L.A. County to deploy reserve deputies in juvenile facilities
Los Angeles County leaders plan to reopen a shuttered juvenile hall and deploy reserve sheriff officers to work in the facilities as they scramble to fix a staffing crisis that has state regulators threatening to close down the county’s two remaining juvenile halls.
The steps are among more than a dozen changes to the Probation Department that Los Angeles County supervisors unanimously approved Tuesday as part of a plan to fix a juvenile justice system in crisis and stave off state intervention.
Under the plan, the county would reopen Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall, which was shut down in 2019 amid a dwindling population and accusations of abuse by staff. Roughly $28 million would be put into upgrading Los Padrinos as well as Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar and Central Juvenile Hall in Boyle Heights. And the Sheriff’s Department would send in reserve officers — volunteer members of the department — to staff the long-troubled juvenile halls.
The vote on the plan came less than a day after interim Probation Chief Karen Fletcher resigned following a brief two-month stint leading the department.
L.A. County has hired 11 law firms to deal with as many as 3,000 plaintiffs who allege that they were sexually abused at county facilities.
Fletcher told The Times she was ready to retire after more than three decades working in probation. She said she submitted her resignation Monday evening and her last day is May 19.
“After nearly 34 years working in the probation field, it is time to retire and embark on the next chapter of my life,” she wrote in a departing memo to staff.
Fletcher became interim director in March after the board fired then-probation chief Adolfo Gonzales. Her abrupt resignation means the county is now simultaneously on the hunt for a permanent director as well as an interim one. Board Chair Janice Hahn said Tuesday the board would meet in closed session to discuss finding a replacement for Fletcher’s post.
Over Fletcher’s brief time at the helm, scrutiny by the state over the county’s juvenile halls only intensified. The California Department of Justice accused the county of flouting the terms of a 2021 settlement around fixing the dire conditions at the juvenile halls. The county and the DOJ are expected to appear in court on May 9.
And the California Board of State and Community Corrections threatened to shut down the halls after repeatedly finding them out of compliance with a long list of state regulations. The board has scheduled a meeting for May 23 to decide whether Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall and Central Juvenile Hall should be vacated.
County leaders hope the plan voted on Tuesday will appease state regulators and prosecutors. But it drew outrage from youth advocates, who accused the county of betraying the promise they made to move away from jails and recklessly moving staff from one chronically dysfunctional department into a different one.
“If we even take a moment to look at Men’s Central Jail and what’s happened there at the hands of the sheriff — to think that that same body would somehow do right by our young people feels wildly shortsighted,” said Milinda Kakani, director of youth justice at Children’s Defense Fund.
Brooke Harris, head of the Pacific Juvenile Defender Center, called the deployment of sheriff’s officers “extraordinarily troubling,”
After warning a shutdown was imminent, the state oversight board will now give L.A. County more time to fix the troubled facilities.
“To allow reserve sheriffs who don’t have the requisite training or experience working with vulnerable youth populations is at best a massive miscalculation, and at worst a recipe for unthinkable outcomes,” she said. “Young people in L.A.’s juvenile facilities have been abused and neglected for long enough.”
The Sheriff’s Department said in a statement that it would work with the Probation Department to “determine how all of our County partner agencies can assist them.”
The plan was given little fanfare by the Board of Supervisors. It was made public Friday night as part of the county’s supplemental agenda — a second iteration of the agenda for proposals that came together later in the week. And it was voted on Tuesday as part of the consent calendar — in which a package of motions is voted on at once without comment.
Chief Executive Fesia Davenport wrote in a board letter that the plan was intended to “ensure optimal and constitutional levels of care for probation youth” and would not “increase probation’s footprint.” She wrote the sheriff’s reserve officers would receive training that gave them the “skills needed to work with probation youth.”
The proposal would also reshuffle the youth currently split between Barry J. Nidorf and Central Juvenile Hall. The roughly 275 predisposition youth in the county’s custody would be moved to Los Padrinos. Barry J. Nidorf would now exclusively house juveniles charged with serious felonies, including murder and sexual assault. And Central would be used partially as an intake unit for law enforcement and a medical hub for youth in the county’s probation halls and camps.
It’s not clear when the changes outlined in the plan will be implemented. A county spokesperson said a “timeline is being developed.”
The letter notes state regulators need to conduct a “pre-inspection” of Los Padrinos before the county can begin transferring youths into the facility.
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