Los Angeles County now has fewer than 120 probation officers left to supervise nearly 22,000 probationers as a result of the redeployment of most of its officers to the county’s troubled juvenile hall and a controversial policy decision to force others with medical restrictions to stay at home.
In an effort to offset the dwindled workforce, the county has signed an agreement with L.A. Impact, a regional law enforcement task force focused on drug traffickers and gangs, to use police officers from around the county to conduct home visits and compliance checks traditionally handled by the Probation Depaartment.
Probation also is reconsidering a policy in place for more than a year that left significant portions of its employees sitting at home while the number of cases handled by the remaining officers in the field offices skyrocketed.
“We know the challenges our field offices are under but redeployments have been necessary to staff the juvenile facilities to appropriate levels,” said Vicky Waters, L.A. County Probation’s spokesperson, in an email. “We are taking steps to try to stabilize staffing through targeted recruitment and hiring and workload redistribution. Our light-duty rotation policy is designed to meet operational needs while complying with medical and labor guidelines, and we are reviewing it to see if changes could further boost field capacity.”
Probation has set aside $1 million per year to reimburse police departments that conduct checks on probation’s behalf. L.A. Impact will handle the payments, but will not send any of the officers who are part of the task force to assist, according to Waters.
Any municipality in L.A. County can participate, but a list of the agencies that have signed up so far was not available. The police officers will be assigned liaisons from the Probation Department, Waters said.
A training session is scheduled for mid-September to teach the police officers how to handle the home visits.
Dwight Thompson, vice president of the L.A. County Deputy Probation Officers’ Union, called the request for mutual aid “misguided” and “far more expensive than simply allowing experienced field deputies to continue performing their duties.”
“Many of these Deputies have been placed on home assignment due to the Department’s refusal to honor long-standing, well-documented physical work restrictions — restrictions that have never interfered with their ability to effectively serve in the field for the past 30 years,” he said.
The Probation Department began redeploying field officers last year to try to bolster staffing levels at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall enough to meet the state’s minimum staffing ratios. The redeployments did stabilize Los Padrinos briefly, but it was short-lived and the facility was deemed “unsuitable” by the end of the 2024 and ordered to close by the state.
The county refused to comply. Eventually, a judge agreed to allow Los Padrinos to stay open, but only if it could reduce the facility’s population to a more manageable level by transferring youth from the juvenile hall to other facilities.
Those efforts, however, have been hampered at every step and the population at Los Padrinos has only grown. Now, the California Department of Justice has asked a judge to place a receiver in charge of the county’s juvenile facilities. A hearing on that motion is scheduled for Sept. 16.
When nearly 40% of the juvenile detention officers scheduled to work at Los Padrinos on Easter Sunday this year called out, the county mandated that even more officers be redeployed from the field.
The redeployments and forced leaves have left the field offices, particularly those handling adult clients, struggling to keep up with the increased workloads per officer. The department now has a 36% vacancy rate among its sworn positions and most of its new hires leave within a year of completing the academy.
In April, one field office in the San Gabriel Valley reportedly had only officer managing 715 adult clients alone, records showed. Alex Nieto, acting deputy director for the L.A. County Probation Department, acknowledged that ratio is not “sustainable” during a presentation at the Probation Oversight Commission’s meeting Thursday, Aug. 14.
“That ratio is sky high,” he said. “As we speak, I’m trying to get staff over there by whatever means possible.”
The American Probation and Parole Association recommends a case-to-staff ratio of 20 to 200 per officer, depending on the risk score of the clients involved. Officers overseeing the highest risk probationers are recommended to have the fewest number of cases.
Thompson, the union vice president, said the San Gabriel Valley office covers high gang activity zones, including Baldwin Park where a police officer was killed in May.
“Across the county, there are only approximately 60 field officers actively providing supervision on any given day,” Thompson said in a statement. “The field offices have been effectively gutted, operating with minimal — and, in some cases, nearly non-existent — staffing levels.”
Officers returning from mandatory deployments to the dangerously understaffed Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall are working overtime and weekends to catch up on their responsibilities in the field, he said. Meanwhile, probationers are left with little supervision.
Angel Mendez, who has been on probation for a year, told oversight commissioners that he doesn’t know who his probation officer is and that when he missed a scheduled appointment, no one reached out to check on him.
“I didn’t get no call,” he said. “It was over a week and I went in and like nothing, I just checked in and went out.”
Mendez, a member of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, said the bond between officer and individuals on probation can make a critical difference. He described how a probation officer helped him get certifications and a well-paying job.
Others, he said, “could fall back easily if they don’t have that foundation.”
Luis Rodriguez, the juvenile division chief for the L.A. County Public Defender’s Office, said his office has noticed that they no longer get calls from probation officers when a juvenile needs extra attention.
“The field officers were the type of folks that would call up the public defender’s office and say, ‘Hey, Johnny, or Maria is having problems, could you work with them?’ ” Rodriguez said. “We don’t have that anymore.
“What is happening now, our youth are showing up, nobody is there,” he said.
Statistics provided by Nieto during the Oversight Commission’s meeting show that of 563 budgeted positions for deputy probation officers and supervising deputy probation officers, only 60 are full-duty staff, 154 are deployed to the juvenile hall, and 235 are on leave or are restricted to working only 90 days at a time. The rest of the positions are currently vacant.
“They’re not spending as much time with each client obviously because of the numbers,” Nieto said. “I’ve seen some real good work done by many of our officers. They go above and beyond, and they have to do, based on these numbers.”
The department has used the 90-day rotations to allow some of the employees who have medical restrictions to return to work, while others are forced to sit at home, burning sick leave and vacation time. Any officer who could not redeploy to Los Padrinos due to restrictions was sent home last year, even if their restrictions did not prevent them from performing their duties in the field.
“Many of these officers have had long-standing light-duty restrictions that have never interfered with their ability to carry out field officer responsibilities,” Thompson said. “Despite this decades-long practice, the current Probation Chief has abruptly reversed course — barring these officers from performing the same duties they’ve effectively handled for years and placing them on unpaid leave.”
Thompson described the forced leaves as “punitive.”
At the meeting, Nieto was unable to answer questions about the reasoning for the policy and referred questions to Probation Chief Guillermo Viera Rosa. Waters, the department’s spokesperson, previously stated that the decision was made because officers must meet the full physical standards of a peace officer, something the department was lax about in the past.
Officers returning on the 90-day rotations, however, work full-time and many of them perform the same duties as before the policy was implemented, according to interviews with some of those who have returned to work.
The department’s review of the policy could change that.
“As public safety is our top priority, our Department remains committed to ensuring appropriate supervision for every client and working with the Board, the Oversight Commission, and our labor partners to maintain public safety,” Waters said in an emailed statement.