City Atty. Urges Probe

Citing an old case that he said still troubled him, Los Angeles City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo said Friday that he will urge a grand jury to investigate the county Department of Children and Family Services.

Delgadillo conceded that it was unusual for a city official to take on an agency outside his jurisdiction but insisted he needed to do so.

“I’m not going to sit on the sidelines while our kids are in harm’s way,” he said in an interview as he stepped into the politically popular child welfare arena.

“I don’t want to see another child beaten to death,” he added, referring to a boy allegedly killed by his mother soon after being returned from foster care.

Delgadillo’s request, made in a letter to the county grand jury, raised some eyebrows at the county Hall of Administration, where officials cited significant improvements in the department in the last few years.

“I think the city attorney is relying on information that goes back as far as 1998, and that’s hardly relevant at this stage in the game,” said county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.

“I think we have made a lot of progress in the last three years and that we turned a department that was on the front page of your newspaper every week to one that has radically changed the way it has done business.”

Children’s department spokeswoman Louise Grasmehr said that timely adoptions had increased 66% in the last three years, that children are spending 17 months less in foster care than they did as recently as 2004 and that fewer children are reentering foster care after leaving it.

Grasmehr also said the agency had recently contracted with the county’s Office of Independent Review for a thorough assessment.

But Gerry Hertzberg, deputy chief of staff for Supervisor Gloria Molina, said a county grand jury investigation could help.

“My understanding is that this came from a grass-roots level at the city attorney’s office, and they thought it was worthy of a look,” Hertzberg said.

The city attorney’s office “is involved and prosecutes cases and, like anyone who gets involved in these cases, they are heartbreaking and you don’t want to see another kid die,” Hertzberg said.

The civil grand jury, made up of citizen volunteers, meets throughout the year to investigate local government operations. Investigations generally lead to reports and recommendations to the Board of Supervisors.

Delgadillo denied that his call for an investigation was a gambit to bolster his political career.

He resoundingly lost his bid for the Democratic nomination for attorney general in June, has no relationship with the popular Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and feuded recently with the City Council over a ballot measure that would ease term limits for them -- but not him.

In addition, children’s issues have become a hot cause in Hollywood, long a source of campaign money and other support for aspiring politicians. Term limits will force Delgadillo from office in 2009.

“There will be petty and cynical people who point to this as an attempt to do whatever. You know what? Let them be. This is the right thing to do; the welfare system is broken,” he said.

Delgadillo said he was motivated to act by the 2004 death of Salomon Santoyo, 10, in El Sereno. The boy, who had been taken from his mother after reports of abuse, was allegedly killed by her four days after returning from foster care. She is awaiting trial.

The city attorney said his office estimates that 75 deaths have occurred in the county’s child welfare system in the last five years.

He did not provide documentation, but his office said that the number is a projection based on statistics the county readily supplied from 1989 to 2000 and that one reason for an investigation is to update those numbers.