The Los Angeles County Probation Department has placed eight officers on leave after a December incident at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall, a facility for detained youth in Downey.
The department announced the discipline in a news release Wednesday evening, though gave few specifics about what occurred.
“We are actively identifying and removing those who do not align with our core values and standards to eliminate the negative influences within our organization,” Probation Chief Guillermo Viera Rosa said in a statement.
According to a source inside the department who was not authorized to speak publicly, the conduct was egregious enough that the officers were unlikely to return.
The alleged incident capped a tumultuous year for the troubled agency. One teen died of a drug overdose. The chief of two years was fired after The Times published video of officers violently restraining a 17-year-old. A state oversight agency ordered most youth in the halls out, citing consistently dismal conditions.
According to the release, Viera Rosa has asked that the Sheriff’s Department investigate the incident, rather than the agency’s own internal affairs department, “to maintain the integrity of the investigation.”
The announcement came one day after county Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, at the request of Viera Rosa, introduced a last-minute motion to make it easier for the agency to go outside its own internal affairs department for investigations.
The motion asks county lawyers to see whether the chief could hire outside experts to evaluate the internal affairs office and contract with outside investigators to oversee some internal affairs investigations while that review is underway.
“We can’t root out corruption without holding people accountable,” Horvath said at the Tuesday board meeting. “If we’re serious about changing this department all options must be on the table.”
This story originally appeared on LA Times
