Guards Blamed for Escape of 4 at Juvenile Hall

Embarrassed county authorities admitted Tuesday that staff negligence, such as leaving doors unlocked and youths unsupervised, was to blame for the escape of four teen-age crime suspects from Central Juvenile Hall last week. Guards at the facility will be disciplined, they added.

“The July 5 escape . . . was clearly because we failed to comply with our own long-established security policies,” Philip Stein, chief of operations for the Los Angeles County Probation Department, told the county Board of Supervisors. He expressed the department’s “serious regret and embarrassment.”

The four escapees, including a 15-year-old and a 16-year-old being held on robbery charges, are still at large.

Stein said guards left unlocked a door that allowed the youths to enter a room in which they were able to pry open a steel-framed window to gain access to a yard. He said an unidentified staff member also violated security rules by parking a car inside the facility next to the wall. That allowed the youths to boost themselves over the 15-foot wall to freedom.

At least five guards face disciplinary action, to be determined after the completion of an internal investigation, Stein said.

“It was strictly inadvertent negligence,” he said. “Discipline, additional training and more intensive supervision of staff are the corrective actions we are taking.”

Juvenile authorities were summoned by Supervisor Ed Edelman to explain the escape, the third since March from the Lincoln Heights facility, which houses 780 youths.

On May 18, six violent-crime suspects fled from the hall after someone on the outside used a stolen car to crash through a gate on the north side of the facility. One of the six was caught last weekend, Stein said, but the others are still at large.

Stein said the May 18 escape did not involve staff negligence.

Juvenile authorities said they are taking steps to send a greater number of violent-crime suspects to maximum-security facilities instead of Juvenile Hall.

At the request of juvenile authorities, the Sheriff’s Department will soon conduct security checks at all of the county’s juvenile halls, including facilities in Downey and Sylmar, Stein said.