Brooklyn Jail Guard Convicted for Shooting and Car Chase
by Jo Ellen Nott
The New York Times reported that Leon Wilson, 51, a veteran guard at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, was convicted on October 28, 2025, in the borough’s Federal District Court for a vigilante pursuit and shooting. Wilson, 51, was found guilty of depriving a victim’s rights and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence. The charges stemmed from a September 2023 incident in which Wilson abandoned his post on the late shift to chase a car smuggling cigarettes, marijuana, and phones into the MDC.
Wilson, as a justification for pursuing the individuals, claimed to have been sick of seeing contraband being smuggled into the jail. During the chase, he weaved through traffic and sped past a red light before getting behind the car at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. Wilson proceeded to fire three gunshot rounds, with one striking backseat passenger Eric Encarnacion, lodging a bullet in his chest. Wilson was arrested about four weeks after the shooting.
In court, prosecutors successfully argued Wilson acted as “judge, jury and executioner,” by ignoring his limited jurisdiction, as he was not authorized to make arrests and his authority ended at the jail’s perimeter. Wilson now faces a mandatory minimum 10-year prison sentence. “He thought the people in that car were unworthy of the Constitution’s protections,” a prosecutor said during closing arguments.
Despite Wilson’s fury at the people he viewed as smugglers, detainees and outside actors are typically not the primary source of contraband entering many jails. While national data is hard to come by, a 2018 study by the Prison Policy Initiative that reviewed arrest records for that year concluded that “almost all contraband introduced to any local jail comes through staff.” And that pattern likely holds true for the notoriously troubled MDC; in the last five years, at least seven staff members have been charged with crimes such as accepting bribes and smuggling cellphones and drugs. [See: PLN, March 2025, p. 34.]
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