In Tuesday’s LA County Board of Supervisor’s meeting, the Sups will very likely approve another $7.9 million to help improve matters at the county’s troubled probation department.

The money is slated to go toward satisfying the agreement the board made with the Department of Justice in 2008 to improve conditions in probation’s various juvenile detention facilities, which were deemed to be violating the civil rights of the kids they served.

The $7.9 million is being requested in addition to an earlier allocation of $79 million earmarked for the same DOJ-related purpose. Unfortunately, as you might remember, the previous probation chief and his administration….misplaced that other chunk of funds—which amounted to more than one tenth of probation’s budget.

The agreement stemmed from a 2006 DOJ investigation into whether youth were “adequately protected from harm” at the Los Angeles County Probation camps.

The Department of Justice concluded that the kids in probation’s camps were not in fact being “adequately protected.”

Four years and much money later, the DOJ is still not one bit happy with what probation has accomplished, according to Monday’s memo to the Sups from Bill Fujioka, LA County’s Chief Executive Officer:

“On July 30, 2010, the County received a letter from DOJ expressing its dissatisfaction with the County’s progress in implementing the MOA [Memorandum of Agreement] for Probation Camps,” wrote Fujioka.

In should be noted that the Urban League and the National NAACP have both passed resolutions–in part at the urging of Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas—each calling for a more rigorous form of federal intervention, likely in the form of a federal consent decree.

Rumor has it that, thus far, Eric Holder’s DOJ has been reluctant to take that step.

But behind the scenes, the pressure is not letting up from any quarter. And, from what I have seen, the disclosures about the ills of probation are far from over.

Tuesday, the LA County Board of Supervisors voted to create a multi-agency task force in order to investigate the health and safety issues surrounding raves—in particular raves that are held in public venues.

The measure was proposed by Zev Yaroslavsky and Don Knabe. Mark Ridley-Thomas suggested that some kind of young person or persons should be added to the task force that would be made up of law enforcement agencies, medical and health professionals, music business types and so on.

(Heck, it’s nice to see the Sups get along over an issue for a change. Last week, they voted unanimously to send a sternly-worded collective letter to the loathsome Sam Zell about the LA Times’ faux front page, so maybe they’re on a roll)

The vote came in response to the death of 15-year-old Sasha Rodriguez who evidently drank from a water bottle laced with Ecstasy—a drug that had dropped in popularity around a decade ago but now has spiked again.

The LA Times covered the story here, KPPC covered it here.

Then, for Neon Tommy, Annenberg journalism student, Paresh Dave, has done an excellent job of giving a comprehensive overview of the many complex issues swirling around Rodriguez’s death and the subsequent temporary ban on raves at the Coliseum and now the Board of Sups new task force.

Read it.

What do you think LA County should do about raves?

Photo by Winnie Jaing

While the flow of revelations about the ghastly state of LA County’s juvenile probation system appears to have slowed for the moment, LA County’s five supervisors can’t seem to agree about how to fix the colossally broken department.

Last week, there was an attempt to pass three reform-minded motions, which stalled due to the abstention of Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas. [Back story here.] Accusations flew that Ridley-Thomas was standing in the way of reform because of pressure from the probation officer’s union.

The next day, however, that notion seemed disabused when Ridley-Thomas pushed for a far heftier brand of reform by calling publicly for federal intervention. Thus far, this is an approach that other supervisors do not favor. And neither, I understand, does the new Chief of Probation, Donald Blevins.

Everyone agrees that something needs to be done. The problem is agreeing on what exactly that something ought to be.

Knowing that the Board of Supervisors will meet again Tuesday to wrestle again with these matters, I talked at length with Ridley-Thomas about various sides of the probation problem, why he thinks the feds are necessary, and the kerfuffle with his colleagues over how to reform a dysfunctional department.

You’ll find the results below:

NOTE: Tuesday, the LA Times has an editorial on the topic describing its own perspective of how probation ought to be fixed.

WitnessLA: Mr. Supervisor, last week you called for federal oversight for the LA County Probation Department in the form of a federal consent decree—much like the federal consent decree that the LAPD had to agree to in order to avoid a Department of Justice lawsuit after the Rampart scandal.

However, none of your fellow supervisors seem to favor such federal involvement. Why is there such a schism between the supervisors?

Supervisor Mark Ridley Thomas: At least one supervisor has articulated the point of view that we have a new chief probation officer, and so we should permit him a chance to succeed rather than declaring him a failure. I think that’s a mischaracterization of the call for broadened, deepened and quickened reform.

These problems are not of [Chief Blevins’] making. We’re not declaring him a failure.

But if we want to get this right, I think it has to be understood that it’s not about the new probation chief at all. This is about the mission of that department. The focus of the probation department is supposed to be rehabilitation of the children we serve. But there is so much dysfunction in the Department of Probation that rehabilitation is hard to realize.

WLA: Most of those I speak to who work inside the department say that rehabilitation is pretty much nonexistent.

MRT: And I don’t think you get there without serious top to bottom reform. For that, I think we need a set of tools and resources that are only available to the federal government.

WLA: One of the main objections I’m hearing from the offices of your colleagues is that: 1. Once the Feds step in their agenda tends to bigfoot any internal reform that is taking place for good and for ill, and 2. Even when the feds are genuinely helpful, as they were with the LAPD, they’re very often like the bad houseguests who overstay their welcome, to a degree that can be problematic.

How would you answer those objections?

MRT: I recognize those concerns. But there is no wholly elegant solution to a crisis as deep as the Probation Department’s. It’s in situations like these that the Justice Department needs to come in— when it’s clear an invasive treatment is required for the patient to survive. If DOJ decides to expand its role, it will be because they have concluded there are civil rights matters serious enough to compel them to do so.

And keep in mind this is no longer George Bush’s Department of Justice. What’s emerging is a new justice department with more robust civil rights prowess that would take this kind of issue on in a serous way—which is what we want.

Frankly, part of the problem I think we’re seeing from those who resist federal help, is a certain level of denial about the depth of the problem. And some want to control rather than correct it.

WLA: When you say “control rather than correct”, are you speaking about juvenile justice advocates—some of whom are also worried about the feds coming in—or those in county government?

MRT: I’m talking about decision makers. And more than some would like to admit or acknowledge, the department is already out of control. And it calls for intervention to rectify these problems.

Also, you should know, I’m quite sure that more in the way of problems will be revealed, none of which is particularly pleasant.

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Activists take lead roles to reopen Burke’s failed monument

I long ago gave up any hope that Yvonne Burke would be indicted for her failure to stop the dying and maiming that eventually forced King-Drew Medical Center to close in 2007. Every sitting member of the county board of supervisors, who ignored the management problems festering for a decade or more, deserve punishment, too.

To heal their souls, Burke and her accomplices should mark a calendar with the birthdays of those who needlessly died under their bungled leadership. One birthday is coming up. On Feb. 1, Edith Isabel Rodriguez may have turned 45 had the hospital staff heeded her pleas and those of her boyfriend. She writhed in pain on the floor of the ER waiting room for 45 minutes before dying of a ruptured bowel. Let the dozens of birthdays marked on the supervisors’ calendars inspire them to quickly act to reopen the hospital.

One woman already up for the fight to reopen the South L.A. hospital is Sylvia Drew Ivie, the daughter of Charles Drew, the physician for whom the hospital was named. A graduate of Howard University School of Law, Drew Ivie is the chief of staff for County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, who replaced the disgraced Burke.

A profile of Drew Ivie, written by a former colleague of mine, Evan George, appears in today’s Daily Journal, a legal newspaper in Los Angeles. (Evan covers healthcare and law better than anyone in town. And yes, his is the first piece written about Drew Ivie by any major media in Los Angeles.)

Drew Ivie worked in the Carter Administration’s U.S. Office for Civil Rights and served briefly as a deputy L.A. city attorney in the 1970s and was most recently the executive director To Help Everyone Clinic in South L.A. She cut back on her time there to lead the community’s losing struggle to keep the hospital open.

Here are a few excerpts from Evan’s story. (Sorry, no link. The paper’s online and print editions are paid-subscription only.)

Her work with the clinic tapered off by 2005, when the largest cloud hanging over South Los Angeles became its once celebrated hospital and the Charles Drew University Medical Center that trained its doctors. As losing federal funding over safety concerns grew likely, Drew Ivie served as project director of the Steering Committee on the Future of the King/Drew Medical Center. The group advised supervisors on how to clean up the hospital’s act.
When the supervisors pulled the plug on the hospital, Drew Ivie said, she was stunned. “We really didn’t think that would be permitted to happen by all of the people who understood how important it was to the community,” she said. She said she blamed failed governance and poor communication between the medical staff and county leaders.
Now, her boss is the one county official most bent on reopening the decrepit facility within two years.
Many in county government have interpreted Drew Ivie’s appointment as a shake-up to try to overcome crippling bureaucratic failures. Last week, Ridley-Thomas also announced his pick of attorney Yolanda Vera as his health deputy. Vera, a longtime health care advocate who helped sue the county over hospital bed cuts years ago, said she has worked closely with Drew Ivie in the past.

Earlier in the story, Evan describes the depth of her motivations:

She also comes to the fight saddled with heavy emotional ties to the issue.
A daughter of the physician for whom the teaching hospital was partially named, she made saving the sinking institution a personal battle and a family obligation. That the hospital finally shuttered within weeks of her losing her own husband to a brain tumor made the tragedy that much more crippling. Friends say the loss brought Drew Ivie to a low point in her life that left her treading water. They also said they had no doubt she eventually would charge back into the fray.
“Sylvia is somebody, unlike some politicians, who actually understands her mistakes and learns from them,” said Stan Price, a former director of the National Health Law Program who has worked with her for decades. “She knows what went wrong and why she wasn’t successful.”

Let’s hope all of the county supervisors are listening to Sylvia Drew Ivie and Yolanda Vera as they reflect on the many darkened days on their birthday calendars.

As we remain glued to the dual drama of the bailout and the election (and the debate-or-no-debate cliffhanger that is John McCain’s latest Hail Mary ball toss), let’s take a break to look at an elections-related drama closer to home.

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This week some are questioning whether or not Councilman Bernard Parks used his office to play politics with the city’s rental policy.

Here’s the deal: SCOPE, a well-regarded South LA-located nonprofit, has been renting the same building for nearly ten years. Like another 100 or more nonprofits in the city (107, to be exact), SCOPE has something of a sweetheart rental deal. They are allowed to occupy a building— a former firehouse located at Florence Avenue near Western—and they pay only $1-a-year in rent. SCOPE originally made the rental deal back in 1998 with then-city council member Mark Ridley-Thomas.

Now that same council seat is occupied by Bernard Parks who is facing a close runoff race for the County Supervisor position being vacated by Yvonne Burke. His opponent in the runoff is, of course, Mark Ridley-Thomas.

(As the story continues keep that last point in mind.)

Anway….after years of happy renting, SCOPE president and founder Anthony Thigpenn and Executive Director Erika Smith were surprised and alarmed when, on September 3, they received an eviction notice stating that SCOPE must vacate the building in 60 days. No warning. No explanation. No hint of what had triggered the eviction. The notice was sent by the city’s Department of General Services.

The SCOPE folks called General Services right away to find out what was up. And were told that Councilman Bernard Parks had requested the eviction because he thought the property could be put to better use for the city and was going to be sold. “We were also told he didn’t know what SCOPE does,” said Thigpenn.

This last seemed somewhat hard to believe. As far as South LA nonprofits go, SCOPE is very well known. They have run several job training programs in the district that Parks oversees, each with budgets in excess of a million dollars.. The programs have been funded by groups as diverse as the L.A. Work Force Investment Board and Dreamworks. Most recently SCOPE has been heading up a newly hot multi-agency project called the Los Angeles Apollo Alliance that is creating green jobs for residents in low income LA neighborhoods.

In other words, SCOPE is not exactly low profile.

So if Parks really was unfamiliar with SCOPE, he was strangely remiss. If he did know SCOPE, why was he feigning ignorance?

Barbara Osborn is another who thought Parks’ Who-Are-These-People? stance a bit odd.

Osborn is the Communications Director for the Liberty Hill Foundation, one of the organizations that has repeatedly given SCOPE grants. She is also the person who first brought the SCOPE/Parks situation to my attention.

“SCOPE is one of the most effective community organizing entities in Los Angeles,” Barbara told me “They have been an extraordinarily effective in their get out the vote effort in South LA. So how could Bernard Parks not know who they were? ”

Whatever the case, SCOPE set about rectifying the situation. On November 4, the day after they got the notice from General Services, they sent their own letter to Parks’ council office inquiring about the eviction, and dutifully followed up with three phone calls in the days to follow.

No one ever got back to them. No return letter. No calls. No emails. Nada.

Curious, Thigpenn and Smith also checked to find out if they could find any evidence that their building was up for sale, was to be placed up for sale, or if anyone had expressed interest in buying the building.

They found nothing. “And we’ve never been approached to see if we wanted to buy the building,” said Thigpenn. As nearly as they could tell, he said, the sales ploy was “a complete fabrication.”

So with still no reply from Parks’ office, SCOPE did what community organizers do. They began organizing. They called friends and allies to see if they could turn things around or, at the least, work out some kind of compromise. They also put in place an organization plan in case the front door approach didn’t work.

Word of the situation got around, and various well-placed friends of the councilman reportedly contacted Parks to warn that this whole eviction thing was wrong-headed.

SCOPE also hand delivered a comprehensive package to Parks’ office explaining the details of all of SCOPE’s programs.

The result?

SCOPE got a new eviction notice saying that now they had to be out in 30 days, not 60. Again there was no explanation.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s so nice to see Mayhill Fowler score two of the biggest stories of the campaign season, and so predictable to hear the complaints from the mainstream press and others out to protect their turf and rules and mirage of power. But I have a more practical issue: Shouldn’t Mayhill be getting paid? Look at how she’s raised the profile of The Huffington Post. She and Arianna have been good for each other, and now it’s time to draw up a generous contract to reflect the good times.

And Mayhill needs a new title. The term “citizen journalist” is offensive at a time when we should be in the streets fighting for the rights of all immigrants. Besides, aren’t most journalists “citizens?” And don’t we want more “non-citizen voices” writing about their communities? Until Mayhill gets her contract, George Orwell and I would like to suggest a more descriptive term: Mayhill Fowler is an “unpaid journalist.”

But I want to change that, Mayhill. I’ll be your agent and will open negotiations with Arianna as soon as you call or email me.

OK, OK, OK, it’s fine if you don’t need the money. Even better, actually. We’ll put your well-deserved salary toward setting up an online news site to report local news in Los Angeles. We’ll hire top student talent from USC, UCLA and other local colleges and cover City Hall and the county Hall of Administration like it was done in the very recent past when this was a three-newspaper town.

A proposed name: The Fowler Post.

When activists complained to the Los Angeles County Supervisors that the collect calls that inmates are allowed to make from the county’s various jail facilities were too expensive, the Sups agreed on Wednesday to take the incredibly lucrative contract to provide phone service for the enormous LA jail system and open it up for competitive bidding.

This meant that the Sups would not extend Global Tel*Link’s contract — which expires in 2010 — to provide the service through 2013. The Board of Sups made the decision at the recommendation of county CEO William Fujioka, a man who generally has his head screwed on straight.

It is unclear, however, if the competitive bidding will actually lower the price of the calls for inmates and their families.

So how lucrative is the jails phone contract? Let’s just say that, when GTL was trying to talk the Sups into extending the contract, it offered the county $3.5 million as a kick back to sweeten the deal.

We are now living in a world where few of us pay by the minute for phone calls and, even if you don’t use Skype, calling China or Estonia costs far less than you once used to pay to call your mother in Portland. But calling collect from jail costs $3.54 for the first minute, !0 cents for each minute thereafter. Or at least that’s what it used to cost in 2004 when ATT had the contract. Now it’s even higher under under GTL.

Oh, and—just so we’re clear— the phone company isn’t the only one making big profits on the calls. The county also takes a healthy cut on every call too.

Sheriff Baca, who is usually far more sensible about such things, bridled when the subject of expensive jail calls came up.

`The key to all of this is that if you don’t like what’s going on in the world of being in jail, don’t commit the crime to go there,” he said.

Yes, dear Sheriff, but not everybody in jail has committed a crime. A large percentage of the inmates are simply waiting for trial, meaning they are supposedly innocent until proven guilty and all that good stuff.

Furthermore, the people paying for these expensive calls aren’t the inmates. They are the families of the inmates, the wives, husbands, parents, children—who have not committed any crimes.

I wrote about this issue extensively in 2001, for the LA Weekly and found that, in the city’s very poorest quarters, communities like the housing projects of East Los Angeles and South LA, one meets a disproportionate number of parents with sons or daughters who are incarcerated. As one community activist told me, “I know more mothers than I can count who are accepting those high-priced calls.”

But the cost of calls add up, so when lower income mothers can no longer afford the price of the calls they often have no choice but to put a block on their phone.”

“I constantly have mothers say to me, ‘I couldn’t bear to hear his voice and not accept the call,’” county jail chaplain Father George Horan told me back in 2001. “So they put a collect-call block on the phone because they don’t know what else to do. They can’t afford the calls. And they can’t stand not to talk to their sons.”

One more thing: according to studies on recidivism dating from 1954 to the present the amount of contact an inmate has with his or her family and community is among the top predictors determining a parolee’s success. Inmates who remain in contact with family and loved ones are less likely to pose a threat to prison staff or to re-offend once they’re released.

The jail and prison collect call system in California is a problem that has long needed reform. But frankly, no one involved in these mega-bucks contracts wants to give up the profit. In 2001, over the three year life of the LA County jail phone contract, the county made $70 million in collect call fees.

Seven years later, we can assume that the county’s take is much, much higher.

Yesterday a press release went out announcing that the new “Countywide Gang and Violence Reduction Strategy” plan, which was supposed to have been delivered to the LA County Board of Supervisors today, is being sent back to the drawing board for another month. According to one of the Sups who’s seen the damned thing, the plan is “too vague”—hence the delay.

Too vague? Right. And what fabulously specific strategy do the Supervisors imagine this new report will outline that has not already been covered by:

1. Connie Rice’s half-million dollar, LA-City-Council-ordered Advancement Project Gang Activity Reduction Strategy report?

2. Mayor Villaraigosa’s Gang Reduction Strategy report?
3. Laura Chick’s half-million dollar “Blueprint for a Comprehensive Citywide Anti-Gang
Strategy” report?

But like it or not, it appears we’ll have said plan in another month (which likely means it’ll be more expensive. Those report-making folks don’t come cheap).

In case you’re curious, the stated purpose of the forthcoming LA County report is to suggest a “holistic method of combating gang violence, bringing together a host of county departments to suppress violence while simultaneously attacking its causes.”

Alrighty then.

The report in its draft form says little about the specifics of this “holistic method,” however we do know that it intends to ask for $500,000 to pay “consultants” who will provide “technical assistance” during a proposed six-month “planning phase.”

Report. Consult. Plan. Rinse. Repeat.

In fairness, Chief Bratton, Sheriff Baca, City Gang Czar Jeff Carr, LAUSD Superintendent David Brewer and others have signed on for the ride with this report in some kind of desperate attempt to get something going that addresses the gang problem from a community-wide public health perspective, as opposed to leaving everything to law enforcement, and a scattered group of prevention/intervention programs that have no coherent form of uber coordination.

But just to make sure we’re all on the same happy page here, let’s review what has thus far been put into motion with the other three plans, all of which have similar agendas:

Nothing.

Zip.

Zero.