Five youth development specialists at a Brooklyn juvenile detention center were charged on Wednesday with smuggling weapons, drugs and other contraband in exchange for bribes, officials said.
By sneaking in and distributing the dangerous contraband into the Crossroads Juvenile Center in Brownsville, the city employees violated their sworn duty and destabilized the detention center while putting at risk the lives of youth and other adult staff members.
“These so-called ‘Youth Development Specialists’ violated their duty to the city and the residents at Crossroads by smuggling in weapons, drugs, and other contraband in exchange for bribes, placing young people and other staff members at an alarming risk of serious harm,” said U.S. Attorney Breon Peace. “Today’s arrests demonstrate that this office remains committed to rooting out corruption and cleaning up our city’s jails and juvenile detention facilities.”
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Luiz C. Ribeiro/for New York Daily News
U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Breon Peace. (Luiz C. Ribeiro for New York Daily News)
Youth development specialists, who work for the city’s Administration for Children’s Services agency, operate in roles similar to those of a correction office at a jail facility, officials said.
Prosecutors said the staffers raked in thousands of dollars in exchange for smuggling in razor blades, prescription pills, alcohol, marijuana and phone accessories.
Nearly 120 residents between the ages of 14 and 20 are housed at the detention center, and are prohibited from any access to drugs weapons, alcohol, cigarettes and cellular phones, among other items.
ACS staffers are supposed to confiscate any contraband and must notify a supervisor if they find any banned items, officials said.
Employees are also required to be screened whenever they enter the facility. Even so, a significant amount of contraband has turned up among Crossroads residents, officials said.
That includes at least 75 cell phones, more than 340 scalpels or blades as well as narcotics and tobacco between March 2022 and May 2024.
One of the suspects, former ACS worker Octavia Napier, 26, even allowed a Crossroads resident to use her Cash App account to run his contraband distribution business from within the center in exchange for $2,000 in bribes,
Also arrested were Da’Vante Bolton, 31, Roger Francis, 58, Christopher Craig37, and Nigel King, 45. They were charged in Brooklyn Federal Court with conspiracy to commit travel act bribery.
If convicted, they each face a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
Bolton appeared to be the biggest moneymaker of the group. Officials said he accepted more than $20,000 from Crossroads residents or their associates, and smuggled in razor blades and marijuana in exchange for those bribes.