3 youths from Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall sent to hospital for suspected drug use

Three youths held in the troubled Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall were rushed to the hospital Friday, April 11, for suspected drug overdoses, but authorities said all returned by the same evening after undergoing routine medical observation.

The Probation Department and local law enforcement have launched an investigation into the “possible substance-related incident.” As a result, Los Padrinos restricted youth movement within the facility and modified the schedule for the weekend, including cancelling visiting hours for both days, according to the department.

“The safety and well-being of all youth in our care remains our top priority,” a statement read. “The department is committed to a thorough review and will take all necessary steps to prevent incidents of this nature in the future.”

Attorney Jerod Gunsberg, who represents one of the youths, said his client was found unresponsive in Los Padrinos on Friday. He was taken to the hospital, treated and then returned to the Downey detention facility, Gunsberg said.

“My client’s mother has not been able to see him, nor has she been able to speak with him,” Gunsberg said. “They’ve completely locked down the facility. Parents do not have access, attorneys do not have access.”

No one from the Probation Department had contacted Gunsberg or returned his calls as of 3 p.m. Saturday.

“All we know now is that he’s in a medical unit at the juvenile hall,” he said. “I have no idea what the condition of my client is right now.”

Gunsberg called the lack of information and access “alarming.”

“We keep having this disastrous situation over and over,” he said. “People forget these are teenagers, these are kids.”

Drugs a pervasive problem

Los Angeles County has struggled to stop drugs from flowing into its juvenile facilities for years. In March 2023, the L.A. County Office of Inspector General found pervasive security flaws — exacerbated by a staffing crisis that is still ongoing — at the county’s two juvenile halls at the time, Barry J. Nidorf and Central. Investigators determined that drugs were thrown over the fences, dropped by drones and even brought in by fake delivery drivers whose packages were never checked.

Emails obtained through a public records request described a “state of emergency” inside Barry J. Nidorf, with one credible messenger warning probation’s leadership in March 2023 that “someone will die unless you take immediate and extreme action.”

Less than two months later, an 18-year-old in custody at the Barry J. Nidorf Secure Youth Treatment Facility died from a fentanyl overdose. He had been at the facility for only about six weeks at the time. Six more youths were hospitalized before the end of the year.

After Los Padrinos officially reopened in July 2023, the Probation Department increased random searches, installed razor wire along the walls, purchased body scanners to place at its entrances and deployed a drug-detecting tool to scan mail in an attempt to intercept contraband. Though signs of drug use were still observed, visitors over the next year described a noticeable change in the atmosphere compared to early 2023.

But the department’s inability to properly staff and provide certain services at Los Padrinos appears to have led to setbacks. The county’s Probation Oversight Commission reported in August 2024 that it attempted to observe 13 hours of scheduled substance abuse programming at Barry J. Nidorf, Los Padrinos and the Dorothy Kirby Center, but more than half of the scheduled programs did not occur.

In late February, the inspector general revealed that staff members at the Barry J. Nidorf Secure Youth Treatment Facility and at Los Padrinos were not conducting routine searches as frequently as required by a court order and its own policy. Each unit in both facilities is supposed to be searched twice per shift, for a total of four times per day.

At Los Padrinos, staff met that requirement only once in November and not at all in December or January. The majority of the time only two searches occurred per day, according to the inspector general’s review of search logs.

Besides the daily searches, the Probation Department’s Special Enforcement Operations team can carry out searches based on suspicions or in response to reports from staff. That seemed to happen frequently at Barry J. Nidorf, with 97 such searches in November, 88 in December and 123 in January.

There were no reported SEO-initiated searches at Los Padrinos in any of those months, according to the inspector general.

Staff scrutiny needed

Gunsberg said the searches are “irrelevant” and the bigger issue is how the drugs are continuing to get into the facility. The security policies at Los Padrinos are not coherent and “change regularly on a week-to-week basis, sometimes day to day,” he said.

“There is only one way that narcotics are getting in and it’s not the kids bringing it in, it’s not the families bringing it in, it’s not the lawyers bringing it, it’s not the court-appointed experts bringing it in, so who is it?” he said.

Gunsberg pointed to the attorney general’s recent indictment of 30 probation employees as an example of the need to scrutinize staff more. The employees, ranging from detention service officers to at least one supervisor, have been charged in connection with 69 “gladiator-style” fights that took place at Los Padrinos from June to December 2023.

The Probation Department announced in May 2024 that it had placed 66 officers on leave in the first five months of 2024, including an undisclosed number of officers accused of possession of contraband.

Failed follow-up inspection

The suspected drug overdoses come just days after state regulators reaffirmed that Los Padrinos should no longer be used to hold juveniles due to staffing deficiencies. The Board of State and Community Corrections, the agency overseeing California’s juvenile halls, ordered Los Padrinos to close down in December, but Los Angeles County has refused to comply and filed an appeal.

The BSCC denied the county’s appeal at its meeting Thursday, April 10, and reported that Los Padrinos has failed a follow-up inspection that could have reset the closure process. Inspectors found that while L.A. County had addressed some of the problems identified last year, it still fell below the minimum standards in key areas, with many of those failures directly relating back to the staffing shortage.

Youth in custody continue to arrive more than an hour late to school at times and to miss medical appointments. Others are not adequately monitored after being pepper sprayed, according to the BSCC.

“We continue to have concerns with the ability of the department to develop a long-term, sustainable solution to address deficiencies with staffing,” wrote Lisa Southwell, the inspector for the BSCC.  “Facility staffing documentation continues to indicate that deployed staff are used to backfill youth supervision staffing, an indication that the department continues to rely on a solution that was intended to be a short-term solution as far back as 2022.”

Those temporarily redeployed officers are “not fully trained and serve irregularly,” contributing to “services not being provided and a less safe facility.”

At the meeting, the Probation Department argued that redeployed staff receive training and that Los Padrinos is meeting required staffing ratios. The county took the stance during the hearing that the BSCC is not applying state law properly.

But the BSCC’s staff and board members disagreed that simply hitting a number was enough, and stressed that the evidence of the understaffing is clear in the department’s failure to provide the necessary services and care. The board voted unanimously to declare Los Padrinos “unsuitable” for the confinement of youth once again.

Fate of Los Padrinos still unclear

The future of Los Padrinos remains up in the air. While the BSCC continues to indicate that the facility should be closed, the state Legislature did not provide the the regulatory body with any means of enforcing that order. The state Department of Justice could charge the probation chief or even the Board of Supervisors with violating state law for continuing to use Los Padrinos, but so far has taken no action.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Miguel Espinoza has taken up the question of whether Los Padrinos should be emptied as part of a juvenile murder case currently ongoing his court. Espinoza has delayed making a decision three times so far and indicated he wanted to see how the county’s appeal to the BSCC played out first.

Separate efforts by defense attorneys to have their clients removed from Los Padrinos have stalled as judges wait for Espinoza’s ruling. The next hearing before Espinoza is scheduled for April 18.