NEW YORK – Investigators seized drugs, homemade weapons and electronic devices this week during an “interagency operation” aimed at cleaning up the troubled New York City federal jail where Sean “Diddy” Combs is being held, the Office of the Attorney General’s Office said Friday. Prisons.

The contraband was identified and confiscated during a multi-agency raid that began Monday at the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center. The Bureau of Prisons, the Department of Justice inspector general and other local, state and federal law enforcement agencies participated in the operation, which continued throughout the week.

The police operation was “pre-planned and coordinated to ensure the safety” of staff and inmates at the facility, the agency said. It was part of a “broader safety and security initiative and not in response to any particular threat or intelligence.”

The raid was unrelated to Combs’ arrest, which has galvanized public interest in the jail. No criminal charges have been filed in connection with the raid.

Combs’ attorneys have highlighted a litany of prison horrors, including deplorable conditions, rampant violence and multiple deaths, while making repeated attempts to secure his release on bail while he awaits trial next May on sex trafficking charges.

The hip-hop mogul’s arrest and a series of jail-related crimes in recent months have put a spotlight on MDC Brooklyn, leading to increased scrutiny and a push by the Department of Justice and the Office of Prisons to solve problems and hold perpetrators accountable.

In September, federal prosecutors charged nine inmates in a series of attacks that occurred between April and August at the Metropolitan Detention Center, the only federal prison in New York City. The allegations detailed serious security problems at the jail, including charges after two inmates were stabbed to death and another was impaled in the spine with a makeshift ice pick. A correctional officer was also accused of shooting at a car during an unauthorized high-speed chase.

In October, an inmate was charged in a murder-for-hire plot that led to the death of a 28-year-old woman last December outside a New York City nightclub. According to prosecutors, the inmate used a contraband cellphone to orchestrate the plot from behind bars while awaiting sentencing for directing a different shooting years earlier.

The criminal charges offered a window into the violence and dysfunction that has plagued the jail, which houses about 1,200 people, including Combs and Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX. The total is down from more than 1,600 in January.

The facility, located in an industrial area on the Brooklyn waterfront, is primarily used for the post-arrest detention of people awaiting trial in federal courts in Manhattan or Brooklyn. Other inmates are there to serve short sentences after being convicted.

Detainees at the Brooklyn jail have long complained of violence, dire conditions, severe staffing shortages and widespread smuggling of drugs and other contraband, some of it facilitated by employees. At the same time, they say they have been subjected to frequent confinement and have been prohibited from leaving their cells for visits, calls, showers or exercise.

Combs, who was twice denied bail, is now asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to grant his release. Arguments are scheduled for Nov. 4.

Combs’ attorney, Mark Agnifilo, who had previously tried to have him transferred to a jail in New Jersey, said at a hearing on Oct. 10: “We are getting the MDC to try. The MDC has been very receptive to us.”

Another attorney for Combs, Anthony Ricco, told reporters outside court afterward: “He’s fine. It is a difficult circumstance. “He is making the best of the situation.”

But Ricco added: “No one agrees with remaining in jail for now.”