USA TODAY International Edition
Barr: ‘Irregularities’ where Epstein died
An angry Attorney General William Barr vowed Monday to press on with the federal investigation into accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, despite the former financier’s apparent suicide while in federal custody.
Barr, in remarks before the Fraternal Order of Police meeting in New Orleans, said he was appalled and angered by Epstein’s death Saturday at the Manhattan Correction Center.
“We are learning of serious irregularities in the facility that are deeply concerning and demand a thorough investigation,” he said. “The FBI and the office of inspector general are doing just that.”
Epstein’s accusers deserve justice, and any co-conspirators involved in sex trafficking with the disgraced financier “should not rest easy,” Barr said.
Cameron Lindsay, a former warden at three federal lockups, including the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, told USA TODAY that an inmate under suicide watch draws “direct and constant supervision” by a staff member or specially trained inmate suicide watch companion.
A federal prison’s chief psychologist decides who is placed on suicide watch – and who is removed. The warden has the power of veto, and in this case, it should have been used to keep Epstein on suicide watch, Lindsay said.
“I believe this will prove to be a case of prison staff failing to realize the gravity of how important it was that Epstein remain living,” Lindsay said. “I hypothesize Epstein was able to charm a mental health professional into believing that he was no longer a threat to himself, and that decision was not challenged at a higher level.”
Staffing at the the Brooklyn center has drawn scrutiny. Eric Young, chief of the federal prison workers union, said the center has been troubled by shortages, prompting the Bureau of Prisons to bring in officers from other locations.
Young said there are about 30 vacancies at the facility, a shortfall that forces officers to work multiple overtime shifts while some civilian workers are pressed to work officer shifts.
Serene Gregg, president of Metropolitan Detention Center’s prison workers’ union, said union officials raised concerns about staffing at the facility with prison leaders as recently as last week.
“Every day,” the staffing vacancies force prison officials to assign teachers, counselors and cooks to cover officer shifts throughout the facility, Gregg said.
Gregg said the workers who discovered Epstein had not been routinely assigned to that area of the detention center. “You have people working who are extremely exhausted and others who are not trained to do the work.”
Epstein, 66, was awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges when he was found in his cell early Saturday and was taken to nearby New York Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The detention center referred to his death as an apparent suicide. Barbara Sampson, chief medical examiner in New York City, said an autopsy was done Sunday, and a ruling on the cause of death is pending.
Catherine Linaweaver, who retired in 2014 after 16 months as the center’s warden, said people overreacted to Epstein’s suicide because he was wellknown. “If someone really wants to commit suicide,” Linaweaver said, “they’re going to do it.”