Move comes after claims of excessive force, sexual abuse, drug possession and endangerment of imprisoned youth by officers
The Los Angeles county probation department has placed more than 60 officers on leave for misconduct in an escalating scandal surrounding claims of excessive force, sexual abuse and endangerment of imprisoned youth.
The probation department, which runs the juvenile halls that have been plagued by claims of physical and sexual abuse for years, announced Monday that 66 officers have been put on “administrative leave” since January for a wide range of offenses.
Thirty-nine of the officers were accused of “general misconduct”, the department said, including excessive force, child abuse or endangerment, possession of contraband and negligent supervision. Eighteen were put on leave for “suspected sexual misconduct”, and nine officers were removed after they were arrested for offenses unrelated to their employment.
Some of the officers put on leave from the nation’s largest probation agency also worked in the department’s adult division, which oversees people released on probation.
The announcement follows a long-running campaign by youth advocates to permanently shutter the Los Padrinos juvenile hall due to extensively documented abuse cases and the failure of reform efforts to prevent the violence.
In April, the Los Angeles Times obtained footage from inside the youth jail revealing that officers stood by as six youths assaulted a 17-year-old, some of the officers appearing to laugh and shake hands with those who were beating the victim. The 17-year-old suffered a broken nose, but was not taken for medical treatment for several days, the teenager’s lawyer said at the time.
After California passed a law lifting the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse cases, hundreds of formerly incarcerated youth have also filed claims alleging they were assaulted by LA probation officers behind bars from the 1970s to more recent years. One woman who recently spoke out for the first time about being abused in the 1990s in LA juvenile hall told the Guardian that she felt she couldn’t report it at the time and that she is still grappling with the trauma decades later.
There have further been growing concerns about the frequent use of pepper spray against youth. Staff have also been accused of bringing drugs into the facility, and a youth died of an overdose behind bars last year.
“While we recognize that 66 officers is an incredibly high and alarming number of staff put on leave, this is an issue that has been going on for decades and is an institutional problem,” said Emilio Zapién, with the Youth Justice Coalition, an advocacy group that has called for the closure of the youth jail and for the county board of supervisors to declare a state of emergency so incarcerated youth can be rapidly released: “Young people’s lives are at stake.”
Despite promises from LA officials to divert youth out of the jails and reinvest probation funds into services, Zapién said: “Young people are still being shuffled from facility to facility facing horrid conditions.”
In February, the LA Times editorial board called for the closure of Los Padrinos, writing: “Not only is it failing to rehabilitate juveniles in trouble (which is its only reason for being), it is actively harming them.”
The probation department said it was disclosing the leaves to “regain public trust”. “We are releasing this information in the spirit of greater transparency and to assure our stakeholders – especially the families of youths in our juvenile facilities – that we will not tolerate anything that impedes our mission to provide a safe, nurturing and structured environment for those entrusted to our care,” department chief, Guillermo Viera Rosa, said in a statement.
