LA County Pays $2.7 million to teenager who was the victim of “Gladiator” fights at youth hall

Another tragic puzzle piece has dropped into the ongoing catastrophe that is Los Angeles County youth Probation, in which young people in residence at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall, in Downey, CA, are subjected to a range of abuses.

A week ago, Assistant Editor Taylor Walker explained how Los Angeles County Probation Department has begun moving kids between youth lockups this week, as part of a plan to reduce the population inside Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall. Living conditions in Los Padrinos are so bad that the Board of State and Community Corrections declared it uninhabitable, and Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Miguel Espinoza ordered the county to come up with a plan to close the facility.

Now in a new distressing event, the LA County Board of Supervisors has agreed to pay $2.7 million to an 18-year-old young man named Jose Rivas Barillas, who was 16-years old when, in December 2023, he was beaten by several other young people in the course of a series of so-called gladiator fights that prosecutors said took place at Los Padrinos in December 2023, a beating that was captured on CCTV in the facility.

Images taken from the CCTV video show Jose Rivas Barillas being pummeled by six other youth at Los Padrinos, known as LP, for short, as probation officers who were officially on duty stood by declining to intervene, as the six aggressors each attacked Rivas Barillas one at a time for a few seconds then moved on to grabbing their respective breakfasts. Two of the officers on duty, were later identified as longtime probation officials Taneha Brooks and Shawn Smyles, both of whom have been accused of laughing as they encouraged the brawl.

December 2023 beating

“What made this unique is the video,” said Rivas Barillas’ attorney, Jamal Tooson, who also said his client suffered from a broken nose after the multiple beatings and a traumatic brain injury.

Defense attorneys, who had their young clients in Los Padrinos, and other LA County youth facilities, during that same period of 2024 told WLA of seeing the disturbing video of the beating of the then-sixteen year-old Jose Rivas Barillas, which was shown in juvenile court in April of last year, and was leaked to various press outlets, including WitnessLA and the LA Times.

Yet, as WLA readers may remember,, the allegedly sanctioned beating of Jose Rivas Barillas was far from the only such horrific incident:

On March 3, 2025, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the unsealing of a grand jury indictment against 30 detention services officers from Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall on charges of child endangerment, abuse, conspiracy, and battery.

The early March, 2025, indictment from Bonta’s office grew out of an investigation launched by the California Department of Justice after the video footage of one of the so-called “gladiator fights” involving Jose Rivas Barillas leaked last year.

As WLA readers also may remember, the AG’s March 2025 indictment made for uncomfortable reading as it identified and described 69 incidents over a six-month period where probation officers facilitated and permitted youths in their custody to beat each other down. These fight-club-like “gladiator fights” resulted in physical harm to youth involved, some of the harm was reportedly serious, and some of the serious harm was inflicted on Jose Rivas Barillas.

For example, county officials have written that, among the many ways that employees abused the sixteen year old, was the manner it which they appeared to deliberately delay in notifying the parents of Jose Rivas Barillas that their son was injured, and the injuries were serious.

According to Barillas and his attorney, staff members began badgering the teenager from the time he first arrived at Los Padrinos. For example, Barillas described how “DPO One” and her colleagues demanded that the young man admit to his “gang affiliation.” Barillas said he was not a gang member. In response, the staff member then allegedly told the teenager that she knew he was from the “Canoga” gang, and followed up by telling Barillas that she “hoped he could fight.”

It was then that another Deputy Probation Officer “directed multiple African American juvenile detainees to attack Barillas in a day room at Los Padrinos. After the multiple attacks were finished, staff allowed the sixteen-year-old to simply sit, with “his nose bleeding into his lunch.”

So, what concrete changes have been accomplished that would prevent such an abusive series of incidents precipitated by adult staff members from occurring again?

A quick review of the county’s “Proposed Settlement of Litigation” outline which goes over the county’s proposed fiscal settlement, mostly suggests that the county lawyers’ perspective on the matter, appears to mostly be self-serving, not curative.

“Given the risks and uncertainties of litigation,” write the county’s lawyers, a “reasonable settlement at this time will avoid further litigation costs; therefore, a full and final settlement of the case is warranted.”

More on the topic soon.