Overdoses, brawls and court battles: Will state take over chaotic L.A. juvenile halls?

Los Angeles Times

01-05-2025

It should have been a normal day at school, or as normal as a classroom setting is in juvenile detention.
But lessons at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall were interrupted on a Friday in early April when three teenagers suffered what county officials later confirmed were drug overdoses. One collapsed in front of his classmates and two others passed out in their rooms, according to multiple sources who requested anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation.
The L.A. County Probation Department, which oversees Los Padrinos, said three youths were hospitalized on April 10 because of overdoses from an unspecified drug. The day before, the sources familiar with the investigation said, probation officers found a large quantity of Xanax inside the Downey facility, where most of the approximately 270 detainees are 18 or younger.
The emergency was the latest in a years-long series of fiascoes within L.A. County's juvenile halls — all of which have unfolded under the watchful eye of the California attorney general's office.
Four years after the state's Department of Justice entered into a settlement to improve conditions in L.A. County's juvenile halls, frustrations are hitting a boiling point. The Probation Department has shown no signs of progress, prompting calls for Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta to intervene.
Bonta declined an interview request, but said in a written statement to The Times that the Probation Department is headed toward the 'end of the line.'
Bonta said he is preparing 'to take steps' to ask a court to place the Probation Department in receivership, essentially wrestling away control of the agency from the leaders who have failed to implement reforms.
'The current situation at Los Angeles County juvenile halls — and particularly at Los Padrinos — is unacceptable,' Bonta said. 'Los Angeles County continues to fail to implement the court-ordered reforms necessary to protect the health, safety, and well-being of the kids under their care.'
Already shut down once, Los Padrinos was reopened in July 2023 after the state forced the closure of two other dysfunctional facilities, leaving the county with few alternatives to house young people with pending criminal cases. Barry J. Nidorf Hall in Sylmar is home to the county's Secure Youth Treatment Facility but otherwise remains under a state shutdown order, and the county also operates a number of lower-security juvenile camps.
Recent years have seen a riot at Los Padrinos, a fatal fentanyl overdose at Nidorf, and continued reports of abuse and excessive force across the system. Probation officers now refuse to come to work, citing chaotic and dangerous conditions. Last month, 30 officers were indicted for arranging what Bonta termed 'gladiator fights' between youths at Los Padrinos.
Bonta's critics say he has ample cause to take further action. The L.A. County inspector general's office has published six reports showing the Probation Department is failing to meet the terms of the state oversight agreement, including instances in which officers and officials were caught lying about violent incidents in the halls.
'When we issued our first report that said zero percent compliance, I hoped that the next report would show an effort to change. It didn't. I don't expect this entity to change outside meaningful outside force,' said Inspector General Max Huntsman. 'If Bonta doesn't, then who can? Who will?'
The California Board of State and Community Corrections ordered Los Padrinos shut down in December, but Probation Department Chief Guillermo Viera Rosa refused to comply, a move supported by the county Board of Supervisors.
Despite pressure on Bonta to step in and take legal action to close the hall, Los Padrinos continued operating in violation of state rules until April 18, when a judge ordered the Probation Department to begin depopulating Los Padrinos based on a legal challenge from the L.A. County public defender's office.
If or when Los Padrinos will once again sit vacant — and what will happen to the kids held there — remains uncertain.
A Probation Department spokeswoman, Vicky Waters, said a 25-person team is focused on achieving compliance with the state settlement.
Asked about Bonta's suggestion of a potential state takeover, Waters said the agency welcomes 'continued dialogue with the attorney general and his office, the monitor, our stakeholders and the public to ensure that this process leads to meaningful transformation.'
Those who spend time in L.A.'s juvenile halls welcomed the possibility of Bonta stepping up — but also questioned why it took so long.
'There's certainly been no evidence in the history of the entire L.A. County Probation Department that they are going to fix themselves,' said veteran defense attorney Jerod Gunsberg.
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 programming, and detaining youths in solitary confinement in their rooms for far too long.
In 2019, Los Padrinos was shut down for the first time, because of a dwindling population of juveniles jailed in L.A. County and a scandal that ended with six officers charged with child abuse for the way they used chemical spray. All were later acquitted.
In 2021, the state and county reached an agreement aimed at drastically improving conditions.
But force incidents in the halls were still up about 6% as of June 2024, according to a Times analysis of data contained in inspector general's office reports. The number of grievances filed by youths about conditions in the halls doubled from 2021 to 2024, according to Probation Department records.
The department was supposed to capture 90% of all force incidents in the halls on camera, but the inspector general found that mark was repeatedly missed. Some watchdog reports said officers delayed paperwork for months — and in some instances were caught lying about their justification for using violence.
One probation officer claimed they had to use pepper spray — which both the state and Board of Supervisors have tried to ban — to subdue a youth who was attacking them. Video, however, showed the boy turning away from an officer, fists unclenched, when he was sprayed in the face.
The county's inspector general cited the Los Padrinos 'gladiator fights' that were caught on security footage as another example of brazen misconduct in the face of state oversight.
'The things that they will do in full view of cameras is particularly disturbing,' Huntsman said.
Michael Dempsey, the court-appointed monitor enforcing the settlement, said he could not comment, citing a confidentiality agreement.
In his first public report released earlier last month, Dempsey raised concerns that the department's improvements have been 'slow and inconsistent,' and said conditions are worsening.
He wrote that staffing issues continue to be a core problem, with the department 'backfilling' juvenile hall jobs with adult probation officers who usually interact with violent adult felons on the streets and do not want to work with kids. The department also continues to fail to give youths access to proper programming, education or services, which Dempsey wrote leaves kids idle, bored and frustrated.
'The facilities have become much more dangerous for staff and the youth,' Dempsey wrote in his April report. 'The Monitor's review of the data provides evidence that both facilities are experiencing high rates of incidents of violence, use of force, major disturbances, and the use of illicit drugs.'
Sean Garcia-Leys, a former member of the county's probation oversight commission, said on one visit last year he found kids pacing around listless with nothing to do. He recalled one group with a football, not playing catch but hurling it as hard as possible at each other. On another visit, he said he found air conditioners broken in the summer heat and shower drains backed up with foul odors emitting from the floor.
Garcia-Leys believes the conditions are affecting youths' mental health and making them more likely to engage in violence.
'You see these same kids in different environments, and they don't attack staff. Like, literally the same kids,' he said.
Huntsman, the inspector general, said there are plenty of additional steps Bonta could take after four years of noncompliance, including trying to have county officials held in contempt of court.
'Like every other political person, he's counting the votes, and takes action based on votes,' Huntsman said of Bonta, who is up for reelection next year.
Bonta says he has not stood entirely on the sidelines. In addition to filing criminal charges in the gladiator fights case, the attorney general's office noted it has filed several motions with the judge overseeing the settlement trying to cajole reform.
But none of those filings have levied penalties on the county or probation leaders, records show. And without a top-down overhaul, Probation Department critics fear nothing will change.
One probation official — who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal — said they repeatedly raised alarms that youths were not receiving the proper amount of schooling in the halls.
'I made sure to report everything up the chain and every time I did, nothing happened within the department. Nothing happened externally either,' the official said. 'The attorney general? Never did anything.'
Viera Rosa, the probation chief, declined an interview request.
Records obtained by The Times show he has taken steps to limit contacts between his staff and state officials. When he took office in 2023, a departmentwide email ordered staff to stop contacting the attorney general's office directly over the settlement.
While some in the office took the message as an attempt to stifle negative reports to oversight officials, Waters, the department spokeswoman, said the email was simply meant to 'centralize communications' with the California Department of Justice.
In the five months since the state found Los Padrinos 'unsuitable' to house youth, the facility has continued to be the sight of disturbing incidents.
In addition to the recent spate of overdoses, a teen was stabbed during class at Los Padrinos in March. Multiple sources told The Times the youth was stabbed in the eye; Waters said only that the teen suffered 'non-life-threatening injuries.'
According to a March court filing, a 19-year-old held at Los Padrinos claimed he was sexually abused by a Department of Mental Health employee during multiple counseling sessions over the past year. Both the Probation Department and DMH declined to comment.
The teen's lawyer described the encounters in a notice of claim, which is a precursor to a lawsuit, as 'consensual,' but incarcerated people cannot legally consent to sex with government employees or guards.
The Probation Department says three-quarters of teens housed at Los Padrinos were arrested for violent crimes. Advocates have called on the department to move youths to camps or place them in community-based 'step down' programs, akin to halfway houses.
Despite constantly criticizing the Probation Department's handling of the halls, all five members of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors supported Viera Rosa's refusal to close Los Padrinos last year. In statements to The Times, each of the board's members defended that decision, saying it was the best of bad options.
'It is clear to me that just moving these young people to another facility in L.A. County would not solve the long-standing issues and will only create more problems,' Supervisor Janice Hahn said in a statement. 'The possibility that these kids might be transferred outside of the county would be hugely disruptive and would force their families to travel across the state or across the country to visit them.'
Another hearing on the judge's order to empty out Los Padrinos is set for mid-May.
That order was the result of a legal challenge filed by L.A. County Public Defender Ricardo Garcia, who said Bonta's oversight of the settlement has been 'insufficient' and described the continued housing of youth at Los Padrinos as 'grossly negligent.'
'If you or I or anybody treated their child in that way, that child would be taken away and placed somewhere safe,' he said.