Fed jail guard is charged in drug smuggle

A federal correctional officer slipped drugs into Brooklyn’s troubled Metropolitan Detention Center in exchange for $10,000, prosecutors alleged Tuesday.

Jeremy Monk, 31, brought more than 9 ounces of weed into a bathroom at the Sunset Park jail on April 15, then resigned three days later, telling human resources staff he was quitting over “some stupid investigation,” federal prosecutors charged.

Monk, a Brooklyn resident, was charged in Brooklyn Federal Court on Tuesday and could face up to five years behind bars.

Metropolitan Detention Center staff got a tip April 14 that Monk had been paid $10,000 to smuggle drugs, alcohol and tobacco into the jail in a black bag, according to a federal complaint. He was supposed to leave the drugs in a staff bathroom, then leave the door unlocked, the feds allege.

The next day, he walked into the bathroom and left about four minutes later. Metropolitan Detention Center staff made sure no one else went in or out before the bathroom was searched. Inside, jail staff found two vacuum-sealed bags of pot, hidden below two floor buffing pads on a shelf, the feds allege.

The feds say an investigation revealed Monk had been smuggling in contraband since December 2020 — just seven months after starting the job.

The break in the case came on Dec. 5, 2020, when jail staff searched the cell of a racketeering suspect after smelling marijuana. They found a cell phone — and then the prisoner started singing about Monk, according to a complaint.

Monk was selling drugs, cell phones and tobacco, using the inmate’s romantic partner as a go-between, prosecutors allege.

He tried to get paid through a Cash App account, but all of the transactions — which ranged from $750 to $4,000 — were blocked, the feds allege.

Monk, who’s now working in a hospital as a behavioral health associate, was ordered released on a $50,000 bond.

He declined to comment. The Metropolitan Detention Center has housed several wellknown inmates, including sex-trafficking R&B superstar R. Kelly, Jeffrey Epstein enabler Ghislaine Maxwell and Frank James, the accused N train subway shooter.

The feds have launched emergency searches for a gun smuggled into the jail at least twice since October. One of those searches turned up numerous contraband cell phones, a source familiar with the lockdown said.