A top city Correction Department official — already under fire for allowing a bar mitzvah bash to be held in the Tombs jail — resigned today, The Post has learned.
The bombshell departure of Correction Chief Peter Curcio comes less than a week after The Post exposed the behind-bars shenanigans. Curcio had been questioned over the weekend by Department of Investigation officials over the weekend, two top city sources said.
Curcio — considered to be the Correction Dept.’s second-highest ranking uniformed officer — quit without being ordered to by either Commissioner Martin Horn or Mayor Bloomberg, both of whom were angered after learning of the bar mitzvah, sources said.
Before the scandal, Curcio was being eyed to become the agency’s next chief of department.
Curcio, who had spent more than 20 years at the Correction Department, was the three-star bureau chief for facility operations — which includes security for the city’s jails — and earned about $162,000 annually.
The Post last week revealed how Curcio, over the objections of the Tombs’ deputy warden, signed off on a Dec. 30 bar mitzvah reception for the son of fraudster Tuvia Stern at that lower Manhattan jail.
Sixty non-inmate guests attended the kosher catered affair which was stocked with china and silverware brought in from outside the jail, and organized by politically connected jail chaplain Rabbi Leib Glanz. The bash featured a band headed by prominent Orthodox Jewish singer Yaakov Shwekey, and guests were allowed to keep their cell-phones inside the lockup, a breach of security rules.
Last Wednesday, Glanz was suspended for two weeks.
Curcio and three other Correction Dept. officials — Chief Frank Squillante, Tombs Warden George Okada and head chaplain Imam Umar Abdul-Jalil — were stripped of two weeks of vacation pay for allowing the bar mitzvah to occur.
Sources have said that four months after the bar mitzvah, Stern was allowed to host an engagement party for his daughter at the Tombs. The former fugitive, who spent nearly two decades on the lam in Brazil, was soon after shipped to an upstate prison to begin serving an up-to-7-year sentence for scams totaling almost $2 million.
In recent days, both former inmates and correction officers have said Glanz coddled Jewish inmates, allowing them access to his office and phone at the Tombs, providing them with food from outside the jail, and making sure they were housed at that facility instead of the rougher Rikers Island.
Today’s Post featured a story revealing that he arranged for a television satellite truck to enter the Tombs complex so that an inmate there could watch the live feed of a wedding of a relative, with the rabbi, years ago.
Glanz was questioned today by DOI investigators for four hours, and is expected to be questioned again next week, according to a source.
Meanwhile today, several people told The Post that Glanz got his job as a Correction Department chaplain in a very un-kosher way.
Glanz is the only city chaplain rabbi who was not approved by a Chaplaincy Committee as required by the city labor contract, several sources said.
They said Glanz’s unorthodox appointment in 2000 came at the behest of then-Mayor Giuliani’s administration in 2000, when the committee had questions about the rabbi.
“Glanz didn’t come through the New York Board of Rabbis,” said FDNY chaplain Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, the executive vice president of that board, which is part of the Chaplaincy Committee.
Glanz’s “was a decision made by the [Giuliani] administration,” he said
Potasnik said he is unaware of any other jail rabbi chaplain being appointed without the Board of Rabbis’ approval.
Shortly before Glanz was hired, the city’s labor contract was changed to require that chaplains be approved by the Chaplaincy Committee, which consists of respective religious oversight groups.
The rule was put in place to prevent unqualified candidates landing jobs.
A high-ranking veteran City Hall source said there was controversy over Glanz’s appointment nine years ago.
“The board agreed to let that one go” and give the Giuliani administration a pass on approving Glanz, the source said.
But the labor contract states that the Chaplaincy Committee has exclusive power over determining a candidate’s qualifications “for initial hiring and continued employment.”
Glanz is a member of the ultra-orthodox Satmar sect which was a big backer of Giuliani for mayor. A Giuliani spokeswoman had no immediate comment.
Bruce Teitelbaum, the former Giuliani chief of staff who recently has said he helped Glanz get the job, could not be reached for comment.
Additional reporting by Tom Topousis