The Los Angeles County district legal professional’s workplace has launched a legal investigation into the conduct of a number of probation officers seen piling on prime of an adolescent and bending his legs towards his head in a video first revealed by The Instances final week.
Tiffiny Blacknell, chief spokesperson for the district legal professional’s workplace, stated prosecutors “have obtained a duplicate of the surveillance footage depicting the incident” and can assign a deputy district legal professional and investigator to the matter.
Within the footage, captured inside Camp Kilpatrick in Malibu in 2020, a 17-year-old boy may be seen arguing with a number of probation officers. He’s compelled face down onto a mattress, the place one officer grabs his neck and a number of other others pile on prime of him.
The teenager — who requested that he solely be recognized by his first identify, Beckham, as a result of he was a juvenile on the time of the incident — stated he was hungry and have become upset when he wasn’t given entry to meals.
Within the video, a probation division supervisor recognized as Oscar Cross may be seen shoving the boy earlier than the melee begins. In the course of the wrestle, 4 officers seize the boy’s limbs, drive him onto a mattress by his neck and place a knee in his again.
As soon as the opposite officers seem to have Beckham subdued, Cross may be seen grabbing the boy’s legs and bending his toes towards his head, yelling “cease resisting!” as the teenager screams out for his mom.
Makes an attempt to contact Cross have been unsuccessful. The probation division didn’t instantly reply to questions concerning the district legal professional’s workplace investigation. The L.A. County Workplace of the Inspector Normal started investigating the incident final month after studying of The Instances’ inquiries on the matter.
Felony justice specialists, and even some members of the probation division who spoke to The Instances on the situation of anonymity, have decried the actions depicted within the video as extreme drive and “youngster abuse.”
The video is the most recent in a prolonged stream of controversies the probation division has confronted lately.
The Bureau of State and Neighborhood Corrections has repeatedly discovered the probation division “unsuitable” to accommodate youths lately, and a class-action lawsuit filed final yr alleged greater than 70 women had been sexually assaulted by probation employees between 1985 and 2019. Final November, a Instances investigation chronicled months of chaos and violence contained in the county’s juvenile halls within the midst of a staffing disaster.
An inner disciplinary board initially moved to fireside Cross in 2021, in accordance with information reviewed by The Instances, however Probation Division Chief Adolfo Gonzales overrode them and saved his job. Cross continues to be employed as a supervisor at Camp Kilpatrick, information present. Gonzales didn’t present footage of the video to both the district legal professional’s workplace or any of the oversight boards that monitor the more and more troubled probation division.
The video sparked a small protest at Tuesday’s assembly of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, the place roughly a dozen youth advocates urged county leaders to chop the probation division’s funding and fireplace Gonzales.
“I stand earlier than you outraged and in disbelief,” stated Gloria Gonzalez, with the Youth Justice Coalition, her voice shaking. “I can’t perceive the way you all can sit there and permit and fund and fund and fund abuse, fund sexual assault with out holding probation accountable. … What else do you should watch for? Would you like somebody to die?”
In a memo issued to his employees on Tuesday, Gonzales defended the choice to not fireplace Cross. Whereas he described the drive used as “not acceptable,” he stated he believed sparing Cross’ job was reflective of the company’s core mission of rehabilitation.
“I concluded that vital progressive self-discipline, not termination, was the suitable response on this case. I made this choice based mostly on a number of components, together with a assessment of the proof, and consideration of the employees member’s service document,” the chief wrote in a duplicate of the letter obtained by The Instances.
“I used to be additionally conscious of our central mission. We prioritize rehabilitation over incarceration,” he wrote. “We’re within the enterprise of giving second probabilities. That philosophy applies not solely to our purchasers however to our employees — inside motive.”
