Two of Los Angeles County’s juvenile facilities were recently allowed to continue operating in part because they beefed up staffing.
But the union representing hundreds of deputy probation officers tells the NBC4 I-Team the way the department has increased personnel is having a negative effect on local communities.
“When you take that DPO2 from the field into the juvenile halls, you are now taking them away from their clients,” Stacy Ford, the President of AFSCME Local 865, said.
Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey continues housing nearly 300 young people after the Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC) that found it “unsuitable” in February, saying the LA County Probation Department had remedied several items related to staffing in recent weeks. The same decision was handed down to the Barry J. Nidorf Secured Youth Treatment Facility (SYTF).
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Part of the department’s short-term plan has been to move probation officers from field offices to juvenile facilities.
Ford says these transferred officers, who handle the cases of minors and adults after they have served time, are now not able to do so.
“If the client is not able to meet with his or her probation officer and providing the services that we are providing for them, that means the community is unsafe,” Ford said.
Services, he says, like drug and mental health counseling.
“Because those people are not getting the services that they need and by not getting the services that they need they tend to go back into the life of crime and when i say the community is unsafe that's what I mean,” he added.
Following recent inspections, the BSCC reversed their “unsuitability” finding for Los Padrinos and Barry J. Nidorf earlier this month.
The Department spoke about their short-term staffing moves at this Probation Oversight Commission town hall in late March.
"Staff reassigned from the field have prior experience as detention services officers. or they have completed a required 59 hours STC approved probation officers to detention officers training,” Kimberly Epps, the chief deputy of the LA County Probation Department, said at the meeting.
The Department also discussed long-term solutions, like job hiring campaigns, with some focused on recent military veterans and a new contract with a consulting firm.
In response to the concerns from the union, the Probation Department shared this statement with the NBC4 I-Team:
"Because staffing is a challenge, we continually monitor and assess our caseloads so that we can redeploy personnel as needed, including the recent decision to move a number of our officers from juvenile field to adult field assignments."
The BSCC tells the NBC4 I-Team it will continue to make unannounced inspections at the juvenile facilities, on at least a monthly basis, to make sure they remain in compliance.
