Death Underscores Youth Officers’ Peril : Law enforcement: Unarmed probation workers rely mostly on guile to handle increasingly dangerous juvenile offenders.

It is a thankless and often perilous job, one that Arnold Garcia performed without the benefit of a gun, baton, chemical spray or personal alarm.

For nearly two decades, he worked the graveyard shift at the Dorothy F. Kirby Center in the City of Commerce, supervising the locked cottages that house some of Los Angeles County’s most youthful and troubled offenders. Like all of the Probation Department’s 3,000 employees, he got by with only two weapons--muscle and guile.

But over the years, something changed about the teen-agers who ran afoul of the law. They became less respectful, more menacing--not merely wayward youths but often hardened veterans of Southern California’s bloody gang wars. One of them, bent on escape, allegedly clubbed Garcia to death last week with a metal leg from a desk.

On Saturday, the 58-year-old East Los Angeles resident was buried in a mahogany coffin under a bed of white carnations, the first Probation Department employee killed in the line of duty since the agency was formed in 1903.

His family remembered him as a devoted husband and father of nine who dedicated himself to his delinquent wards as if they were his own blood. But, to many of his co-workers who operate the county’s three juvenile halls and 20 probation camps, he also was a symbol of their increasingly hazardous mission--one they are expected to perform without any of the protective equipment issued by other departments.

“By wits, cunning, personality and, occasionally, force, we have been able to keep a lid on things,” said Mary Ridgeway, a veteran Eastside probation officer. “But this isn’t the 1950s anymore. If a major incident breaks out, our people have nothing except themselves.”

The Kirby Center, where Garcia worked as a group supervisor for 17 years, was considered among the county’s least-volatile facilities.

Opened in 1961 as a home for troubled girls, it eventually became a co-ed treatment center with a sterling reputation for offering psychological therapy to the emotionally disturbed. With 13-foot walls designed to blend into the landscape, it resembles a well-kept prep school. In its confines, about 100 teen-agers complete eight-month stays.

“When he left for work, he would say: ‘I’ve got to go take care of my kids,’ ” said Garcia’s son, 35-year-old Arnold III. “He tried to make them feel like he was their father.”

During his all-night shift from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., Garcia often bent the rules, bringing candy and videos for the most well-behaved wards. Always, co-workers said, he had his Bible in hand, passing the lonely hours by praying for those who had strayed.

About 1 a.m. last Monday, he heard a knock from inside one of the bedroom doors. A teen-ager, who authorities said was serving time for burglary and possession of a concealed weapon, asked if he could be let out to use the bathroom.

As soon as Garcia unlocked the door, he was whacked in the head with a metal object, apparently a leg from a desk that had been disassembled in the room. The alleged assailant then fled with another teen-ager, but the two boys, ages 16 and 17, were captured a short time later at a nearby railroad yard.

“We’re so vulnerable here,” said one of Garcia’s colleagues, who asked not to be identified because the staff has been instructed not to discuss the incident. “I used to look at these as just troubled kids . . . but now it’s like, just give me a baton and Mace.”

Officers at the California Youth Authority are given chemical spray and, in some cases, batons.

At Los Angeles County Jail, deputies are armed with pepper spray, flashlights and radios. Should a riot break out, a tactical squad in riot gear arrives with stinger grenades that explode into hundreds of hard rubber pellets.

At state prisons, correctional officers carry batons and personal alarms. In a disturbance, they have observation posts equipped with 37-millimeter cannons that fire wood blocks known as “knee-knockers.”

But under Probation Department guidelines, officers are pretty much on their own.

Garcia was allowed to have handcuffs, his co-workers say, but he would have been required to leave them in his desk drawer. An alarm is installed there too, but that assumes he would have had time to go back to his office. There is even an intercom device that picked up the sounds of the attack, the co-workers added, but it is so antiquated that officials could not immediately determine from which of the 10 cottages the noise had come.

“We don’t control the place anymore,” said a guard at Central Juvenile Hall who once had to break up a melee by spraying a group of youths with a fire extinguisher. “I hate to say it, but these kids could get away with almost anything they wanted.”

The problem is partly one of shrinking government resources, a trend that has forced deep cuts in a department widely viewed as the justice system’s forgotten stepchild. Although agency guidelines recommend one guard for every 10 juveniles in custody, Kirby Center employees say that Garcia was alone watching over a 20-bed cottage.

Beyond economics, however, lies a philosophical crossroads for the department. Historically, its officers have been asked to meld social work into their watchdog responsibilities. By counseling youths and setting expectations, they usually can deliver strict discipline without resorting to force.

“We believe our brain is our best weapon,” said Craig Levy, the department’s media relations officer.

But in recent years, the dynamics of these juvenile facilities have been undergoing a dramatic conversion.

Gang rivalries and racial tensions, long the purview of county jails and state prisons, have started to polarize the 40,000 teen-agers who pass through the Probation Department’s system each year. Although some of the youths are car thieves and vandals, others are likely to be awaiting trial for murder, rape or a drive-by shooting.

“We call them minors, but they’re just as dangerous and volatile--if not more so--than some of the felons you have in maximum-security prisons,” said Richard Shumsky, president of Local 685, the probation officers’ union. “The department has learned a very difficult lesson at the expense of one of our colleagues.”

After Garcia’s death, Shumsky met with Probation Department supervisors and complained about the lack of security. Among the union’s demands: pepper spray and personal alarms, which can be clipped to a belt and triggered at a second’s notice.

“We don’t intend to trade in our brains and our compassion,” Shumsky said, “but we also don’t want our people battered or killed.”

Chief Probation Officer Barry J. Nidorf, who on Saturday presented Garcia’s widow with an American flag that had been draped over Garcia’s casket, conceded that his deputies are being asked to supervise a very different generation of teen-agers without any change in equipment.

But Nidorf, who has not made a decision on the union’s demands, also said he was concerned that such protective devices could lull officers into a false state of security. “If you begin to rely on Mace or pepper spray to maintain control in an institution, in many ways you lose control,” he said.

Of course, it’s impossible to say whether any protective equipment would have made a difference in Garcia’s case. By all appearances, co-workers lamented, Garcia never had a chance.

After Mass was said at St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, some speculated that Garcia may have become too trusting after so many years, especially working at a facility that emphasizes therapy, not punishment.

“He loved those kids,” said one Kirby co-worker, “even the baddest ones who always cursed him out.”