Jail chaplain Rabbi Leib Glanz wielded such power that correction officers who crossed him or any of the favored Jewish inmates would get transferred from the Tombs at his behest, a former inmate and officers told The Post.
“If an inmate had a problem with an officer, that problem disappeared — that officer wasn’t there anymore,” said ex-con Robert Feder, 50, who did a stint in the Tombs last summer. “This was standard procedure.”
And the politically connected Glanz called the shots even when it came to which correction officers were posted near his office, where the rabbi allowed observant Jewish inmates to hang out unsupervised, Feder said.
“They didn’t supervise us. We did what we wanted to do,” Feder said. “The rabbi controlled the whole jail.”
Several correction officers backed up Feder’s account, which emerged after Glanz resigned for organizing a bar mitzvah in the lower-Manhattan jail for an inmate’s son.
“He’s had people transferred before — just for telling him no. Because they were doing their job,” said one officer who asked to not be identified.
A retired mid-level Tombs supervisor said: “We knew we couldn’t fight Glanz. He did whatever he wanted.”
The retiree said Glanz could get officers transferred to Rikers Island.
Glanz and other Correction brass are being investigated for the bar mitzvah and for the rabbi’s coddling of Jewish inmates. Glanz’s lawyer had no comment for this article. “I have never run into what I saw at the Tombs,” Feder said about his decade in New York prisons and jails.
“These guys [inmates] lived like King Farouk,” said Feder, who has done time for assault, attempted burglary and attempted forgery.
“Other guys were placing bets at racetracks and calling bookies” in Glanz’s office, where inmates also enjoyed “TVs, DVDs, video . . . complete cable,” Feder said. Glanz regularly treated the inmates to food “from fancy restaurants,” Feder said. “I never ate so good in my life.”
When he was transferred to an upstate prison, Feder said, Glanz “was very kind to call the rabbi [at that prison] to arrange transportation.”
When he arrived at the prison, “there was the rabbi standing there, waiting for me,” Feder said. “I felt like John Gotti.”
Additional reporting by Perry Chiaramonte