Correction officer pleads guilty to smuggling crack and weed into Manhattan jail

A veteran correction officer has been sentenced to six years in prison for smuggling drugs and other contraband into the Manhattan Detention Center.
 Patricia Howard took a plea deal after she was accused of sneaking crack cocaine, pills and pot into the city jail known as The Tombs.
Howard, 44, copped to attempted sale of a controlled substance and promoting prison contraband in exchange for the six-year sentence.
Assistant Manhattan DA Renee Jarusinsky said Howard and her co-defendants “conspired to smuggle dangerous contraband” into the jail.
Jarusinsky said the time Howard was caught represented "only a portion of the times she had smuggled contraband" into the facility "where her very job was to remove any contraband found in packages."
She said Howard had been bringing illegal items in “for months if not years.”
Investigators said Howard was at the center of a distribution ring involving an inmate and his relatives, all of whom worked to bring pot, cocaine, iPhones, lighters, pliers and oxycodone into the Lower Manhattan jail between December 2014 and May 2015.