Arrested singer Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs is reportedly not eating in jail, former inmate Larry Levine told News Nation, citing a source close to the investigation.
The reason is not unclear, but Levine said it could be because Combs (54), is “paranoid” and “scared” of someone poisoning his food, or because he is on “hunger strike” or its “just bad food”.
“There are people out there that he has things on that do have a substantial amount of money. Imagine if someone paid someone off on the inside to actually poison his food, give him a heart attack, and he dies, and no one would really think anything of it. So that may be one of the reasons he’s not eating,” Levine told News Nation.
According to an AP report, Combs is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn — the only federal jail in New York City. It has been often described as “hell on earth” and “an ongoing tragedy” and has had problems since it opened in the 1990s, it added.
The conditions recently have so bad that some judges have refused to send people there, the report said.
“We also take seriously addressing the staffing and other challenges at MDC Brooklyn. An agency team is working to fix problems, including by adding permanent correctional and medical staff, remedying more than 700 backlogged maintenance requests and answering judges' concerns,” the Federal Bureau of Prisons said in a statement.
High-profile inmates at the MDC Brooklyn prison include Sam Bankman-Fried, Ghislaine Maxwell, R Kelly and Fetty Wap. Some high-profile ex-detainees included Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli, NXIVM sex cult founder Keith Raniere, former Mexican government official Genaro Garcia Luna and ex-Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez Alvarado.
Mainly used for post-arrest detention of those awaiting federal trials, it also serves as a “short sentences” jail after some convictions, as per the AP report.
Located in an industrial area on the Brooklyn waterfront, the jail has around 1,200 inmates. It is equipped with a medical unit, a library, and outdoor recreational facilities.
Inmates complain about “rampant violence, dreadful conditions, severe staffing shortages and widespread smuggling of drugs and other contraband, sometimes facilitated by jail employees”, the report said. They also said there were frequent lockdowns which barred them from having “visits, showers exercise”.
At least six jail employees have been charged with crimes in the past five years alone for taking bribes, or providing contraband (drugs, cigarettes, cell phones), the AP report added.
An ongoing AP investigation showed that “dozens of escapes, chronic violence, deaths and severe staffing shortages” have plagued federal prison facilities.
(With inputs from AP)
