ON ANY GIVEN DAY IN LA COUNTY’S 21 JUVENILE PROBATION CAMPS AND JUVENILE HALLS, a total of around 3000 children and teenagers are locked up under the watch and care of the Los Angeles County Department of Probation .

Anyone who works in and around the kids and teenagers who have served time in those facilities has heard more than a few anecdotal accounts of staff abuse. Some of the stories come from the kids themselves, or from their parents who feel helpless to do anything with what they have been told them by their children. [READ TO THE BOTTOM FOR ONE SUCH ACCOUNT.]

I’ve been told similar accounts by volunteers who teach writing and the like to young inmates in inside the camps or juvenile halls.

Some of the stories are more egregious and credible than others. But even with the most believable accounts, the details are inevitably tough to verify. It does not help that many of the 600 security cameras placed throughout the facilities—cameras that might have proved or disproved the alleged incidents—have long been broken.

(Last month the LA County Sups voted to spend $1.2 million to figure out how to replace some of those cameras. Very nice, but a little late, guys. The broken cameras have been reported for several years.)

NOW, HOWEVER, SUNDAY’S LA TIMES FEATURES a rigorously reported article by reporters Richard Winton and Molly Hennessy-Fiske, that finally brings to light documentation of a few of the long rumored abuses.

To research their story, Winton and Hennesy-Fisk trolled through piles of court paperwork and police records, along with talking with sources inside county the probation system. The result is an important article that lays out multiple instances of abuse perpetrated by the very people inside the county facilities who are supposed to be helping and protecting the juveniles in their charge.

Among the incidents Winton and Hennessy found:

* A probation officer had sex with three youths in the detention hall where she worked — in laundry, supply and interview rooms. She was sentenced last year to four years in prison after pleading guilty to five counts of felony sexual abuse.

* A probation officer caught on tape beating a youth in a juvenile hall recreation room was convicted last year of battery and sentenced to 24 months’ probation.

* A probation officer was sentenced to a year in jail last year for directing five teenagers under her care to beat another youngster who she mistakenly believed had stolen her cellphone.

And here is another representative clip.

The Times examined records from the last four years – a period during which county officials hired Robert Taylor to head the agency with the mandate of reforming the department, including providing better oversight of officers. At the time he took over, the department was struggling with violence in its halls and camps and persistent criticism that it was doing little to help the juvenile offenders in its care.

Probation officials have sustained 102 allegations of officer misconduct involving youths at the county’s halls and camps over the last three years, according to a department source who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to release the information publicly. The source said many of the sustained cases involved complaints of excessive force. Department officials did not disclose how many officers were involved in misconduct or the extent of any discipline.

IT IS ESSENTIAL TO NOTE that there are many staff and administrators in the countys various juvenile facilities who are deeply dedicated to their work, and who assuredly make a difference in a lot of young lives..

For instance, Camp Vernon Kilpatrick located in the hills above Malibu is known for the positive affect of its CIF-rated sports program.

Camp David Gonzales in Calabasas is a model camp known for its commitment to strengthening not warehousing the young men who come through its doors through its consistently innovative educational and vocational programs.

BUT ALONGSIDE THE GOOD WORK BEING DONE in the LA probation’s best facilities there are accounts of conditions at other facilities that suggest that what the LA Times’ reporters uncovered is merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

There is, for instance, the pending ACLU lawsuit that alleges a laundry list of abuses and instances of educational neglect at the four-camp facility known as Challenger.

And there are anecdotal stories like the one I heard Sunday night.

Read the rest of this entry »

While none of LA’s newspapers have bothered to interview or profile Donald Blevens, the Alameda County Probation chief who will soon be taking over the LA County’s troubled Department of Probation, three of my Annenberg students managed to nab Blevins as part of their most recent round of crime reporting assignments.

One of those three is Sharis Delgadiillo, who chatted a couple of times with the newly appointed Blevins. A part of her account is posted on Neon Tommy.

Here’s a clip from the section in which Sharis asks Blevins about some of the methods he found successful during his stint in Alameda County.

….Blevins also attributes his success in Alameda County to a Juvenile Mental Health Court, where judges were familiar in dealing with kids with mental health issues.

“Kids with mental health issues are the fastest growing population in juvenile hall,” he said.

Blevins …focused on expanding services to sexually exploited minors, specifically young women, many of whom were sent to safe houses found in open settings and rural areas, rather than juvenile halls.

“There is a better outcome when you treat them more like victims than criminals,” he said.

Blevins says he is entering the new post confident in the L.A. County probation staff, despite a tarnished record that includes incidences of mistreatment to minors in the department’s custody.

“I hope I can lead them back in the right direction,” said Blevins.

We hope so too.

Judge Alex Kozinski, the chief judge for the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, is mighty pissed off at the 9th circuit’s refusal to hear a 4th Amendment warrant case.

As the San Diego City Beat writes:

The other judges decided not to consider an second appeal by a San Diego man whose house was searched, without a warrant, by police who had arrested him outside his home. That, Judge Alex Kozinski says, erodes the protections against unlawful search and seizure that Americans hold dear. And he goes so far as to suggest police lied to the court.

Here’s a snippet from Kozinki’s dissent. Actully the whole thing is worth reading. Plus I’m impressed wtih Kozkinski’s use of “bupkis” in a Federal Court ruling.

This is an extraordinary case: Our court approves, without blinking, a police sweep of a person’s home without a warrant, without probable cause, without reasonable suspicion and without exigency—in other words, with nothing at all to support the entry except the curiosity police always have about what they might find if they go rummaging around asuspect’s home. Once inside, the police managed to turn up a gun “in plain view”—stuck between two cushions of the living room couch—and we reward them by upholding the search.

Did I mention that this was an entry into somebody’s home, the place where the protections of the Fourth Amendment are supposedly at their zenith? The place where the “government bears a heavy burden of demonstrating that exceptional circumstancesjustif[y departure from the warrant requirement.” … The place where warrantless searches are deemed “presumptively unreasonable.”

Government encroachment into the home, which I lamented three years ago in United States v. Black, dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc), has continued, abetted by the creative collaborators of the courts. This is another example:
The panel goes to considerable lengths to approve a fishing expedition by four police officers inside Lemus’s home after he was arrested just outside it. The opinion misapplies Supreme Court precedent, conflicts with our own case law and is contrary to the great weight of authority in the other circuits. It is also the only case I know of, in any jurisdiction covered by the Fourth Amendment, where invasion of the home has been approved based on no showing whatsoever. Nada. Gar nichts. Rien du tout. Bupkes.

Whatever may have been left of the Fourth Amendment after Black is now gone. The evisceration of this crucial constitutional protector of the sanctity and privacy of what Americans consider their castles is pretty much complete.

Welcome to the fish bowl.

No kidding.

Read the rest of Kozinski’s opinion. It’s scathing.

The original majority decision may be found here.

Based on what Kozinski says, one is left to wonder how our city’s law enforcement agencies can be expected to train their young officers to respect the Constitutional rights of those with whom they deal—when the court appears to be saying that such nicities aren’t all that important.

JUDGE DENIES DEPUTY UNION REQUEST TO STOP RELEASES FROM OC JAIL

Okay, Superior Court Judge Steven Perk has declined to buckle under to the OC Deputies’ union’s law suit asking for a temporary restraining order to keep the OC sheriff from letting any more inmates out from the jail early in response the the state’s corrections reform law that kicked in Jan 1. But the judge said he would revisit the thoroughly bollixed up issue in mid March. For her part, the OC Sheriff has been applying the law retroactively, even though anybody with a grasp of logic who read the law could see that this was not its intention—as California Attorney General Jerry Brown has stated with admirable succinctness.

As should be evident by now, I’m for the parole revisions and the new provisions that allow prisoners—both in prison and in jails—to earn a few days or weeks off their sentences by engaging in productive and rehabilitative programs. Such programs are statistically likely to decrease inmates likelihood of reoffending,. And, by the way, the amount shaved off their sentences is comparatively minimal.

But I do not see any reason why we have to start dumping people out of jails by the hundreds, freaking everyone out, when the law says to do no such thing. If for no other reason, its a lousy PR move.

Here’s what Jerry wrote on the retroactivity issue.. It’s a little long to paste the best of it here, so you’ll have to click through.

To make matters more bizarre, some of the crafters of the law are saying that they never meant it to apply to jails. (Well, Assembly Majority Leader Alberto Torrico, if you didn’t want your law—good ol’ SB 3X 18 —to apply to jails, then it might have been wiser not to have written into it the words, “This bill would also revise the time credits for certain prisoners confined or committed to a county jail or other specified facilities, as provided.”

The Wave has an informative take on the quarrel.

And the LA Times Andrew Blankstein and Richard Winton have more of the details on the judge’s decision:

A judge on Thursday denied a request by the union representing Orange County deputies to end the early release of jail inmates but signaled that the decision would not be the last word on the issue, setting a hearing for further arguments next month.

In turning down the bid to temporarily block the releases, Superior Court Judge Steven Perk noted that Sheriff Sandra Hutchens has the final say in choosing how to address the new state law that went into effect Jan. 25.

The judge set a hearing for March 12 on arguments for a preliminary injunction.

The law reformulated good behavior credits for state prison inmates, accelerating their release. But it also has caused confusion among local law enforcement officials, many of whom have been advised by county counsels to release inmates early, an interpretation that was backed up this week by Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown.

SPEAKING OF THE CONSTITUTION: THE SUPREMES WILL HEAR A 2ND AMENDMENT HAND GUN BAN CASE NEXT MONTH

The Wall Street Journal has this in Friday’s paper about the upcomng case the Supreme court will hear regarding the ban on handguns in Chicago and Oark Park, Ills.

The WSJ reports that the case has brought together a surprising mix of allies on the left and the right. Not a bad thing.

(Now if we could just have a similar left/right collaboration in Congress Over something. Anything.)

NATIONAL ENQUIRER OFFICIALLY IN THE RUNNING FOR PULITZER

As well they should be. Yes, there are ethical issues caused by their policy of paying sources. But they should still be in the running for their reporting on John Edwards. Speaking personally, I don’t think they deserve to win. But I do believe they should be shortlisted.

The Huffington Post (which is getting WAY too celebrity driven of late) has the story:

The Pulitzer Prize Board has officially accepted The National Enquirer’s submissions for breaking the John Edwards scandal, according to sources close to the Board. In a historic move, the Pulitzer Board conceded that the self-proclaimed tabloid is qualified to compete with mainstream news outlets for journalism’s most prestigious prize. The Enquirer is in the running for the Pulitzer in two categories: “Investigative Reporting” and “National News Reporting” for The National Enquirer staff.

[SNIP]

Before The Enquirer submitted its nomination, the Pulitzer’s long-time administrator Sig Gissler attempted to pre-empt this campaign by telling reporters that the tabloid is not eligible due to various technicalities. Gissler, however, showed great humility and fairness by reading The Enquirer’s submission and admitting that the paper is eligible to compete. Gissler has given The National Enquirer the legitimacy it long deserved for breaking a political scandal of national significance.

The National Enquirer single-handedly broke the stories about Edwards’ affair with a campaign staffer, their out-of-wedlock child, the expensive cover-up and the federal grand jury investigation of possible misappropriation of campaign funds. During the 2008 presidential campaign, the other reporters covering Edwards’ campaign did little if anything to follow up on the published stories in The Enquirer.

My good pal, Marc Cooper, has had the excellent idea of weaving the war stories of his younger years as a reporter into a chapter by chapter series of blog posts.

The site where these stories live is called, logically enough, Reporter War Stories.

And the tales contained make for intriguing reading.

The first is a tale of Chile in 1971: The Day Fidel Arrived. But you should begin here at the prologue.

I particularly like the next entry Chile 1973 My .22 And Me Parts I & II It opens like this:

Lest you think ill of me, I had some legit reasons to carry. After all I worked for a Socialist president at a time of great social unrest. And there were literally armed fascist gangs running in the streets. And being a good citizen and all, I had legally registered the gun with the Ministry of Defense as required. I did not, however, have a permit to carry. And I can’t imagine I would have ever used the gun except to maybe throw it at somebody.

On a night in late May, the evening before Allende was to deliver that year’s equivalent of the State of the Union speech, the fascists had blown up a major oil pipeline. Allende declared a state of emergency, putting more militarized carabinero police and some army units out on the street.

It really wasn’t that big of a deal. I had finished translating an advance copy of the speech that afternoon and I spent the evening with friends at a very good French restaurant called La Cascade. On the way home, around midnight, our taxi driver spotted a police roadblock and check point. No sweat he said. No sweat, as ling as nobody in the car had a gun.

My girlfriend at that time told me not be stupid and give her the gun. She would put it in her panty stockings crotch and the polite Chilean cops would never check there.

I did my on-the-spot risk assessment and decided against the crotch option. I figured there was little chance the police would pat down a car full of happy gringos. And if they did, it would be easier to talk my way out of it all rather than tick them off by hiding it on a girl.

That didn’t work out quite so well.

Read the rest.

Barack Obama pledged to close Guantanamo within a year of his inauguration. But Gitmo is still open and too many of the dark and toxic stories that characterized Gitmo under Bush are still in evidence.

Here are two of them.

THE UIGHURS

Seven Chinese ethnic-minority Uighurs being held on Guantanamo contend that they are being held illegally by the U.S, government. Their case has come to Supreme court.

In yesterday’s Slate, Rebecca Crootof and Oona A. Hathaway have an analysis. Here’s a clip

The Uighurs’ story is by now depressingly familiar. Having fled first to Afghanistan to avoid persecution in China and then to Pakistan to avoid U.S. bombing in the wake of 9/11, the Uighurs were turned over to the U.S. military by local inhabitants in exchange for $5,000 per person. The United States suspected them of being enemy combatants (wrongly, our government now admits) and sent them to Guantanamo Bay, where they have been imprisoned for the past seven years.

After the Uighurs’ detention was challenged in court, the U.S. government determined that there was no legal reason to continue to hold them. But repatriation to China was not an option. The United States concluded that the Uighurs might well face persecution and perhaps even torture as suspected members of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, which China regards as a terrorist organization.

Switzerland has finally agreed to take the Uighurs, thus suggesting they should be released. So why hasn’t it happened? Perhaps the Surpemes will answer that question.

THE GUANTANAMO 3: WAS IT A TRIPLE SUICIDE??

While the Uighurs’ limbo is deeply disturbing, the story of the three prisoners whom, we are told, committed a coordinated suicide on the same night chills in a whole different way.

A law professor with his students, plus a reporter from Harper’s magazine named Scott Horton, all got drawn into investigating the issue.

The stories below tell what these investigations found. .

First, the journey taken by the law professor and his students as told this week on Dick Gordon’s The Story.

Here’s a clip of the text. (And there are links to the investigation.) But listening to this story is the thing.

When three prisoners at Guantanamo Bay died on the same night in June 2006, the official report said they had committed coordinated suicides by hanging themselves in their cells. Years later, a Seton Hall University professor named Mark Denbeaux asked a group of his law students take another look based on newly-released documents from multiple investigations. Adam Deutsch and Kelli Stout were part of that group. They were shocked to learn the three men had been dead at least two hours before they were found, when they were supposedly under constant supervision. And that was just the beginning.

And now there ‘s Scott Horton’s investigation that will appear in the March issue of Harper’s Magazine.

The opening makes a sobering accusation:

When President Barack Obama took office last year, he promised to “restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great.” Toward that end, the president issued an executive order declaring that the extra-constitutional prison camp at Guantánamo Naval Base “shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order.” Obama has failed to fulfill his promise. Some prisoners there are being charged with crimes, others released, but the date for closing the camp seems to recede steadily into the future. Furthermore, new evidence now emerging may entangle Obama’s young administration with crimes that occurred during the George W. Bush presidency, evidence that suggests the current administration failed to investigate seriously—and may even have continued—a cover-up of the possible homicides of three prisoners at Guantánamo in 2006.

Late on the evening of June 9 that year, three prisoners at Guantánamo died suddenly and violently. Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, from Yemen, was thirty-seven. Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi, from Saudi Arabia, was thirty. Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani, also from Saudi Arabia, was twenty-two, and had been imprisoned at Guantánamo since he was captured at the age of seventeen. None of the men had been charged with a crime, though all three had been engaged in hunger strikes to protest the conditions of their imprisonment. They were being held in a cell block, known as Alpha Block, reserved for particularly troublesome or high-value prisoners…..

Although a number of others have criticized Horton’s story, While others have criticized the story’s critics.

For me, it was Horton’s work in combination with that of the law prof and his students that made this a case that demands investigation.

Listen and …..read. See what you think.

It’s impossible not to delight in someone who is just so fantastically good.

And for your viewing pleasure, here’s the the Double McTwist 1260 in training.

PS:Cheers for Lindsey Vonn too!

The LA County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved Donald H. Blevins as the new head of County Probation Department on Tuesday.

And most people didn’t notice—-and if they did, they didn’t care.

But they should care. We all should care.

For one thing, the new chief will oversee an LA County agency with a $692.8 million budget.

(To give you a reference point, the entire LA City Fire Department has a budget of $533 million.)

For another thing, every kid who runs afoul of the law in Los Angeles City or County will likely either be sent into some kind of juvenile detention facility run by Mr. Blevins and his agency. Or he or she will be given probation wth a probation officer who will soon also be under Mr. Blevins jurisdiction.

This also means that the various programs that are purportedly designed to help our county’s lawbreaking kids come out better from their detention experience (or their probation experience), than they went in, will also be under Mr. Blevins care and control.

Rhus Mr. Blevins has a number of big challenges ahead of him when he takes over the post on April 19..

The LA County probation camps in particular, are becoming increasingly scandal-ridden.

For instance, there was a lawsuit brought against LA County by the Southern California ACLU and others last month regarding the treatment of adolescents at the county’s Camp Challenger where the court filing outlines Dickensian conditions.

I have heard repeatedly that the Camp Challenger lawsuit is the tip of the probation camp iceberg. And when I spoke to a County government insider yesterday, he did nothing to disabuse of that perspective. Instead he admitted that he too had heard that things were bad in the camps, worse than had yet been made public.

So who is this Donald H. Blevins and what can we expect of him?

We know that he is the former head of probation for Alameda County. But what else should we know?

(To be continued…)

Check back before noon.

I’m still doing light posting, but here’s a story from the Miami Herald that merits attention.

It is about a free speech case involving a student who said some angry things on Facebook about her teacher, and was punished by the school principle as a consequence.

Here’s how it opens:

A student who set up a Facebook page to complain about her teacher -- and was later suspended — had every right to do so under the First Amendment, a federal magistrate has ruled.

The ruling not only allows Katherine “Katie” Evans’ suit against the principal to move forward, it could set a precedent in cases involving speech and social networking on the Internet, experts say.

The courts are in the early stages of exploring the limits of free speech within social networking, said Howard Simon, the executive director of the Florida ACLU, which filed the suit on Evans’ behalf.

“It’s one of the main things that we wanted to establish in this case, that the First Amendment has a life in the social networking technology as it applies to the Internet and other forms of communication,” Simon said.

In 2007, Evans, then a senior at Pembroke Pines Charter High School, created a Facebook page where she vented about “the worst teacher I’ve ever met.”

But instead of other students expressing their dislike of the teacher, most defended the teacher and attacked Evans.

A couple days later, Evans took the page down.

But after Principal Peter Bayer found out about it, he bumped Evan from her Advanced Placement classes, putting her in classes with less prestige, and suspended her for three days.

There’s more. So read it here.

And here’s an MSNBC story about other incidents in which student speech is challenged, even outside school.