(NewsNation) — Former inmate Larry Levine says that Sean “Diddy” Combs is getting “special privileges” in prison.
“My information from my source is that they’re letting him shower almost every day,” Levine said on “Banfield.” “It could cause some problems with other inmates as far as jealousy and special privileges. … Apparently, some of the staff is sneaking food into him.”
Diddy’s allegations, arrest
Diddy is accused of using his music empire to engage in sex trafficking and accused of having a pattern of abusing women.
He was arrested Sept. 16 after months of allegations and a federal raid on two of his properties. He pleaded not guilty in New York court the next day.
Both his bids to bail out of jail have been rejected, leaving him in MDC Brooklyn for the foreseeable future.
Diddy at MDC Brooklyn
There are 1,218 people at the Metropolitan Detention Center, which is located in the Eastern New York Judicial District, according to the Bureau of Prisons.
The MDC is “plagued by chronic understaffing, constant lockdowns, outbreaks of violence, delayed access to medical care, and a rash of suicides and death,” The Daily Beast reported.
“Several courts in this District have recognized that the conditions at Metropolitan Detention Center are not fit for pre-trial detention,” Combs’ lawyers said in a motion they filed for bail Tuesday, per the news outlet.
Mentioned by Combs’ attorneys in their filing was a June 7 incident; Uriel Whyte, a man who had been at MDC for gun charges, was stabbed to death in the facility. Spectrum News New York reported that Whyte was awaiting trial on gun charges for two years.
A second man named Edwin Cordero died after being injured in a jail fight in August. Cordero’s lawyer, The New York Times reported, wrote about the “awful” conditions his client faced in a June letter to a federal judge.
The detention center, Cordero’s lawyer said, is “an overcrowded, understaffed and neglected federal jail that is hell on earth.” Along with the deaths this past summer, suicides and an electrical fire in 2019 that caused those in the facility to be without heat and power for days have been reported at MDC.
Judges and advocates have called out the Bureau of Prisons for “dangerous, barbaric conditions” in MDC, and pressed the agency to make improvements.
In a statement to the Associated Press, the federal Bureau of Prisons said it is “addressing the staffing and other challenges at MDC Brooklyn.”
NewsNation’s Cassie Buchman and the Associated Press contributed to this report.