WHY HAVE SOME JUVIE PROBATION OFFICERS BANNED HOMEBOY INDUSTRIES?

by Matthew Fleischer

On first weekend of April, Homeboy Industries founder Father Greg Boyle was making his usual rounds to LA County’s various juvenile probation facilities, when he had a strange conversation with three female probationers.

“I asked them when they were coming to see me at Homeboy,” he remembers. “They told me, ‘We can’t. Our probation officer won’t let us.’ I thought, ‘Huh? That doesn’t sound right,.”

Homeboy Industries has a national reputation for its nearly 25 years of work with at-risk youth and former gang members from all over Los Angeles County. Thanks to a $1.3 contract with Los Angeles County, LA County juvenile probationers are supposed to be given preferential access to Homeboy’s formidable array of wrap-around services: tattoo removal, counseling and job training to name just a few. Boyle makes a point of encouraging kids to show up during the first week after their release when they are trying to repurpose their lives.

But, says Boyle, probation officers explicitly told these three girls they were not allowed to spend time at Homeboy. It wasn’t the first time he’d gotten word of such directives. Boyle says he’s aware of at least 10 kids who desired to come to Homeboy for help but were prevented from doing so by their probation officers. “When I first heard about this happening I thought it was a mistake,” he says, “but this has been going on for months now.”

Homeboy’s director of legal services Elie Miller says she has had her own experiences with the anti- Homeboy prohibition. In one recent incident she dealt with a mother whose son had a job at Homeboy—but was forced to quit by his probation officer. “She was upset and came by to ask what she could do,” says Miller. “Here’s a mother excited her son is able to come somewhere for services, and the probation officer makes an arbitrary decision to halt that rehabilitation. It’s insane.”

So why are county juvenile probation officers denying kids in need of help the chance to work at Homeboy Industries? It certainly isn’t because of Homeboy’s performance, says UCLA researcher Jorja Leap, who was hired by the county to evaluate the effectiveness of Homeboy’s county-sponsored programs. In the first quarter of 2012, none of the 30 enrollees in Homeboy’s comprehensive Job Readiness and Job Placement Service Program were re-arrested.

“We’ve been following these kids very closely,” says Leap. “We’re finding that once they’re enrolled at Homeboy, there is virtually no recidivism—roughly 96 percent stay in the program. That is outstanding and virtually unprecedented.”

Nevertheless, says Father Boyle, probation officers are telling kids that working at Homeboy is a violation of the terms of their probation–because gang members are known to be on the premises, or former gang members anyway.

“That’s akin to telling an alcoholic he’s not allowed to go to AA because there will be other alcoholics there,” says Boyle. “It makes zero sense.”

Calvin Remington, deputy chief of the LA County probation department, agrees. I called him on Monday and asked if he thought working at Homeboy was a breach of probation protocol, due to the presence of gang members. “Absolutely not,” he replied. “We’d have to shut down our probation camps if that were the case.”

Remington assured me that there was no top-down directive from the probation department to steer kids away from Homeboy. But he also made it clear that Homeboy isn’t the perfect fit for all juvenile probationers—which could explain why probation officers discouraged certain individuals from attending. “For some kids less is better,” he said. “If you have a lightweight kid, there’s no reason to send them to Homeboy. Homeboy is for the deep-in kids: for the kids who need lots of help and need it quick.”

That caveat aside, Remington says there isn’t any other reason POs should be discouraging enrollment in Homeboy’s programs. “It’s possible that certain probation officers who are unfamiliar with the program could have told their kids to stay away from Homeboy,” he says. “We’ll look into it.

“I’ve known Father Boyle for a long time,” Remington continues. “I have tremendous respect for him and he provides a real service to the whole community.”

For his part, Boyle agrees with Remington that is likely a case of a small number of probation officers who haven’t done their research regarding Homeboy, its services and its rate of success. “Look, we have no shortage of kids looking to access our services,” says Boyle. “We’re not dependent on the probation department to help fill our caseloads. But I would hate to see someone denied the option to come here who really wants to turn their life around. The problem with many of these kids is a lethal absence of hope. Hope is our currency here at Homeboy.”

Earlier this month, the LA County Supervisors passed a motion authored by Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas that asked the county’s Probation Department to come up with some ideas as to how Probation might improve the way it was handling the more than 5000 newly-released inmates that had been handed to LA County Probation for oversight as part of the new realignment strategy mandated by AB109.

One of the purposes of realignment—in addition to saving the state money— is to rethink the idea of prisoner reentry so that those released receive appropriate rehabilitative services to aid them in succeeding on the outside, rather than simply returning to prison. This means they were supposed to be enrolled in services such as mental health and substance abuse counseling, housing referrals and job training, and other programs of that nature.

Yet, according to reports, LA’s Probation Department has thus far had a dismal record for actually getting the mandated services to those newly-released former prisoners who need them. In fact, since February, probation had reportedly only referred 60% of the former inmates that passed through its doors to services, of which only 15% actually have received treatment.

It was also noted that the Probation Department’s intake “HUBs” to which a newly released prisoner must first report, weren’t properly equipped to refer clients to many of the services necessary to begin with.

Since appropriate reentry programs and services have been shown to greatly improve an individual’s chance to avoid the revolving door back to lock-up, the supervisors moved to direct Probation to come up with some solutions for the various problems outlined, and a goal-laden plan for bringing those solutions to fruition. Plus to help matters along, the motion provided a few suggested methods that Probation might explore.

Probation’s response to the supervisors’ request was posted on Tuesday night, and it isn’t particularly heartening.

It mostly consists a list of reasons why nearly everything the supes asked them to do “isn’t feasible”—-with few if any creative counter-solutions offered.

You can take a look for yourself here.

More on this as we have a chance to analyze it further.

NOTE: AN INMATE AT TWIN TOWERS JAIL DIED AFTER RECEIVING MEDICAL TREATMENT ON TUESDAY

The LA Times’ Robert Lopez posted the story Tuesday night. Details are sketchy. Presumably we’ll know more soon.

SANTA MONICA COLLEGE STUDENTS PROTESTING RATE HIKES PEPPER SPRAYED

(NOTE: Taylor Walker contributed to the following stories.)

Angry over a new system of pricey courses, around 30 not-very-dangerous looking Santa Monica College students tried to enter the trustees meeting on Tuesday night, and got lit up with pepper spray for their trouble.

Stay classy SMC cops. Stay classy.

The LA Times has more on the story as does the AP

SUPERVISORS GET SERIOUS ABOUT REHABILITATION

At Tuesday’s board meeting the LA County Supervisors demanded accountability and clear goals from Probation officials regarding the county’s realignment program instituted this past October. The Supes criticized Probation for failing to insure that the recently released inmates actually turned up at the rehabilitation programs to which they were assigned. (These are the non-violent, non-serious, non-sexual offender releasees now overseen by the county, rather than the state, as part of the AB106 “realignment” plan). They noted that, of the 60% of the realignment parolees who have been referred to services like substance abuse and mental health counseling, only 15% have actually been treated.

With a unanimously adopted a motion by Mark Ridley-Thomas, the Supes called for Probation to establish a feasibility plan to explore how to better (and more quickly) get those percentages up. Probation’s deputy chief, Cal Remington, assured the Supes that progress was already being made, that as of now 48% of those in need of mental health services are actually receiving them.

Representatives from several community-based organizations spoke in favor of the motion, however, some urged the county to resist creating a structure of mandates and resulting probation violations that could lead to the re-incarceration of returning prisoners. (A strategy called “flash incarceration”—short, immediate jail terms, such as those being used successfully in Hawaii—was one of those being tossed around.)

Kim McGill of the Youth Justice Coalition praised the motion as a “positive step,” but pointed out that many of those returning are hindered in their efforts to comply. The lack of a valid or government-issued identification card, without which they often cannot access educational, housing and health care services, said McGill. (Simple obstacles like having the money to buy a bus pass to get to rehab programs can, for some of the newly released, seem insurmountable.)

Ridley-Thomas emphasized the importance of addressing the problem now, not later.

“The matter is urgent,” He said. “If we do not see substantially more people receiving the treatment and services they need, no one will be well served; public safety will be undermined and the cycle of recidivism will continue unabated.”

Indeed. For years, California’s recidivism rate has been stuck at abysmal levels, with approximately 65% of parolees passing through the revolving door back in prison within three years of release.

Good that the realignment issue is getting attention early.

Nice story from the LA Times’ Jenny Deam on how Colorado is managing to close a $184M prison facility built in 2010 thanks to a steadily declining prison population—thanks, in part, to a enlightened attitude toward rehab and alternative sentencing . Here’s an excerpt:

The 316-bed prison, called Colorado State Penitentiary II, is the fourth correctional facility in Colorado ordered closed in the last three years because of a dwindling prison population. At its peak in July 2009, the state’s inmate population was 23,220. As of February, it had dropped to 21,562. A decrease of 900 more inmates is expected by June 2013.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics recently reported that the overall prison population in the U.S. had declined for the first time in four decades.

Tom Clements, executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, said the state was part of a seismic shift in attitudes in the U.S. about the wisdom of locking up nonviolent offenders for long periods.

In some states, decades of get-tough sentencing have given way to alternatives to prison. They include probation and parole, mandatory drug treatment, mental health care and community supervision such as halfway houses, GPS ankle bracelets and regular drug testing.

Research has shown that if alternatives are well implemented and include good supervision, repeat offenses can be cut by 30% and the cost is about one-tenth of the $30,000-a-year average for housing a prisoner, Gelb said.

“This is not about being soft on crime or being hard on crime,” Clements said. “This is about being smart on crime.”

THE EXTRAORDINARY MEANNESS OF “HOLIDAY ON ICE”

This is a story from last week, but in case you missed it: Displaying a bout of shocking callousness, the Republicans in the House Judiciary committee dubbed the hearings on the new guidelines for immigration detention issued last month…as Holiday on Ice, implying that being locked up in ICE detention is a vacation.

This after novelist and essayist Edwidge Danticat wrote an scathing OpEd for the NY Times with regard to this flip title and callous attitude.

Here’s a clip:

The flippant title of the hearing shows a blatant disregard for the more than 110 people who have died in immigration custody since 2003. One of them was my uncle Joseph, an 81-year-old throat cancer survivor who spoke with an artificial voice box. He arrived in Miami in October 2004 after fleeing an uprising in Haiti. He had a valid passport and visa, but when he requested political asylum, he was arrested and taken to the Krome detention center in Miami. His medications for high blood pressure and an inflamed prostate were taken away, and when he fell ill during a hearing, a Krome nurse accused him of faking his illness. When he was finally transported, in leg chains, to the prison ward of a nearby hospital, it was already too late. He died the next day.

My uncle’s brief and deadly stay in the United States immigration system was no holiday. Detention was no holiday for Rosa Isela Contreras-Dominguez, who was 35 years old and pregnant when she died in immigration custody in Texas in 2007. She had a history of blood clots, and said her complaints regarding leg pains were ignored. It was no holiday for Mayra Soto, a California woman who was raped by an immigration officer. It was no holiday for Hiu Lui Ng, a 34-year-old Chinese immigrant with a fractured spine who was dragged on the floor and refused the use of a wheelchair in an ICE detention center in Rhode Island….

Then here’re are the letters to the editor in response to what Danticat has written.

Los Angeles County’s Office of Independent Review (OIR), released its annual report on the LA’s Probation Department and, while the report points to progress made in the last year, overall the news is not cheering.

The report notes that in the reporting period, probation officers—the bulk of them sworn law officers—have been accused of hurting scores and scores of kids who are in the county’s charge. (Probation houses approximately 2300 kids in either the department’s 15 juvenile probation camps or its 3 juvenile halls.)

Christina Villacorte of the Daily News has this:

Cynthia Hernandez, an attorney with the OIR, said the agency looked at 303 disciplinary cases against probation officers in 2011, and the vast majority of them involved allegations of using excessive force on juveniles.

The report further notes that many of the cases are never resolved due to delays in departmental investigations, failure to preserve evidence, and other missteps. Even with serious accusations, kids often recant, noted the report. Yet when they do, staff rarely seems adequately probe the reasons why, or to examine if the kid has been subject to intimidation.

As the report notes:

When a minor recants serious accusations about staff, this should be an occasion for increased caution and scrutiny. This has not been the rule, however. Interviews of recanting minors have tended to be extremely short and cursory.

While the report remarks on areas of improvement the problems remaining—especially in the camps— are both daunting and perplexing in their implications. There is, for example, the matter of the video cameras: For some years now, the department has been mandated to install cameras in its ten probation camps and its juvenile halls. Yet, somehow the job has not gotten done adequately, as the report makes clear:

Currently, only a fraction of the institutions from which alleged child abuse incidents arise are equipped with any video surveillance cameras. In the institutions that have them, the cameras are often unreliable, poorly maintained or store video in a difficult-to-copy format that slows down investigations.

In many other use of force/child abuse cases, where there is no video because the area of the facility in question or the entire facility has no cameras….

Unhappily, these issues linger uncorrected despite the fact that U.S. Department of Justice has also been pushing for reform in the the department’s juvenile facilities.

As KPCC’s Franks Stoltze reports:

Since 2008, the United States Justice Department has also been examining the Probation Department. In December, federal officials said the department had made “great strides” but failed to comply with more than a dozen reforms, including identifying and treating minors with mental health problems.

Federal officials have left open the possibility of seeking a court oversight of the department, similar to the oversight over the LAPD ordered by a judge in the wake of the Rodney King beating and Rampart scandal.

Stoltze also points to these facts:

The OIR report also said probation faces an “extraordinary rate of employees who cannot return to work or are working with restrictions.”

Nearly 400 of the agency’s 5,630 employees are on some type of medical leave, the report said. “Another 353 employees are … on modified duty.”

The Probation Department’s problems are costing L.A. County money, the report said. In fiscal year 2010-2011, it was the subject of 56 new liability claims, and the county paid out nearly $4 million on claims and lawsuits.

Added to all this, in the last year, the County fired 14 employees for serious misconduct.

Anyway, there’s more. You can peruse all 59 pages for yourself by clicking here.

THE LATEST DOJ REPORT FUELS RENEWED SPECULATION THAT A FEDERAL CONSENT DECREE MIGHT BE IN THE FUTURE FOR LA COUNTY’S TROUBLED PROBATION CAMPS

This past Friday the Federal monitors representing US Department of Justice delivered their 145 page response to LA County Probation’s claims that its juvenile camps were mostly “In compliance” with the Feds’ 41 demands for reform spelled out four years ago in a 2008 Memorandum of Agreement.

Not so fast, said the monitors in the report— which WitnessLA has acquired.

When, on November 6, 2006, the US Department of Justice began investigating LA’s juvenile probation camps, investigators found the facilities rife with horrors. Probation officers batted kids around, instigated fights (some of which were caught on video and wound up on YouTube) or looked the other way when one group of kids pounded another. Staff also made kids stand or sit in body-stressing positions for long periods, kept them in solitary confinement for even longer periods as punishment, randomly denied them bathroom breaks, recreational time and/or medical treatment, failed to check on kids who were on suicide watch, pepper sprayed teenagers over trivialities, and drank alcohol on the job—among other transgressions and illegalities.

Now, said the monitors in the new report, the worst of the rampant abuse and neglect in the camps had pretty much been halted, although there was still lots of room for improvement.

And thankfully the staff, for the most part, wasn’t drinking on the job.

But, after 4 years under the watchful eye of the Department of Justice, although most kids weren’t being actively abused, they weren’t being helped either, said the monitors, particularly when it came to mental and emotional health, substance abuse—and overall rehabilitation. Probation has little or nothing in the way of positive outcomes to show for its supposed progress in these areas. And in many of the camps they have they don’t have the required rehabilitative programs in place at all.

“These camps are not meant to be punishment for the kids we send there,” said a source close to the federal monitors. “They’re supposed to rehabilitate. And that’s still not happening.”

So now the big question is: Will the Feds take over the the juvenile facilities with a Federal Consent Decree?

Observers are split on whether the Feds will step in— or will they give probation one more chance now that Probation has a brand new head guy, Chief Jerry Powers, who started last Monday.

LA County Board of Supervisors has a committee of staffers meeting today, Wednesday, to discuss the Fed monitors’ comments and instructions—and what, if anything, to do in response.

(MORE ON THE REPORT AND ITS MEANING SHORTLY)

MEANWHILE LA’S CITY COUNCIL CALLS FOR MORE CONTROL OVER THE $2000 LUNCH -EATING HOUSING AUTHORITY

After the $1.2-million golden parachute handed to HACLA’s ousted head, and jaw-dropping spending for trips, meals and “employee incentives,” the LA City Council thinks maybe there should be a bit more city oversight of the agency. (Ya think?)

The LA Times David Zahniser and Jessica Garrison have the story.

Controller Wendy Greuel also has a new report on the drunken-sailor-spending HACLA folks.

Nearly 20 years ago The California Wellness Foundation was one of the first organizations of consequence to promote the recognition that violence was not merely a crime problem. It was a serious public health issue.

As part of their focus on the topic, every year Wellness puts on a Violence Prevention Conference at which around 300 people drawn from all over the state gather to discuss the myriad complex facets of this problem that so deeply affects the health and well being of California’s communities.

Among those who attend are directors of programs that address some aspect of the issue, a smattering of law enforcement (This year Deputy Chief Pat Gannon, head of LAPD’s South Bureau, was on a panel), academics, researchers, and other experts in the field.

Each year at the conference, Wellness presents three Peace Prizes, which honor three people with a $25,000 cash award….”in recognition of his or her outstanding efforts to prevent violence and promote peace in their local communities.” The 2011 winners were Ray Balberan, Priscilla Carrasquilla, Manuel Jimenez, all of whom work in different capacities with former gang members and/or kids who are headed that direction. (You can read more about the winners here).

The topics vary from year to year. This year, the subject of realignment came up frequently in public discussions and in private conversation. Another big conference topic was juvenile probation. The Chiefs of Probation for Alameda and Yolo counties were both on a panel. In fact, Alameda County’s Chief of Probation, David Muhammad, was one of the conference’s two keynote speakers and his straight talk about what works and what doesn’t for lawbreaking kids had direct and urgent implications for LA County’s troubled juvenile camps. (I’ll have much more to say about David Muhammad in a later post.)

The other keynote speaker—the one who opened the conference—was LA’s own Father Greg Boyle.

I’ve posted some (very) rough iPhone video snippets from his speech. Please ignore the recurring hand-held jiggles and the less than felicitous framing, and just give yourself and treat and watch. As speakers go, they don’t get any better than Fr. Greg.

As the first clip below opens, Greg is talking about an encounter with a particular Homeboy Industries staffer. He also covers why he may title his next book “Barking with the Choir,” and why we must stand with the despised and the easily thrown away.

This next clip, #2, contains a story about homeboys and texting.

(NOTE: I turned off the video before the story of texting homeboys was over, so quickly switched it back on for the 55 second tag to the tale that you’ll find below.)

You’ll find one more instructive (and funny) homeboy story here in clip #4.

This next video opens with a short talke featuring the actress Diane Keaton at the Homegirl Cafe, and ends with…well…..just watch it.

Even for some reason you don’t want to watch to all six videos, do watch this last one, # 6. It’s only a little over five minutes long. I’ve heard Greg tell the story encased in the clip many times, but I still can’t hear it without crying off all my eye makeup. Thursday night was no exception.

Truth be told, I lived this story along with Greg. I was very close to the kid in the tale known as “Puppet,” and even closer to his girlfriend. I remember that Greg was out of state when all this happened. Thus I was the one who rushed to the hospital to hold down the fort, emotionally speaking, in those first hours.

Despite the pain of it, this story is—as are all Greg’s stories—about hope, and about why the issues talked about at last week’s conference matter so very much.

Jerry Powers was officially tapped on Tuesday as the new Chief of LA County’s troubled Probation Department.

Powers, who is, at present, running the probation department for Stanislaus County was described to me by those who know him both in LA in in Stanislaus, as smart, down to earth, transparent, capable and a likeable straight shooter.

However, a source whom I talked to in Powers’ home county said most he knew were startled by the appointment and questioned why LA’s Board of Supervisors would pluck the head of an agency with a little over 200 employees supervising 7,000 adult probationers and 900 juveniles, and install him in the largest probation agency in the world—with 6,200 employees supervising 50,000 adult offenders and 20,000 kids.

“I mean he’s a good guy,” said the source, “He’s got good people skills. He returns phone calls. But, come on, we’re tiny. And frankly, we hardly pay attention to probation up here. It’s just not that big. So, yes, we were a little taken aback.”

Originally, it was rumored that the Board of Supervisors and CEO William Fujioka would engage in a national search to find someone to replace departing Probation head, Donald Blevins who assumed the post in April 2010.

Yet, a few have speculated that the Supes felt the need to move more quickly due to the looming October 31 federal deadline for reforms in LA’s juvenile probation camps. If the Department of Justice’s 41 requirements are not met, the Feds may take over the running of the camps and/or impose a federal consent decree. But the feds could extend the deadline if LA County makes a persuasive case that it should be given some leeway.

“And what better demonstration of good faith could there be than appointing a new probation chief?” commented one Probation watcher.

Others say that the Federal deadline is not at all the reason for the speed in choosing the new Chief. They point out that Powers was on the short list during the hiring process that produced Blevins and that some factions close to the selection process felt that Powers should have gotten the job back then, and is the ideal choice now.

Still, while Powers seems universally liked, there are those who worry whether or not he has the breadth of vision necessary to transform the kid-damaging catastrophe that LA County Probation’s juvenile system has become. “I look at his resume,” said one insider, “and I see a lot about grants acquired and buildings constructed. But I don’t see anything about outcomes for the kids. Nothing about education or innovative programs.”

[NOTE: Read Powers' Resume for yourself.]

Powers’ fans counter that he is the perfect nuts and bolts, Can Do guy to get the agency back on track. “Before we think about the vision thing,” a County source told me, “maybe we need somebody who can deal with the overtime and absenteeism, and stop kids from getting brutalized.”

Whether or not Powers is a great choice—or merely a good choice— to take over LA’s giant Probation Department is a question that will be answered more definitively by his actual doing of the job in the months and, we hope, years to come.

Yet one thing is certain: between the problem-haunted juvenile facilities and the influx of brand new adult parolees to the county system for oversight (under the new realignment process that shifts the monitoring of certain non-violent parolees to California’s counties and away from the state), Powers will face an impressive list of challenges.

Jerry Powers will take over as Chief on December 5. Cal Remington will be the acting chief in the interim.

Photo by Daily News

It’s not officially official yet, but deals have been made, hands have been shaken, last minute contractual stumbling blocks have been shoved off the road ahead. Barring any force majeure, Jerry Powers, the Probation Chief for Stanislaus County will take over LA County’s very troubled and very large Department of Probation.

The official approval by the Board of Supervisors of Powers’ appointment plus his salary and extras is slated to take place next Tuesday, Oct 25. But offers have been unofficially made and accepted.

County CEO William Fujioka has recommended that the board approve a salary for Powers of $255,000 per year, with $25 grand to help with the relocation of his family.

Powers is expected to start work on December 5.

The Board members seem pleased. Powers is thought of as a very solid guy.

The rest of us look forward to welcoming the nearly-appointed new Probation Chief, and wish him all possible luck. Given the challenges the beleaguered agency still faces, he will likely need it.

(Link to CEO’s memo here.)

UPDATE:

Garett Therolf of the LA Times reports that the $255,000 per year salary for Jerry Powers that the board is expected to approve on Tuesday is $28,000 higher than what Donald Blevins was making.

Photo by BRIAN RAMSAY, Modesto Bee

The ACLU of So Cal filed a racial profiling lawsuit against Glendale Unified School District, the Glendale Police Department, the Los Angeles Police Department, and LA County Probation on Thursday having to do with a 2010 incident in which 56 Hoover High Hchool students were rounded up and questioned for an hour.

The suit names individual officers from the GPD, the LAPD, probation, plus administrators at Hoover HS for “racial profiling and unlawful search and seizure.”

The lawsuit is based on an incident that occurred on September 24, 2010, when, according to the ACLU, school administrators, working with police and school-based probation officers, rounded up 56 Latino students during their lunch period, herded them into classrooms, interrogated them—and in a bizarre touch—”orced them to pose for mock mug shots.”

Attorneys say that the students were targeted although there was no evidence that they were violating any laws or breaking school rules.

Here’s more from the ACLU statement:

“I was shocked and scared when I saw the police, especially because I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong,” said sixteen-year-old Ashley Flores, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. “It was the first encounter I’ve had with police. I’ve never been in trouble and have nothing to do with gangs.”

The students, all Latino, were eating lunch when school administrators ordered them into two classrooms, where armed GPD and LAPD officers were waiting for them. Police told the students that they could not leave until they provided information. When some protested that they had done nothing wrong, officers ordered them to “sit down and shut up,” and threatened to go to their homes at 6 a.m. to collect the information if they did not cooperate. The officers told students that their personal information would be kept in a file to identify them if they ever got in trouble. The students were detained between 30 and 90 minutes, causing some to miss their fifth-period classes.

“The police officers, school officials, and probation officers involved in this roundup targeted these students solely because they are Latino,” said David Sapp, a staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California. “They acted as though being a Latino teenager is all the justification they needed to detain and threaten these students, which is a textbook case of racial profiling.”

One student who was eating lunch with the others, who is not Latino, was not detained in the classrooms.

Additionally, after the incident, Defendant Michael Rock, a captain in GPD who authorized the roundup, acknowledged that the students’ ethnicity was central in determining which students were detained, adding that GPD had planned to conduct a similar operation targeting Armenian students. [Italics mine.]

Nice.

The lawsuit sounds righteous, and there’s no excuse for racially profiling and terrorizing kids, yet it might help to have this bit of context:

According to the school website, Hoover High’s student population is around 42 percent Armenian American, and around one quarter Latino. In recent years, elements within the two ethnic groups have sometimes been violently at odds. The most tragic such event occurred in May of 2000 when 17-year-old Raul Aguirre was beaten with a crowbar then stabbed to death in front of the school just after classes ended for the day. Raul Aguirre, it seemed, was a non-troublemaker kid who had tried to intervene in a fight between the two ethnic factions, and was murdered for his trouble.

In any case, one assumes that there’s more to the story. Again, not that anything excuses the actions of the adults. However, additional information might at least, in part, explain the thinking of the cops and the Hoover High administrators.

AND IN OTHER NEWS:

CDCR SAYS CALIFORNIA’S PRISON HUNGER STRIKE HAS ENDED

The CDCR reported on Thursday that the mass hunger strike in the state’s prisons has ended. This is from their statement:

CDCR officials in Sacramento were contacted by inmates by letter on October 11. It was the first such contact by inmates or their representatives during the inmate-led action.

Officials agreed to meet with inmate representatives to discuss its ongoing review of and revisions to its Security Housing Unit (SHU) policies that began in May 2011. Similar to its discussions with inmates during a July hunger strike, all agreed the changes to policies would take several months to finalize. The department agreed to continue on its same course.

Inmates initiated a second hunger strike on September 26, and after three days, 4,252 inmates in eight state prisons had missed nine consecutive meals – the point at which CDCR considers an inmate to be on a hunger strike….

Last Friday, Ian Lovett reported for the NY Times that, unlike with the first strike in the summer, this time the hunger strikers were dug in and prepared to last as long as it took to get some of their demands met, so the change was unexpected.

Here’s a clip from last week’s story:

….since inmates resumed the strike last week in continued protest against conditions of prolonged isolation, things have gone differently: the corrections department has cracked down, trying to isolate the strike leaders, some of whom say they no longer trust the department and are hoping to push the governor to enact reforms.

“I’m ready to take this all the way,” J. Angel Martinez, one of the strike leaders at Pelican Bay State Prison, said in a message conveyed through a lawyer this week. “We are sick and tired of living like this and willing to die if that’s what it takes.”

This time, though, both sides have shown less inclination to compromise, and no negotiations between the strike leaders and the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation have taken place since the strike resumed.

An internal memo from George J. Giurbino, director of the Division of Adult Institutions for the department, outlined new, more aggressive processes for dealing with mass hunger strikes….

However, on Thursday, Lovett reported on how and why the strikers had agreed to begin eating again. Here’s a clip:

…after negotiations on Thursday between the corrections department and lawyers representing the inmates, strike leaders agreed to resume eating.

Corrections officials reiterated the reforms the department had agreed to at the end of the previous hunger strike in July, which they said would take several months to finalize, and “agreed to stay on its same course,” according to a news release from the department.

The department had already agreed to a review of its policies for placing inmates in security housing units.

But Carol Strickman, a lawyer with Legal Services for Prisoners with Children who negotiated on behalf of the inmates, said that, most importantly, the department had agreed to review the cases of all prisoners already in isolation because of “validated” gang affiliation, rather than because of their behavior while in prison.

“This is the first time the prisoners had heard that kind of review was in the works,” Ms. Strickman said. “That new information, I believe, convinced them to end the hunger strike.”

While Probation Chief Don Blevins last day at work will not be until October 21, 2011, he officially tendered his letter of resignation to Supervisor Michael Antonovich on Thursday, October 13.

He cited personal reasons for his exit.

Blevins was sworn in as the chief of the extremely troubled Probation Department in April of 2010. Although well liked in Alameda, some wondered if any one person was up to the challenge of reforming the highly dysfunctional Los Angeles County agency without the addition of some kind of federal oversight such as a federal consent decree. It was just such a consent decree that was considered a significant part of what allowed former LAPD Chief Bill Bratton to make great strides in reforming LA’s once badly-ailing Police Department.

This past summer, Blevins days appeared to be numbered when he suffered various setbacks —including a very public Vote of No Confidence by the labor unions who represent most of Probation’s employees.

His future in Los Angeles was also likely harmed by the perception that too little progress had been made on reforming the juvenile probation camps as required by an agreement with the Department of Justice. A crucial DOJ review of the state of the camps will take place on Oct. 31. If federal officials aren’t happy with what they see, they could up the ante considerably with a federal consent decree. (Which might not be a bad thing at all, by the way.)

Recently Blevins remarked on Larry Mantle’s Off Ramp show on KPCC that most of the goals set by the Feds have been met in the youth camps, and that the Oct. 31 review will likely be a positive one.

However, sources familiar with the camps say that, while some of the easier “boxes” may have been checked by Probation, the DOJ requirements that have most to do with improving the health and well being of LA County’s young charges have, in fact, not been met.

Los Angeles County supervisors have entered negotiations with Stanislaus County Probation Chief Jerry Powers to take control of their troubled department. No word as yet on whether the deal with Powers has been officially closed.