A judge temporarily blocked the California attorney’s account. Gen. Rob Bonta sought to take over Los Angeles County’s troubled juvenile correctional facilities on Friday, finding that despite evidence of a “systemic failure” to improve poor conditions, Bonta had not met the legal basis needed to strip local control.
After years of scandal — including frequent drug overdoses and incidents of violence against juveniles by staff — Bonta filed a motion in July to place the county’s juvenile halls into “conservatorship,” meaning court-appointed monitors would run the facilities, set budgets and oversee the hiring and firing of staff. The ongoing staffing crisis previously led state watchdogs to deem two Los Angeles County auditoriums unfit to house children.
Los Angeles County reached a settlement with the California Department of Justice in 2021 requiring improvements, but an investigation by the watchdog and The Times earlier this year found that the probation department fell far short of addressing many of the issues required by the agreement.
On Friday, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Peter A. Hernandez reprimanded Bonta for failing to clearly spell out the probation department’s mandate in the 2021 settlement. Hernandez said the attorney general’s office documents failed to show that a state takeover would result in “rehabilitation of juvenile prisons.”
The steps the probation department needs to take to meet the terms of the settlement have been spelled out for years in court documents and reports issued by the Los Angeles County Inspector General’s Office. Hernandez was assigned to oversee the settlement only in recent months and spent much of Friday’s hearing complaining about a lack of “clarity” in the case.
Hernandez wrote that Bonta’s motion was a wake-up call for the probation department’s management of the hall.
“Going forward, the Court expects that all parties will maintain an ‘all-in’ mentality,” the judge wrote in a tentative ruling earlier this week that was adopted Friday morning.
Hernandez said he would not rule out a future conservatorship but wanted more direct testimony from all parties, including probation department chief Guillermo Viera Rosa and Michael Dempsey, the court-appointed settlement monitor. A hearing is scheduled for October 24.
The attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“The department remains fully committed to making the changes necessary to bring our youth institutions to the level they deserve,” Vicky Waters, chief spokesperson for the probation department, said in a statement. “However, to achieve this, we must have the authority and support to remove barriers to progress and not perpetuate no-win situations.”
The California Attorney General’s Office began investigating Los Angeles County juvenile correctional facilities in 2018 and found probation officers excessively used pepper spray, failed to provide appropriate education and treatment programs and kept youths in solitary confinement for too long.
Bonta said in July that the county failed to improve “75 percent” of the changes called for in the 2021 settlement.
A 2022 New York Times investigation revealed that severe staffing shortages resulted in serious injuries to juveniles and probation officers. By May 2023, the California Board of State and Community Corrections ordered the closure of the Barry J. Niedorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar due to unsafe conditions. That same month, an 18-year-old died of a drug overdose in custody.
The county quickly reopened Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey, but the facility quickly became the site of riots, jailbreaks and more drug overdoses. Last year, the California Attorney General’s Office won an indictment against 30 officials who planned or allowed teenagers to participate in “gladiator fights.” The investigation was prompted by a video of police allowing eight teenagers to beat another teenager inside Los Padrinos, which a state board also deemed unfit to house teenagers.
In court Friday, Laura Fair, an attorney with the attorney general’s office, said that while she understands Hernandez’s position, she is concerned about the dangers teens still face while in probation department custody.
She said: “Young people in the Hall remain at serious risk and continue to suffer irreparable harm every day.”
Fehr told the court that several teenagers transferred out of Los Padrinos under another court order showed up at Niedorff Youth Hall in recent weeks with broken jaws and arms.
She declined to comment further outside court. Waters, the probation department spokesperson, said she was not aware of the circumstances Fair described but would investigate.
Despite a string of fiascos over the past few years, probation leaders argued in court documents that Bonta went too far.
“The county remains willing to explore any path that will lead to better outcomes. But it strongly opposes the Department of Justice’s ill-conceived proposal, which will only harm the young people in the county’s care by sowing seeds of confusion and inconsistency,” county attorneys wrote in a motion in opposition filed last month. “The Justice Department’s request is almost unprecedented. No state judge in California history has ever placed a correctional institution into receivership.”
The county said that under Viera Rosa, who takes office in 2023, the probation department has made improvements to keep drugs out, corrected staffing issues and held its officers accountable for misconduct.
Robert Dugdale, an attorney representing the county, said the department has placed “airport-grade” body scanners and drug-sniffing dogs at the entrances of Niedov and Los Padrinos to stem the flow of drugs into the halls.
Dugdale also praised the department for hiring Robert Arcos, a former senior member of the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, to oversee security at the facility.
The motion claims it was the probation department that first discovered evidence that led to the gladiator brawl prosecution. Bonta said in March that his office launched the investigation after reviewing leaked footage of one of the incidents.
