What do I Know?

Imam Zulqarnain Abdu-Shahid

Zulqarnain Abdu-Shahid is a Muslim Imam employed by the New York City Department of Correction with a salary of $49,500 to cater to the spiritual needs of incarcerated Muslim inmates within the New York Correctional system. Prior to taking his Muslim name, the Iman was known simply as Paul Pitts.

Yesterday, as Imam Abdu-Shaid was entering the Manhattan Detention Complex formerly known as the Bernard Kerik Center and years previous to that as the “Tombs”, he was found to be carrying “three utility blades and a scissors”.

The Correction Department has a strict policy of accounting for all disposable razor utilized by inmates within the agency. If an inmate is able to obtain a razor blade that blade may be used to slash another inmate causing serious injury.

If an inmate wants to shave, he must first surrender his inmate identification to his area officer who will then provide him with the razor. When the inmate is finished, he returns the razor to the Officer and, in turn, receives his identification card back. All razors are maintained in the Officer’s station under continual supervision. If a razor is found to be missing, the area is locked down and an immediate thorough search of the area and all inmates is conducted.

Additionally, all staff working within a city correctional facility are made succinctly aware of the agency’s policy regarding the prohibition against carrying any type of contraband into a facility.

As far as a pair of scissors is concerned, the scissor blades could be separated resulting in two sharpened knives or “shanks” being made available to the inmates.

Now it goes without saying that attempting to introduce any type of Not surprisingly, weapons contraband within a correctional facility is a big “no – no” and is viewed by that agency as a very serious offense. As such, Imam Abdi-Shahid was arrested and charged with four felony counts of promoting prison contraband in the first degree. He is currently still incarcerated in lieu of a $50,000 bail.

Not surprisingly, Imam Abdu-Shahid stated that he “didn’t know (the contraband) was in his bag.” At his arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court the Iman’s lawyer, James McQueeny said that the utlility blades were, in fact, “injector blades from an injector razor.”  On the other hand, jail sources have stated that the blades were one and a half inches long and three quarters of an inch wide.

I almost forgot to mention, Imam Abdu-Shahid, then known as Paul Pitts, and three other men were convicted in 1979 of murder and robbery for the December 1976 holdup of a Harlem supermarket that left 30-year-old customer Philip Crawford dead from a bullet wound. Their trial was the longest in state Supreme Court history -- one year, three months and three days. Abdu-Shahid served 14 years of a 15-year-to-life prison term before being paroled in August 1993. A prior sex assault charge against him was dismissed before the murder case.

Imam Abdu-Shahid’s lawyer, James McQueeny, acknowledging his client’s previous legal troubles, stated in court that his client is now “completely reformed.”

It is also interesting to note that Iman Abdu-Shahid’s boss, Head Chaplain, Muslim Imam Umar Abdul-Jalil was employed by City Corrections and allowed access to the city correction facilities even though he also,served fourteen years in prison for flony drug charges. 

Last year, Imam Abdul-Jalil was stripped of two weeks vacation as punishment for signing off on a plan by another Tombs chaplain, Rabbi Leib Glanz, to allow a jailhouse bar mitzvah for the son of an inmate at the same facility Abu-Shahid was working at.  The sanctioned bar mitzvah party included catered food, a live band, and scores of noninmate guests, among them Head Chaplain Imam Abdul-Jalil.

Lest I forget,  kudos to the Correction Officer working the Front Gate post at the Manhattan Detention Complex who took the time to do his or her job right and discovered and confiscated the weapon contraband before it disappeared within the jail.

Suffice it to say that regardless of the outcome of the criminal case against Iman Abu-Shahid, I would think a top to bottom intensive review of all City Correction non-uniform hires is called for in order to ascertain the extent of access of Ministerial and other civilian and volunteer staff within correctional facilities who may have serious felony criminal histories.

But then again, what do I know?