California’s attorney general on Monday announced the unsealing of an indictment charging 30 detention officers assigned to a Los Angeles-area juvenile hall with child abuse for allegedly allowing and sometimes encouraging so-called gladiator fights among youths.
At the heart of the grand jury indictment is the allegation that officers stood by as children and teenagers at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall engaged in the fights, the attorney general’s office said in a statement. The detention center is in Downey, about 13 miles south of downtown Los Angeles.
The office of Attorney General Rob Bonta said there were at least 69 fights in the second half of 2023, with 143 children and teens between 12 and 18 years old involved. Some fights, Bonta’s office said, resulted in physical injury.
Officers, Bonta said in the statement, were allegedly “overseeing ‘gladiator fights’ when they should have intervened.”
The defendants took advantage of the vulnerability of the victims and their own position of trust, his office said.
“Let today’s charges be a warning for all those who abuse their power,” Bonta said. “The California Department of Justice is watching, and we will hold you accountable.”
The fights came to the attention of the attorney general and state investigators after video of one of the altercations was “leaked” in January 2024, Bonta’s office said. Speaking to news media by video, he described the violence.
“The footage, which was later circulated widely by the media and on social media, shows one youth in the detention center being attacked by a series of other youth who come at him one by one as detention officers stand by watching,” Bonta said in video aired Monday by NBC affiliate KCRA of Sacramento. “The officers look more like referees or audience members at a prize fight, not adults charged with the care and supervision of young people.”
Stacy Ford, president of the L.A. County Deputy Probation Officers Union, AFSCME Local 685, which represents the 30 officers in labor negotiations, said in a statement that the organization “will do everything in our power” to support the officers.
“Every American is innocent until proven guilty,” Ford said. “Our members are entitled to this same presumption of innocence and deserve to be treated with fairness and due process, just as they provide to those in their custody.”
He said juvenile detention officers are tasked with keeping peace and order among children and teens often accused of violent crimes.
“Despite these challenges, our professional peace officers remain committed to maintaining the highest level of professionalism,” he said. “We will continue to advocate for the safety, rights, and integrity of our members.”
According to the indictment, each of the 30 officers is charged with felony child abuse under a California law aimed at those who enable child endangerment, with those convicted of the charge facing two to six years in state prison.
One of the 30 faces an additional count of misdemeanor battery for allegedly using force and violence against an unnamed subject, according to the document.
Three of the defendants were charged with conspiracy to commit a crime, according to the indictment. It alleges two of them allowed some of the fights, knew beforehand when and where they would happen, and told new detention officers to watch but not report the bouts.
Prosecutors alleged the third joined the other two in allowing some of the fights, one of the which resulted in a broken nose for an unnamed victim.
One of the three told new officers that nine fights on Dec. 22, 2023, in a unit of the juvenile facility, were an example of how the detention employees controlled the children in their care, according to the indictment.
Twenty-two of the defendants were arraigned Monday. The rest will be arraigned April 18, the attorney general’s office said.
All the defendants have been placed on unpaid leave, the county’s probation department said in a statement. In April 2024, probation chief Guillermo Viera Rosa said officers involved in the alleged abuse captured on video had been removed from duty as he sought investigation from an outside agency.
“We will not tolerate misconduct like that depicted in the video,” the chief said at the time.
The next month, he said 66 officers had been placed on leave amid an internal investigation. Viera Rosa said he would root out the “culture of violence, drug use, neglect and sexual misconduct in the nation’s largest probation agency,” according to a county statement at the time.
Saying the indictment announced on Monday is an example of the need for change in the culture of county probation officers, L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn said she would support firing any officers found guilty.
“The young people in Los Padrinos are not only in our custody, they are in our care,” she said in a statement. “It is unacceptable that probation officers who were entrusted with this responsibility would use their power to abuse these kids.”
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