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Tag: probation department

  • Judge pumps brakes on Bonta’s push to take over L.A. County juvenile halls

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    A judge temporarily blocked California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s attempt to take over Los Angeles County’s beleaguered juvenile halls on Friday, finding that despite evidence of a “systemic failure” to improve poor conditions, Bonta had not met the legal grounds necessary to strip away local control.

    After years of scandals — including frequent drug overdoses and incidents of staff violence against youths — Bonta filed a motion in July to place the county’s juvenile halls in “receivership,” meaning a court-appointed monitor would manage the facilities, set their budgets and oversee the hiring and firing of staff. An ongoing staffing crisis previously led a state oversight body to deem two of L.A. County’s halls unfit to house children.

    L.A. County entered into a settlement with the California Department of Justice in 2021 to mandate improvements, but oversight bodies and a Times investigation earlier this year found the Probation Department was falling far short of fixing many issues, as required by the agreement.

    On Friday, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Peter A. Hernandez chastised Bonta for failing to clearly lay out tasks for the Probation Department to abide by in the 2021 settlement. Hernandez said the attorney general’s office’s filings failed to show that a state takeover would lead to “a transformation of the juvenile halls.”

    The steps the Probation Department needs to take to meet the terms of the settlement have been articulated in court filings and reports published by the L.A. County Office of the Inspector General for several years. Hernandez was only assigned to oversee the settlement in recent months and spent much of Friday’s hearing complaining about a lack of “clarity” in the case.

    Hernandez wrote that Bonta’s motion had set off alarm bells about the Probation Department’s management of the halls.

    “Going forward, the court expects all parties to have an ‘all-hands’ mentality,” the judge wrote in a tentative ruling earlier this week, which he adopted Friday morning.

    Hernandez said he would not rule out the possibility of a receivership in the future, but wanted more direct testimony from parties, including Probation Department Chief Guillermo Viera Rosa and the court-appointed monitor over the settlement, Michael Dempsey. A hearing was set for Oct. 24.

    The attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    “The Department remains fully committed to making the necessary changes to bring our juvenile institutions to where they need to be,” Vicky Waters, the Probation Department’s chief spokesperson, said in a statement. “However, to achieve that goal, we must have both the authority and support to remove barriers that hinder progress rather than perpetuate no-win situations.”

    The California attorney general’s office began investigating L.A. County’s juvenile halls in 2018 and found probation officers were using pepper spray excessively, failing to provide proper educational and therapeutic programming and detaining youths in solitary confinement for far too long.

    Bonta said in July that the county has failed to improve “75%” of what they were mandated to change in the 2021 settlement.

    A 2022 Times investigation revealed a massive staffing shortage was leading to significant injuries for both youths and probation officers. By May of 2023, the California Board of State and Community Corrections ordered Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar shuttered due to unsafe conditions. That same month, an 18-year-old died of an overdose while in custody.

    The county soon reopened Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey, but the facility quickly became the site of a riot, an escape attempt and more drug overdoses. Last year, the California attorney general’s office won indictments against 30 officers who either orchestrated or allowed youths to engage in “gladiator fights.” That investigation was sparked by video of officers allowing eight youths to pummel another teen inside Los Padrinos, which has also been deemed unfit to house youths by a state commission.

    In court Friday, Laura Fair, an attorney from the attorney general’s office, said that while she understood Hernandez’s position, she expressed concern that teens are still in danger while in the Probation Department’s custody.

    “The youth in the halls continue to be in grave danger and continue to suffer irreparable harm every day,” she said.

    Fair told the court that several youths transferred out of Los Padrinos under a separate court order in recent weeks showed up at Nidorf Juvenile Hall with broken jaws and arms.

    She declined to comment further outside the courtroom. Waters, the Probation Department’s spokesperson, said she was unaware of the situation Fair was describing but would look into it.

    Despite the litany of fiascoes over the last few years, probation leaders still argued in court filings that Bonta had gone too far.

    “The County remains open to exploring any path that will lead to better outcomes. But it strongly opposes the DOJ’s ill-conceived proposal, which will only harm the youth in the County’s care by sowing chaos and inconsistency,” county lawyers wrote in an opposition motion submitted last month. “The DOJ’s request is almost literally without precedent. No state judge in California history has ever placed a correctional institution into receivership.”

    Under the leadership of Viera Rosa, who took office in 2023, the Probation Department has made improvements to its efforts to keep drugs out of the hall, rectify staffing issues and hold its own officers accountable for misconduct, the county argued.

    The department has placed “airport-grade” body scanners and drug-sniffing dogs at the entrances to both Nidorf and Los Padrinos in order to stymie the influx of narcotics into the halls, according to Robert Dugdale, an attorney representing the county.

    Dugdale also touted the department’s hiring of Robert Arcos, a former high-ranking member of the Los Angeles Police Department and L.A. County district attorney’s office, to oversee security in the facilities.

    The motion claimed it was the Probation Department that first uncovered the evidence that led to the gladiator fight prosecutions. Bonta said in March that his office launched its investigation after it reviewed leaked footage of one of the incidents.

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    James Queally

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  • Ex-probation chief’s suit alleges L.A. County fired him for being a whistleblower

    Ex-probation chief’s suit alleges L.A. County fired him for being a whistleblower

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    Former Los Angeles County Probation Department chief Adolfo Gonzales, who was fired last March amid widepread dysfunction at the agency’s juvenile halls, alleges in a lawsuit that he was ousted for reporting dire staffing shortages to state regulators.

    Gonzales’ two-year, one-month tenure was marked by near-constant controversies. But in a lawsuit filed last month, he argued that county supervisors decided to terminate him only after he was frank with inspectors from the Board of State and Community Corrections about the agency’s staffing crisis.

    The board, referred to as the BSCC, has the power to shut down juvenile detention facilities if inspections reveal that conditions aren’t up to state standards.

    “Gonzales candidly reported to the BSCC inspectors the staffing shortages in Probation Department which caused lack of compliance with various California State regulations and mandates,” the lawsuit says. “As a result of Gonzales’ reports to BSCC, he was terminated by the County.”

    The state board declined to comment. Mira Hashmall, outside counsel for L.A. County, called the lawsuit baseless.

    “The Probation Department suffered from a lack of leadership under Adolfo Gonzales, which is why his employment was terminated,” she wrote in a statement to The Times. “He is no whistleblower.”

    Under Gonzales’ leadership, the perennially struggling agency careened from one problem to the next. There were more lockdowns, more fights and fewer staff members to deal with them. Deputies said they were too scared of the violence inside the juvenile halls to come to work. Youths were traumatized too, forced to urinate in their locked rooms because no one was around to let them out.

    Gonzales’ attorney, Michael Conger, said his client’s account of staffing issues heavily influenced a Jan. 13, 2023, report from state inspectors, which found, among other shortcomings, that the county’s two juvenile halls were dangerously short-staffed. Months later, the board would shut down the two halls after the county repeatedly failed to improve conditions.

    Conger said it was Gonzales’ “candid” portrayal of staffing problems that led to his termination two months later.

    The state inspection was not the only embarrassment Gonzales’ agency suffered in the months leading up to his firing, however. On Feb. 11, 2023, The Times reported that Gonzales overrode an internal disciplinary board’s recommendation to fire an officer who had violently restrained a 17-year-old. After The Times’ report, a majority of the Board of Supervisors called for Gonzales’ resignation.

    Gonzales’ attorney said this was not what earned the board’s ire.

    “We don’t believe that had anything to do with it,” he said. “That was a complete non-issue. They were not mad at that.”

    Records show the county spent more than $900,000 on Gonzales during his stint with the department.

    By the time he left, Gonzales had received $927,000 in compensation, according to county salary data. It’s unclear if that figure includes other perks Gonzales was entitled to under his employment agreement with the county, which promised relocation costs and severance pay.

    According to his employment agreement, reviewed by The Times, Gonzales was entitled to up to $25,000 to relocate from San Diego, where he worked for five years running the county’s Probation Department.

    Records show he also received $172,521 — equivalent to six months’ salary — as severance pay after he was fired.

    The board replaced Gonzales with Guillermo Viera Rosa, promising a new chapter for the long-troubled agency. But so far, his tenure has been plagued by the same staffing crisis that haunted his predecessor.

    A report released Thursday from the county’s Office of Inspector General found that “dangerously low staffing levels” had contributed to the chaotic Nov. 4 escape of a youth from Los Padrinos juvenile hall. After several teens attacked a staff member, one briefly escaped to a neighboring golf course.

    At the time of the incident, only one staff member — who had never before been assigned to juvenile halls — had been in the unit with 14 youths, the report’s authors found. The report notes the staffing level violates state law, which requires the agency maintain a ratio of one staff member for 10 youths.

    That day, the Probation Department had scheduled 100 staff members to work at the facility — the minimum required in order to operate.

    Sixty of them didn’t show up.

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    Rebecca Ellis

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