State Order Decertifies Facility for Juveniles : Penal system: The California Youth Authority acts against Los Padrinos in Downey because of health and safety violations.

In an unprecedented move, the California Youth Authority on Wednesday decertified one of Los Angeles County’s three juvenile hall facilities because it was in violation of health and safety regulations.

The move against 33-year-old Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey could render the county “highly vulnerable to liability lawsuits,” regional CYA Administrator Rito Rosa said.

The decertification also raised the possibility of minors being released from the facility on grounds that it is unfit for detention, he said.

The 741 minors at Los Padrinos are either awaiting trial or serving sentences for a variety of crimes, including murder, said Rosa, whose agency monitors and inspects juvenile halls throughout the state.

Rosa said he expects that attorneys will now go to the courts and ask that their juvenile clients be immediately released because of health and safety violations at Los Padrinos.

“Whether or not this facility will release dangerous kids, well, that can happen,” he said.

Officials in charge of Los Padrinos, however, doubted that dangerous juveniles would be released from custody. Instead, they would be transferred elsewhere.

Rosa said investigators found that Los Padrinos did not meet fire codes, did not have enough teachers, allowed minors to sleep on floors and did not process health reports in a timely fashion.

In May, county officials were given 60 days to correct the problems. But at midnight Wednesday, an inspection revealed that minors were still sleeping on floors at the facility, which was built to hold 401 juveniles.

Phillip Stein, chief of operations for the Los Angeles County Probation Department, which runs the facility, acknowledged that there were problems. He conceded that his department was to blame because of neglect.

“We’ve never had a decertification before,” Stein said. “It’s the Probation Department’s fault. We waited too long to order mattresses.”

He said department personnel were frantically trying to buy enough mattresses to correct the deficiencies.

“They are slow in delivery,” Stein said. “These are not the kind of mattresses you buy in department stores.”

He said he believes that the problem will be remedied within a week.

The decertification came a day after Stein admitted to the county Board of Supervisors that staff negligence, such as leaving doors unlocked and youths unsupervised, was to blame for the escape of four teen-agers from Central Juvenile Hall in Lincoln Heights last week.