Community Law Enforcement

At probation, the new powers that be

Jerry Powers could have predicted as much. The first paragraph of the Los Angeles Daily News story announcing his hiring Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors began with the phrase, “Los Angeles County’s troubled Probation Department has a new chief.”

“Every news report, it’s the same thing, ‘troubled, troubled, troubled,” Powers was saying just the other day. “I was joking with the board that my cards will have my name, title and ‘Troubled L.A. County Probation Department.’ ”

Powers, of course, knows that reporters are unlikely to abandon the descriptive shorthand until he gives them a new story line, a daunting challenge for an agency that has, among many other things, come under intense Justice Department scrutiny for failures in its juvenile camps, severe budgeting lapses and considerable churn at the top. Powers’ predecessor is leaving after only 18 months on the job.  

“We’ve got some flaws, and some work to do,” Powers acknowledges. “That’s been well documented. But I’m convinced we can fix that. This department can be a leader in the field again.”

Powers, who’ll begin work on December 5 and earn an annual salary of $255,000, is likely to experience some culture shock, not only because of the enormity of the issues confronting the department but because of its sheer bulk.

He’ll arrive here after a well respected career in Stanislaus Countyin the northern Central Valley, where he’s been chief probation officer since 2002. There, the department’s 250 employees oversee 7,000 adults and 900 juveniles. Its budget is $25 million.

Those numbers, however, represent a fraction of what Powers will confront inLos AngelesCounty, where 6,200 staffers supervise more than 50,000 adults and 20,000 juveniles. Its budget is $716 million.

What’s more, no probation department in Californiawill feel a greater impact from the state’s new criminal justice “realignment” law, which transfers to the counties the responsibility of supervising newly-released prison inmates who’d been serving sentences for non-violent, non-serious, non-sexual crimes.

In Los Angeles County, these paroled inmates—many with prior histories of serious and violent crimes—are predicted to number 9,000 by June.

Asked how he’ll make the adjustment from a relatively small operation to such a huge one, Powers says “that’s the No. 1 question.” But he’s convinced “it’s strictly a leadership issue,” whether you’re responsible for 250 employees or 2,500. And that means “being visible, holding people accountable and putting people in the right places to succeed.”

Powers, who is president of California’s association of probation chiefs—and was a reported finalist to become Stanislaus County’s chief executive officer until taking the L.A. job—describes himself as a “collaborative” and “flexible” leader, “who’s pretty sure about what I want and what I don’t want.”

“But at the end of the day,” he says, “I’m ultimately responsible, and we’re [the staff] going to move in the same direction. And if you’re not interested in pulling in the same direction, then we’ll get people who are. The vast majority of people here do not want to work for a ‘troubled’ department. They want to be proud of who they work for and know that what they do is of value to the community.”

Posted 10/26/11

County re-ups with Homeboy

Nine months after Los Angeles County stepped in to help keep the doors open at Homeboy Industries, its contract for re-entry services has been extended, preserving a key source of job training for gang-affiliated probationers and parolees.

The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday voted to renew the county’s $1.3 million agreement with Homeboy, which originally had been approved as a 9-month pilot project.

The public money will pay for 12 more months of job training, tattoo removal, legal counseling and other services for more than 600 county probationers and parolees between the ages of 14 and 30. It also will continue to fund 20 to 30 revolving job trainee positions at Homeboy businesses, along with an ongoing outside evaluation of the program’s effectiveness.

Although the final evaluation of the joint venture’s first nine months won’t be complete until August, the social scientists conducting it say Homeboy’s success rate appears to be strikingly higher than the national average.

UCLA adjunct professor Jorja Leap said preliminary data shows approximately 80% of the county-funded trainees to be either fully employed or still enrolled in the Homeboy program at the end of the initial 9-month contract, with only about 10% back behind bars. The national rate of re-incarceration among gang members is about seven times higher than that, Leap says.

“This is all very cautionary and short term, and with the contract renewed, we’ll be able to learn even more,” she says. But if the numbers hold up, “it’s absolutely phenomenal.”

Founded in 1992 by the Rev. Greg Boyle, a Jesuit priest, Homeboy Industries is the nation’s largest gang intervention program. Operating under the slogan, “Nothing stops a bullet like a job,” the organization operates a bakery, two cafes, a silk screening and embroidery shop and a janitorial company, among other endeavors.

The organization also is known for its tattoo removal program—a prosaic but potentially life-altering service that annually eliminates a crucial job impediment for thousands of repentant gang members. Boyle has said Homeboy’s job training, educational, legal and mental health services help some 12,000 at-risk youths and young adults every year.

Boyle has noted that Homeboy has served for years as the county’s unofficial—and largely un-reimbursed—“after-care and re-entry program for gang members.” According to Leap’s preliminary numbers, Homeboy’s client base is overwhelmingly, if not entirely, made up of county probationers and parolees who came to Homeboy on their own initiative.

The county also runs various re-entry programs for ex-inmates, but the demand for help far outstrips the supply, says Cal Remington, chief deputy of the county’s Department of Probation. So when a financial shortfall last year forced the organization to lay off hundreds of staffers, Homeboy turned to the county as a natural ally.

“This is really a public safety issue for the county,” says Homeboy’s Chief Operating Officer Veronica Vargas. “You can’t expect someone who has never held a job to walk back into society and know how to get hired.”

Remington calls Homeboy “a good resource,” particularly in light of the state’s desire to shift responsibility to the county for thousands of non-violent parolees, who “still tend to need a lot of resources wrapped around them…Homeboy is legitimate, and has credibility in the community, so I think they could have a real role to play.”

Posted 6/28/11

Hall of Justice to reopen in 2014

Los Angeles’ long-slumbering Hall of Justice just moved closer to a 2014 reawakening as a new home for the Sheriff’s Department and members of the District Attorney’s staff.

The storied 1925 building, which played host to some of L.A.’s most famous and infamous figures, from Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan to Marilyn Monroe after her death, has been closed since the Northridge earthquake in 1994.

Since then, workers have virtually gutted the space to set the stage for the hall’s revival. On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors approved a design-build contractor, Clark Construction Group California LP, to finish the job.

The board’s action set the budget for the project at $231,785,000. Long term bonds were issued to fund the project in November. A report submitted to supervisors said the debt service on the bonds would be more than covered by lease savings realized by moving staff into the rehabilitated building. Over 30 years, the net lease savings would be $160,300,000, the report said.

When finished, the building will feature 308,000 square feet of office space and a 1,000-space parking structure.

Clark is set to begin design-build work next month. The report said the company has offered to upgrade the finished building’s environmental ranking from LEED Silver to LEED Gold at no additional cost to the county.

To get a look at the Hall of Justice’s historic interior as it awaits transformation, check out this flashlight tour.

Posted 7/12/11

 

Curbside sales hit a roadblock

Parked bumper-to-bumper on busy streets throughout Los Angeles County, they seem to materialize out of nowhere, lines of used cars with hand-lettered “for sale” signs in the windows. And while those vehicles may look like a bargain, they can carry a stiff price for the surrounding neighborhoods and beyond.

A study by the DMV in Los Angeles last year concluded that, among other things, these curbside auto bazaars have led to hazardous traffic jams, increased pollution and rampant consumer fraud, including the sale of stolen cars with fake paperwork. In some cases, individual sellers were found to be illegally hawking multiple cars, turning the public streets into their personal lots.

On Tuesday, armed with that assessment, the Board of Supervisors decided to slam on the brakes, giving initial approval to an ordinance introduced by Supervisor Gloria Molina that would ban vehicle sales on nearly 1,000 specific blocks in the county’s unincorporated areas. A second and final vote is scheduled for next week.

The board’s action comes one month after the City of Los Angeles, led by City Councilman Tom LaBonge, banned auto sales along Los Feliz Boulevard and Franklin Avenue near Griffith Park, where the car trade has long flourished on weekends.

Helping lead the enforcement strategy was lawyer Sari Steel of the County Counsel’s Office, who worked closely with city and county officials, as well as with the DMV and law enforcement. “Their days are numbered,” she says of the outlaw sellers.

For years, both the county and city had laws broadly banning vehicle sales on public streets. But more than a decade ago, Steel says, the city’s measure was successfully challenged in federal court as an unconstitutional infringement on commercial free speech, prompting the county to stop enforcing a similar ordinance. The speech in question: the “for sale” signs.

In recent years, Steel says, a reexamination of state vehicle codes and other court decisions gave way to a new enforcement strategy, one targeting specific streets where it can be determined that a substantial government interest is at stake, such as neighborhood safety. The county’s proposed new ordinance hits sellers hard in the pocketbook; if they’re caught twice in a restricted area within 30 days, their cars are impounded and penalties are imposed.

Steel acknowledges one potential shortcoming to the approach: some determined sellers may simply move from one of the 78 streets listed in the ordinance to set up shop elsewhere. And on Tuesday, that possibility clearly was on Supervisor Don Knabe’s mind.

“My feeling is that you’re either all in or you’re all out,” an irritated Knabe declared. He argued that a sales ban on certain streets would do nothing to solve a problem that he described as endemic in his district. As for the potential unconstitutionality of a countywide prohibition, the supervisor said bluntly: “Why don’t we let somebody sue us and find that out for a fact.”

Knabe also said he was bothered by the cost of putting up enforcement signs in the restricted areas, estimated at $400,000 by the county’s public works department. The board approved a motion by Knabe for a report in 30 days on the ordinance’s costs and approach.

For her part, Steel remains optimistic, noting that new streets can be added to ordinance in the months and years ahead. “No, I’m not satisfied yet but I’m happy that there’s finally progress…Our enforcement is going to make it inconvenient for the sellers no matter where they set up.”

Posted 6/15/11

Camp Gonzales shines in Solar Cup

They came. They built. And by the time last weekend’s Ninth Annual Solar Cup boat race was finished, the scrappy teen underdogs from Camp David Gonzales had conquered, too.

Profiled here last week as they were preparing to become the first team of incarcerated teenagers ever to enter the scientifically challenging contest, the Camp Gonzales kids, led by teacher Ty Kastendiek of the Los Angeles County Office of Education, ended up with a second-place finish in the sprint in the Rookie Division, and 12^th place overall among 40 teams of students, most of whom—like the winners—attended suburban high schools.

Earlier, they took first place in a preliminary round involving the creation of a public service ad on water conservation. The team had spent some seven months building a solar-powered skiff, which they then raced for two days at Lake Skinner near Hemet.

For the teenagers, the glory was less in the race than in completing the project. The group that built the “Miss Ann” knew from the start that they would not be the group that raced it because their sentences at Camp Gonzales, a Los Angeles County probation camp in the hills above Malibu, didn’t coincide with the school year. Most had never been in a boat, let alone built one, and even the most mundane contest rules—attending a mandatory boat-building workshop, for example—posed procedural hurdles.

But as each challenge was met, Kastendiek says, the students gained dignity and maturity. For him, he says, the real triumphs came in random, unguarded moments: Watching an 18-year-old named Richard who had never steered a boat “take full control” and order him to stop talking and help get their boat out of the water. Or listening to the suddenly child-like laughter of his young probationers as they sat around a campfire eating moon pies. Or hearing Christian, one of his liveliest charges, muse that “he liked the endurance race more than the sprint, because the sprint was over too fast and it was beautiful to be out on the lake for a while by himself.”

At one point, Kastendiek says, their boat hit a mechanical snag that cost the team the endurance portion of the contest. “It was a repair,” he says, “that normally would have taken 40 minutes.”

But, in what for him was one of the most gratifying moments of the weekend, he says, one of his students, a 16-year-old aspiring electrician named Marco, looked at him and just said, “Mr. Ty, relax—we got this.” In less than 25 minutes, as bystanders shouted advice from the sidelines, the “Miss Ann” was back in the race again.

“The students demonstrated dedication and the ability to solve problems and overcome adversity,” said John R. Mundy, general manager of the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District, which sponsored the probation camp team and congratulated both the students and L.A. County Office of Education.

Kastendiek, who was only able to take three of the more than 20 team members to the actual boat race, says he hopes to enter the Metropolitan Water District-sponsored event again next year. But in any case, he says, the project was deeply gratifying.

“We set a goal,” he says, “we did the journey, and the final outcome was not decided on Sunday, but hopefully in the lives of the young men who had a chance to shine in a new arena, to believe in themselves in a different way and to touch the other participants who got to know them.”

 Posted 5/18/11

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