The California Attorney General announced on Monday the insulgation of an accusation that charges 30 detention officers assigned to a youth hall of the Los Angeles area with child abuse for allegedly allowing and sometimes encourage the so -called gladiator fights among young people.
In the heart of the accusation of the grand jury is the accusation that the officers remained in children and adolescents in the youth sponsors participated in the fights, said the prosecutor’s office in a statement. The detention center is in Downey, about 13 miles south of the center of Los Angeles.
Attorney General Rob Bonta said there were at least 69 fights in the second half of 2023, with 143 children and adolescents between 12 and 18 years involved. Some fights, said the Bronta office, resulted in physical injuries.
The officers said Bonta in the statement, they were supposedly “supervising ‘gladiator fights’ when they should have intervened.”
The defendants took advantage of the vulnerability of the victims and their own position of trust, said their office.
“Let today’s charges be a warning for all who abuse their power,” said Bonta. “The California Department of Justice is observing, and we will hold it.”
The fights called for the attention of the Attorney General and state investigators after the video of one of the altercations “leaked” in January 2024, said the office of Bont. In statements to the video media, he described violence.
“The footage, which was then widely distributed by the media and on social networks, shows a young man at the detention center attacked by a series of other young people who accompany him one by one while the detention officers are watching,” said Bont on video broadcast on Monday by the NBC Kcra of Sacramento affiliate. “Officers are more similar to referees or members of the audience in a prize fight, not adults accused of the care and supervision of young people.”
Stacy Ford, president of the Union of County Probation Officers of the Local AFSCME 685, who represents the 30 officers in labor negotiations, said in a statement that the organization “will do everything that is in our possession” to support the officers.
“All Americans are innocent until their guilt is demonstrated,” said Ford. “Our members have the right to this same presumption of innocence and deserve to be treated with equity and due process, as they provide to those who are in their custody.”
He said that youth arrest officers have the task of maintaining peace and order between children and adolescents often accused of violent crimes.
“Despite these challenges, our professional peace officers are still committed to maintaining the highest level of professionalism,” he said. “We will continue to advocate for the security, rights and integrity of our members.”
According to the accusation, each of the 30 officers is accused of child abuse of serious crime under a California law aimed at those who allow child danger, and those convicted of the position facing two to six years in the state prison.
One of the 30 faces an additional position of minor crime of the minor crime battery for allegedly using force and violence against an unnamed issue, according to the document.
Three of the defendants were accused of conspiracy to commit a crime, according to the accusation. He alleges that two of them allowed some of the fights, knew in advance when and where they would take place, and told the new detention officers to see but did not report the fighting.
The prosecutors alleged that the third joined the other two to allow some of the fights, one of which resulted in a broken nose for an unnamed victim.
One of the three told the new officers that nine fights on December 22, 2023, in a unit of the youth center, were an example of how detention employees controlled children under their care, according to the accusation.
Twenty -two of the defendants were prosecuted on Monday. The rest will be prosecuted on April 18, said the Office of the Attorney General.
All the defendants have been placed on unpaid license, said the department of probation of the county in a statement. In April 2024, the head of probation, Guillermo Viera Rosa, said that the officers involved in the alleged abuse captured in the video had been withdrawn from duty while looking for an investigation of an external agency.
“We will not tolerate misconduct as represented in the video,” said the boss at that time.
The following month, he said that 66 officers had been placed licensed in the middle of an internal investigation. Viera Rosa said that he would highlight the “culture of violence, drug use, negligence and inappropriate sexual behavior in the largest probation agency in the country,” according to a statement from the county at that time.
To say that the accusation announced on Monday is an example of the need for a change in the culture of County Probation officers, the Los Angeles County Supervisor, Janice Hahn, said he would support the officers who are guilty.
“Young people in the godparents are not only in our custody, but are in our care,” he said in a statement. “It is unacceptable that probation officers who were entrusted with this responsibility would use their power to abuse these children.”
