30 L.A. County probation officers indicted over ‘gladiator fights’ at juvenile halls
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Footage obtained by the L.A. Times shows a December 2023 incident in which staffers can be seen allowing at least six youths to hit and kick a 17-year-old.
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Thirty officers from the Los Angeles County Probation Department have been indicted on criminal charges after an investigation into allegations they allowed — and in some cases encouraged — fights between teens inside the county’s juvenile halls.
An indictment unsealed late Monday afternoon contains 71 counts of child abuse, conspiracy and battery against 30 probation officers for their alleged roles in a series of fights that took place between July and December 2023. Two officers — Taneha Brooks and Shawn Smyles — are accused of telling other officers not to intervene or make reports when fights happened, according to the indictment.
Smyles told youths involved in fights not to seek medical attention in order to cover up the brawls, the indictment said. Late Monday, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta referred to the coordinated brawls as “gladiator fights.”
The indictments were the result of a California Department of Justice investigation launched after state investigators were leaked security footage — published last year by The Times — that shows eight probation officers standing idly by while a group of teens attacked a 17-year-old inside Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey. The teen suffered a broken nose and a “traumatic brain injury,” according to a civil claim filed last year. Details of the indictments were first reported by The Times last month.
“The officers look more like referees or audience members at a prizefight, not adults charged with the care and supervision of young people,” Bonta said at a news conference. “The officers don’t step in, don’t intervene and don’t protect their charges.”
Bonta said the office reviewed videos and found 69 fights that occurred between 143 youths who were between the ages of 12 and 18. The fights took place at Los Padrinos in the chaotic first six months after the hall opened in July 2023.
“They did have multiple gladiator-type fights between individuals with probation officers employed by L.A. County right there in the room, watching, not intervening, not keeping the young people they were charged with taking care of,” he said.
Bonta said prosecutors believed the fights were orchestrated by the probation officials.
“We believe that this was planned. It was intended. There was a desire on the part of the juvenile probation officers for these fights to occur,” he said. “They often wanted them to happen at the beginning of the day and a certain time in a certain place.”
The indictment echoed Bonta’s allegations. In the December 2023 attack on the 17-year-old, Brooks and Smyles told several new detention services officers that fights would happen before they took place. They instructed the rookie officers “not to say anything, write down anything and just watch when youth fights occurred,” according to the indictment.
The video published last year by The Times shows the 17-year-old sustaining punches and kicks from a series of youths who attack him one at a time inside a “day room” at Los Padrinos. On more than one occasion, the victim falls to the ground while officers do little to stop the violence. At one point in the video, Brooks steps out of the way as a youth charges the victim and delivers a running kick.
Oscar Cross, who was charged with assault after The Times published a video of him bending a teen in half at a Malibu youth camp, will face no jail time under a plea deal.
The victim’s public defender alleged last year that Brooks “instigated” the brawls by telling the attackers the 17-year-old was a racist and a member of a rival gang. At one point in the video, Brooks can be seen checking her watch, as if timing out each brawl.
Another officer — identified in court last year as Smyles — can be seen in the video shaking hands with one of the assailants while the 17-year-old crumples under a flurry of punches in another part of the room.
The teen, who was charged with robbery at the time of the attack, remains in the custody of the probation department but is no longer being housed at Los Padrinos, according to his civil attorney, Jamal Tooson.
Smyles was also charged with one count of battery for an unlawful use of force against a youth on Oct. 9, 2023, according to the indictment.
Brooks ignored questions from a reporter in the courthouse on Monday. Smyles declined to comment through his attorney.
In her written report on the incident, Brooks said that the 17-year-old and his attackers were engaged in mutual combat and each fight stopped when she gave an oral warning.
Supervisor Janice Hahn, whose district includes Los Padrinos, said in a statement that all of the officers involved in the abuse had been placed on leave last year.
“I support the Chief Probation Officer in firing any officers who are found guilty,” she wrote. “This is only further proof that the culture of our probation department needs to change dramatically.”
Dozens of current and former probation officers could be seen milling around the 13th floor of the downtown Los Angeles criminal courthouse on Monday afternoon, many of them still unsure what they were being charged with or why.
Retired officers also appeared in support of the defendants, arguing their colleagues were victims of a chronically understaffed and mismanaged agency that put them in an impossible job.
“Our members have been working under extremely difficult conditions — understaffed and ill-equipped facilities that house individuals accused of murder, sexual assault, terrorism, and other serious crimes,” Stacey Ford, president of AFSCME Local 685, the union that represents probation officers, said in a statement. “Despite these challenges, our professional peace officers remain committed to maintaining the highest level of professionalism while upholding their sworn duties.”
Probation Chief Guillermo Viera Rosa suspended at least 14 officers in relation to the Los Padrinos video months before it was published, according to a department spokeswoman. In a statement released Monday, the department said it sought an outside investigation immediately after discovering the video. Every officer caught up in Monday’s indictments is now on leave without pay, according to the department.
“While these incidents are deeply troubling, we believe this marks an important step toward rebuilding trust and reinforcing our commitment to the meaningful changes we are proposing in our juvenile facilities,” the statement read. “Our vision for them is one that prioritizes rehabilitation, support, and positive outcomes for justice-involved youth, as well as upholding the highest standards of professionalism and integrity for our staff.”
The majority of the officers charged were lower-level staff, many of whom had been with the agency for over a decade.
At least one of the officers who was indicted, Ramses Patron, is a director at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall, meaning he supervised the staff involved in the incidents. His attorney, Tom Yu, dismissed the allegations as a “political hit” and said Patron, who has been with the department for 30 years, wasn’t even in the room when the fights happened.
“It appears that the indictment arose from a failure to act by my client, which presupposes he had direct and actual knowledge of the ‘gladiator’ style fights,” Yu said in a text message to The Times. “From my knowledge of the case, I do not believe that such evidence exists.”
The December 2023 incident raised questions about whether the violence was condoned by officers and the validity of probation officers’ reports on fights and other uses of force within the halls.
A supervisor who reviewed Brooks’ notes on the fighting incident captured on video said during a court hearing that he never questioned her account or reviewed the footage before entering her report into a court file.
The indictments are the latest in a string of controversies surrounding the probation department.
Superior Court Judge Miguel Espinoza is seemingly swayed by having no good alternatives for where the roughly 230 youths housed in the Downey facility should go instead.
California’s Board of State and Community Corrections ordered Los Padrinos closed late last year after it repeatedly failed inspections and was deemed “unsuitable” to house youths. The majority of the juveniles incarcerated in Los Angeles County are housed in Los Padrinos because the board previously closed the county’s other two juvenile halls — Barry J. Nidorf in Sylmar and Central Juvenile Hall in L.A. — after increases in violence and instability in the halls exacerbated by a staffing crisis.
The probation department refused the state’s order to close Los Padrinos, and state board members have said they don’t know what legal recourse they have to enforce it. The California attorney general’s office has previously declined to address the issue.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Miguel Espinoza is weighing a request from the L.A. County public defender’s office to remove all of its clients from Los Padrinos, based on the board’s finding that it’s unsafe for youths.
“The probation system and its underlying culture are broken,” Los Angeles County Public Defender Ricardo Garcia said in a statement Monday. “Accountability for those who have failed to protect our youth is long overdue — there is no justice in a system that abuses the very youth it is entrusted to care for.”
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