27. They’d washed clothes in the sink and toilet, the inmate said.
The Bureau of Prisons previously said that all inmates at the jail where Jeffrey Epstein killed himself were receiving showers and hot meals.
The inmate accounts were provided by David Patton, the attorney-in-chief of the Federal Defenders of New York.
He has slammed jail officials for the length of the lockdown and denial of legal visits, which he says violates inmates’ constitutional right to an attorney.
A former BOP warden, Cam Lindsay, said the smuggled gun represented a “monumental lapse” in security.
“It’s unfathomable,” he said. “Controlling weapons from entering the facility is perhaps the most basic operational procedure relevant to security and safety of a correctional facility.”
The BOP overhauled its employee screening procedures in 2006 after a correctional officer suspected of trading contraband for sex with female inmates opened fire inside a federal prison in
Tallahassee, Fla., as federal agents tried to arrest him.
An agent and gunman were killed in the shootout.
The lockdown at MCC had uncovered numerous contraband items, including opioids, marijuana, synthetic weed, cellphones and homemade weapons.
The FBI was investigating the flow of contraband at the jail with more than 700 inmates, crumbling infrastructure and overworked staff.
The Bureau of Prisons allowed legal visits to resume on a limited basis Friday though the lockdown remained officially in place.
“The BOP is committed to the safety of staff, inmates and the public while continuing to ensure that those responsible for misconduct and criminal activity are held accountable,” the agency said.