| Written by Sentinel News Service, on 06-25-2009 00:00 |
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                                                        Foxy Brown
The New York Post is reporting that prison officials at Rikers Island made Foxy Brown extra comfortable during her nine-month sentence for violating parole by assaulting nail-salon workers.
According to the newspaper, officials regularly hung out in her cell, brought her meals and makeup, gave her unlimited TV and phone use, and even carried her bags when she was released last April.
The article stated:
Brown wore Gucci sneakers and a Fendi scarf -- and when they got dirty, new ones were brought to her.
The diva's jailers also set up an interview and photo shoot with a magazine, which ran a feature on the raunchy rapper that helped hype her new album.
So say outraged Department of Correction insiders, who told The Post that Brown's coddling was yet another example of an unruly agency flouting its own regulations and security for the privileged few.
"It's just out of control," one official said.
Said another, "There's a total lack of leadership at the top."
Correction chief Peter Curcio and the prison's top rabbi, Leib Glanz, resigned last week after The Post exposed a lavish bar mitzvah that Glanz arranged for an inmate's son at a lower-Manhattan lockup, along with other perks showered on select prisoners. The city Department of Investigation and the Manhattan District Attorney's Office are probing Glanz and his boss, Imam Umar Abdul-Jalil, in the matter.
Abdul-Jalil played a key role in Brown's star treatment, the sources said, going to bat for the hip-hop hottie when she wanted something special.
"Umar would call the warden, and the warden at the time would comply," one insider said.
Two other ministers who report to Abdul-Jalil -- the Rev. Kevin Green and Imam Aisha Muhammad -- helped arrange Brown's good-time treatment, despite the rapper's bad behavior as an inmate at Rikers' Rose M. Singer Center, the insiders said. Brown is Christian.
"They were in her cell day and night," one department supervisor said. "Whatever she wanted, Sister Aisha would talk to warden [Michelle] Mack and get it."
Mack, for her part, was "star-struck," a source said. Mack and Muhammad allowed Brown to place a bedsheet across her prison bars as a privacy curtain, and let her stroll around by herself in a housing unit for high-profile prisoners, sources said.
Only one of the handful of inmates there is allowed out at a time, so Foxy's solo jaunts meant others had to wait.
"Everyone else in that area sat in their cell longer than they should have because that chick had carte blanche," said a source at the facility.
The photo shoot involved hip-hop magazine XXL, which sent seven people including a photographer and a makeup artist, to the jail to chat with and snap pictures of the star. The Brooklyn-born Brown wanted to promote her album, "Black Roses," and a reality-TV show.
The sit-down, just 10 days before her release in April 2008, was approved by the department's media-services office.
Jails spokesman Stephen Morello said Brown got no favors.
"We're required to allow inmates access to the media," he said. "This is exactly how we do each and every one of these. She may have been promotionally motivated, but it's absolutely wrong to suggest we were partners in this."
He said neither prisoners nor staff made complaints against Brown or her treatment.
But Foxy was not a model prisoner. She was ordered into isolation for 76 days for brawling with an inmate. She also failed to take a drug test and verbally abused a captain who ordered her to remove photos of herself in her cell.
Her stint in solitary was cut short -- she was let out after 40 days. It was hardly solitary, according to jailhouse sources, who said Brown had a constant companion in Muhammad.
The imam "practically lived down there," an officer said. "It was a spectacle."
Asked about the claims of special treatment, Muhammad said, "I won't be able to answer any questions like that. I'm so sorry. Have a blessed day."
Even Foxy's release was unusual and spurred much criticism by jail officials.
Foxy, who was whisked away in a luxury SUV, got a warm send-off from Carolyn Thomas, the correction chief of department. "She was waving to her," an astonished jail official said. "I've never seen that before in my entire life."
Courtesy of EUReb.com Last update: 06-26-2009 15:37
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