By Jason Henry
Los Angeles Daily News
DOWNEY, Calif. — Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall failed to meet legally required staffing minimums for nearly 20% of its shifts in July despite the county’s controversial efforts to boost its numbers by involuntarily reassigning more than 100 field officers to the juvenile facility.
State regulators warned the county that Los Padrinos did not reach a mandated ratio of one officer per 10 youth for 15 of 87 shifts in July, according to a notice sent by the Board of State and Community Corrections, the regulatory body overseeing California’s jails and juvenile halls. The short staffing has led to youth being held in their rooms for longer than allowed, late arrivals to school and missed medical appointments, inspectors said.
The notice starts a months-long review process that could result in the closure of the facility if the numbers do not improve.
“The continued lack of staffing continues to impact delivery of required services and compliance with additional regulations,” Lisa Southwell, a field representative with the BSCC, told the Los Angeles County Probation Department in the notice.
Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall, based in Downey, houses more than 300 juveniles, most of whom are considered “predisposition,” meaning they are still awaiting their day in court and have yet to be sentenced.
Adequate staffing required by law
Under state law, juvenile halls are required to “have an adequate number of personnel sufficient to carry out the overall facility operation” and to “ensure that no required services shall be denied because of insufficient numbers of staff on duty absent exigent circumstances.”
Last year, the BSCC closed two of Los Angeles County’s juvenile halls — Central and Barry J. Nidorf — after years of inadequate staffing had led to such poor conditions that the facilities were declared “unsuitable” for the confinement of youth. Los Padrinos, pitched as a way for the county to operate more efficiently by consolidating to a single juvenile hall, was rapidly reopened in response.
But the same problems persisted at the new location. It took less than a month before the BSCC flagged Los Padrinos’ staffing as out of compliance the first time.
At one low point in November, only 40 out of the 100 staff members scheduled to work showed up for their shift. A group of teenagers took advantage of the understaffing and staged an escape attempt, during which one youth managed to scale a wall and reach a waiting car before he was apprehended.
In March, the Los Angeles County Probation Department, ahead of a vote by the BSCC deciding Los Padrinos’ fate, implemented a drastic mandate ordering hundreds of field officers who typically work on traditional adult probation cases to instead deploy to Los Padrinos. The gambit seemingly worked and the BSCC opted to keep Los Padrinos open. However, board members at the time warned that Los Angeles County would not receive any leniency if Los Padrinos fell out of compliance again.
The turnaround was short-lived. By June, half of the 541 employees at Los Padrinos were on leave and dozens were still calling out every day, according to figures provided to the Los Angeles County Probation Oversight Commission. The constant call-outs have been attributed to safety concerns and are compounded by worries that the employees will be held over for additional shifts when others don’t show up.
The Probation Department declined to answer questions about Los Padrinos’ staffing or to provide updated numbers.
Redeployment creates friction
The first group of redeployed officers began rotating back to the field offices in late May and the department reportedly struggled to fill the second group. The redeployment mandate has created friction between probation’s leadership and its rank-and-file.
Officers who worked in the field offices, but could not work in the juvenile halls for medical reasons, were sent home and told they couldn’t come back until they meet new, stricter requirements. Some of the officers with medical restrictions have launched a class-action lawsuit alleging the department is discriminating against them.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles County Deputy Probation Officers’ Union has filed an unfair labor practices claim against the county demanding the employees be returned to their original offices. That case, previously set to be heard at Employee Relations Commission’s Aug. 26 meeting, was postponed to its next meeting.
“I just don’t understand how they can be out of compliance when they’re pulling the field deputies into the halls,” said Stacy Ford, president of the probation officers’ union, Local 685. “It’s just bad management.”
Ford said he did not know why the department is unable to meet the required staffing ratios. Hundreds of field officers were sent home and are now burning sick and vacation time, he said, describing it as robbing Peter to pay Paul.
‘Abusive’ relationship
Ford, in a letter to Probation Chief Guillermo Viera Rosa published in the union’s newsletter, characterized the relationship between employees and the administration as “abusive.” Officers are retiring and quitting over how they are treated, both by the department’s leadership and by youth, he said.
The letter asks the chief to “stop forcing us to work unwanted overtime with 20- and 30-hour shifts” and to stop blaming officers for the conditions at Los Padrinos.
“Chief, some of us cannot deal with these young people in the mental state we are in,” Ford wrote. “Some of us are not healthy enough to be attacked by these young adults. Some of us have injuries that are healing and some of us have illnesses that we are dealing with. We are capable of doing our jobs where we are, but to move us to do something totally different does not benefit the department, the clients, or the employee.”
The same newsletter acknowledged an ongoing problem with “no call, no show” employees.
“When we don’t follow the call-out procedures, it affects everyone — the young people we serve, programming, and our sisters and brothers,” Ford stated. “Not calling out causes holdovers, late relief, no relief, illness, fatigue, stress on other employees and so on.”
Recovering from a ‘deep hole’
The fact that Los Padrinos is once again out of compliance for staffing did not come as a surprise to others. Eduardo Mundo, the chair of the Probation Oversight Commission and a former probation officer, said it is clear the department is still struggling.
“By the time this team got on board, it was really trying to recover from a deep hole,” Mundo said.
The officers calling out frequently “created a hostile environment and aren’t there to clean it up,” he said. Meanwhile, the older generation in the department, whose careers have led them out of the juvenile halls, are faced with either deploying to a volatile environment, being sent home or leaving the department, he said.
“It’s really intense in there,” Mundo said of Los Padrinos. “Whenever I go in there, it is palpable, you can really feel the uneasiness of it.”
Reducing youths in custody
The department is making progress behind the scenes to try to reduce Los Padrinos’ population of roughly 300 youth, but more time is needed, Mundo said.
The hope is that cutting down the number of youth inside Los Padrinos will allow the facility to run more efficiently with less staff. The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office is embedding a deputy district attorney with the Probation Department’s intake division to assist with evaluating cases.
A recent opinion by county counsel classified house arrest as “detention,” making it easier for the Probation Department to send youth home with an ankle monitor rather than placing them in Los Padrinos until their cases can be heard, Mundo said.
The constant turnover at Los Padrinos contributes to the volatility, he said. A youth who is there for only a few days is more likely to clash with others, including rival gang members, he said.
“If we can cut 40 to 50 of the 200 youth that are cycling in, eventually we’re going to reduce the population to about 200 and that will make it easier to get compliance,” he said.
Others are less optimistic. Los Angeles County has repeatedly fallen in and out of compliance for at least past three years. When the BSCC voted in April to allow Los Padrinos to stay open, advocates warned the fixes would be temporary at best.
“We’ve all been saying from the beginning they’d be back here in a couple months,” said Aditi Sherikar , a senior policy advocate for the Children’s Defense Fund California. “This is a very predictable outcome and, unfortunately, it is the youth inside that suffer the consequence of it. Not L.A. County. Not Probation. Not the BSCC.”
‘Can’t pay people to be there’
Sherikar said the conditions are so bad that “they can’t pay people to be there.”
“Forget a permanent fix, they can’t even get a temporary fix right,” she said. “If this just a one-off problem, we wouldn’t be in this cycle every few months.”
The solution, she said, is for the BSCC to follow through with its threats at the board’s April meeting to declare Los Padrinos “unsuitable” and to force the county to “find a safer way to care for the youth in its custody.” The BSCC’s process has faced criticism because the clock is reset whenever a facility is found to be back in compliance, no matter how brief.
In April, BSCC Chair Linda Penner, the former chief probation officer for Fresno County, stressed that the last-minute reprieve for Los Padrinos was not “mission accomplished” and that the board would hold Los Angeles County accountable if it failed again.
“We need continued compliance,” she said.
Only six of the 13 board members voted to allow Los Padrinos to stay open. Three opposed it, saying they did not believe Los Angeles County could maintain the improvements. The other four abstained or recused themselves. BSCC’s attorney told the board members at the time that he believed the panel could quickly declare Los Padrinos “unsuitable” through a truncated review process if it fell out of compliance again, rather than having to wait for the entire process to play out, which can take up to seven months from start to finish.
Los Padrinos has been found out of compliance with state regulations twice since April, but the BSCC does not meet again until Oct. 3 and has not indicated whether it will take up the lack of continued compliance at that time.
Currently, Los Angeles County is not required to submit a plan detailing how it will address the staffing shortage until Oct. 11, according to the BSCC’s notice.
—
©2024 MediaNews Group, Inc.
Visit dailynews.com.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.