Five current and former employees at a city-run juvenile detention center in Brooklyn were arrested by federal officials on Wednesday on charges that they had accepted bribes to smuggle in a tidal wave of illicit substances, razor blades and scalpels.
All five were “youth development specialists” employed by the Administration for Children’s Services at Crossroads Juvenile Center in Brownsville, and were released on bail after an initial appearance before a judge in Brooklyn federal court on Wednesday afternoon.
The employees were Da’Vante Bolton, 31, of Queens; Roger Francis, 58, of Brooklyn; Christopher Craig, 37, of Brooklyn; and Nigel King, 45, of Queens. One former employee, Octavia Napier, 26, of Brooklyn, had already been fired after it appeared that she had been involved in smuggling, according to a criminal complaint.
None entered pleas at their court appearance on Wednesday. Mr. Francis declined to comment; efforts to reach the other defendants after the hearing were not immediately successful.
The defendants “violated their duty to the city and the residents at Crossroads” and placed the center’s residents and staff members “at an alarming risk of serious harm,” Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.
The facility, in Brownsville, houses about 120 young people ages 14 to 20. Prosecutors said that the authorities had found more than 340 scalpels or blades in the possession of residents in the past two years. They also found at least 75 banned cellphones, pills, alcohol and cigarettes.
Crossroads is one of two “secure detention” facilities for youth who have been accused of serious crimes or who pose “the highest risk” as determined by city officials. The other, Horizon Juvenile Center, is in the Bronx. Before 2017, 16- and 17-year-olds charged with serious crimes were held on Rikers Island, but they were moved to the youth facilities after the passage of a law called “Raise the Age.” The detention centers have more services and are generally less restrictive than the infamously dangerous city jail complex on Rikers.
The head of the city’s Department of Investigation, Jocelyn E. Strauber, said in a statement that the case sprang from reports that A.C.S. had relayed to her agency, which worked with federal prosecutors and the F.B.I.
According to the criminal complaints, the defendants took more than $50,000 in bribes to allow in items like razor blades, marijuana, alcohol and prescription pills such as Percocet.
The documents laid out how prosecutors say the schemes unfolded. Mr. Bolton, for example, exchanged messages with relatives of youth held at the facility to arrange smuggling, and received electronic payments in return, they said. Records from Amazon showed that one of the relatives ordered hundreds of scalpels before the payments began, according to the complaint.
Young people at Crossroads and their associates used Uber and Lyft to deliver contraband to Mr. King to be smuggled in, according to the complaint against him. He was also paid in marijuana, it said.
Ms. Napier is accused of accepting more than $2,000 in less than a year on the job, and of letting a resident use her Cash App accounts to run a “contraband distribution business.”
The complaint said also that Ms. Napier had a forbidden relationship with a Crossroads resident who was later transferred to Rikers. In calls recorded by the Department of Correction, the two engaged in conversations indicating they had an “illegal sexual relationship,” the complaint said, though she faces no charges in connection to that. The detainee was 20 but was incapable of consent because he was in custody, the complaint said.
An account belonging to Ms. Napier was also used to pay for contraband, including pills, that was passed between a Crossroads resident and a Rikers inmate at Brooklyn Supreme Court, according to the complaint. She was fired last year “when it appeared that she had smuggled contraband into the facility,” it said.
In court Wednesday, Ms. Napier sat beside her lawyer, hands on her lap, and looked at the judge for the duration of her arraignment. She answered the judge’s questions, softly saying “yeah” or “no.”
The defendants could face up to five years in prison if convicted.
Olivia Bensimon contributed reporting.