Brooks moved to Nassau jail for tighter security

David Brooks was transferred Thursday from a Jamaica jail to an isolation cell in the Nassau County jail for security reasons, according to several sources.

The transfer from the Queens facility, where the chief of the former Westbury body armor company DHB Industries could mix with other white-collar federal detainees, to the high-security section of the Nassau jail in East Meadow was done by order of the U.S. Marshals Service, the sources said.

The marshals, who guard federal prisoners, have increasingly had to deal with alleged violations of detention and courtroom procedures by Brooks, and, possibly, some members of his defense team, according to the sources.

Federal prosecutors, the FBI and a federal grand jury in Central Islip are investigating whether Brooks tampered with the ongoing deliberations of the jury there in his multimillion-dollar fraud case. The probe began after handwriting on legal documents given to Brooks on Monday by one of his paralegals indicated he might have inside information on the jury's activities.

Tim Hogan, chief deputy U.S. marshal for the Eastern District, said last night he could not comment because of security policies but said Brooks "is not where he was." Brooks' lead defense lawyer, Kenneth Ravenell, declined to comment, as did Robert Nardoza, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District.

In the Nassau jail even Brooks' lawyers will no longer be allowed contact visits with him, the sources said. That means that while they can visit and confer with Brooks, they cannot directly hand him anything, even legal papers, the sources said. The papers must first be checked by guards to see if they conceal any impermissible objects or materials, the sources said.