Los Angeles County Probation Officer Tanesha Brooks' report described a series of breakfast fights inside Los Padrinos Youth Center last December. One teenager, she wrote, was involved in eight separate altercations in just seven minutes.
But key details were missing from the document. Brooks' report said nothing about the injuries, the presence of other officers or how a young man could get into so many fights in such a short time.
Video footage, published last month by The Times, revealed something Brooks did not mention.
The 17-year-old, who suffered a broken nose, fought back as one attacker after another attacked him with punches and kicks. Six other officers stood still while Brooks appeared to be looking at his watch, as if he were calculating how long each round of violence would be allowed to last. A seventh officer could be seen smiling and shaking hands with one of the attackers.
The case is one of several publicized in recent years in which a probation officer's written description differed greatly from a recording of the scene, leaving defense attorneys, supervisory staff and even some prosecutors wondering. whether they can trust the reports coming from inside the county's beleaguered juvenile facilities.
The reports can influence whether minors remain incarcerated and at what level of security. They are often not challenged in court unless a lawyer seeks video footage, said Milinda Kakani, a member of the parole oversight committee. Without hard evidence to contradict the officers, she said, the district attorney, judges and other officials tend to take them at their word.
“How many reports did these officers write?” -Kakani asked. “How many times do we just accept?”
Several probation supervisors said during a court hearing in April that they do not question officers or review footage before submitting their notes to court records.
“I'm not looking for the truth,” said Officer Jerrod Montgomery, a supervisor who reviewed Brooks' case notes.
The head of the Probation Department, Guillermo Viera Rosa, declined to be interviewed for this article.
When asked how the probation department reviews reports from its officers, a spokesperson pointed to a 2013 “honesty directive” that requires reports to contain “truthful, accurate and complete” information. A juvenile's file must also contain accurate information about her “attitude and behavior during detention,” according to a recent policy update. The agency did not respond to questions about inaccurate or misleading reports submitted by Brooks and other officials.
Brooks did not immediately respond to a request for comment through his union.
The probation department submits several different types of reports to juvenile courts, and judges weigh them when deciding the length of a teen's sentence, whether a youth should be tried as an adult or whether he should be placed in a juvenile facility. high security.
“In a transfer hearing where the central issue is whether or not a minor can be rehabilitated, the reports are extremely important,” said defense attorney Jerod Gunsberg. “That becomes a record of how they do in the courtroom and the prosecution can certainly use anything negative.”
As in the Godfathers case, Gunsberg said, he has had clients who were accused of fighting but were later shown on video to have acted in self-defense.
Stacey Ford, president of Local 685, which represents probation officers, issued a statement this week rejecting testimony in the Godfathers case, claiming that supervisors are supposed to review officers' reports before presenting them to the court.
“It is the responsibility of supervisors and directors to review the accuracy of such reports, including directly interviewing minors and reviewing videos that are only available for review by supervisors and/or directors,” their statement read.
Sherrie Albin, the deputy public defender who represented the teen in the Godfathers video, said it would be impossible to subpoena footage to dispute all the reports. Juveniles in custody also often hesitate to report mistreatment or inaccuracies, for fear of being labeled snitches or facing retaliation from officers, she said.
Albin said he only followed the recent video after seeing a January Times report about officers allowing a young man to be beaten inside the Downey facility.
She said of her young clients: “A lot of them say, 'I don't want to make a big deal out of this,' and we have to make sure they feel comfortable sharing things with us.”
The teen in Brooks' report has since reached a plea deal on the attempted murder charge that landed him in The Godfathers, Albin said. His family filed a notice of claim against the probation department, alleging that officers “organized and encouraged” the fights that were captured on video. The California Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation.
Discrepancies between what probation officers allege in reports and what videos show have been exposed in multiple use-of-force incidents.
In October 2020, department supervisor Oscar Cross filed a one-paragraph physical intervention report into an incident at Malibu's Camp Kilpatrick, where he described “gaining control” of a teenager's legs as he kicked officers afterward. of a dispute.
More than two years later, a video showed the skinny teen calling for his mother as five officers descended on him. Cross could be seen bending the boy's legs over his head, almost bending him in half. The footage was never shared with prosecutors or the oversight committee, but the Los Angeles County district attorney's office charged Cross with assault last year after The Times published footage of the incident.
In July 2022, a Los Angeles County inspector general report found that officers breaking up a fight at the Central Youth Center fired an unnecessary burst of pepper spray into a young man's face. An officer's report said the young man was resisting and being violent, but video showed him “walking away from the officer without clenching his fists” when he was sprayed, according to the watchdog's findings.
Another inspector general's report from 2023 said an officer fraudulently claimed two teenagers attacked him, prompting him to use chemical spray. The video showed that not only was that description inaccurate, but the officer had not documented the use of the spray on a third youth, according to the report.
Samuel Leonard, the chief deputy public defender who oversees juvenile cases in several Los Angeles County courthouses, said the department has not yet released the names of six of the officers involved in the Padrinos incident.
Leonard said he is concerned about the continued use of official notes against youth in court when there is no video corroboration.
“Probation officers know where there are cameras and where there aren't cameras, so a lot of these things happen where there aren't cameras, intentionally,” he said.
Larry Droeger, who oversees juvenile cases as director of specialized prosecutions for the district attorney's office, said that while the Godfathers and Cross incidents raised concerns about the accuracy of probation reports, such documents are considered “hearsay.” “and would never be the sole basis for a criminal record.
“It is a problem that affects the entire criminal justice system. The credibility of witnesses is subject to the weaknesses of [them] potentially not telling us the truth,” he said. “So the adversarial system itself is supposed to figure it out.”
Droeger said the district attorney's office places probation officers who are dishonest on an internal list of witnesses with credibility issues. The district attorney's office denied a public records request for data showing how many probation officers are on that list.
The probation department announced it suspended 66 officers for misconduct in juvenile facilities this year, including the eight involved in the Godfathers incident, but did not say whether any of those officers face allegations of dishonesty.
Leonard, the public defender, has accused probation officers of trying to intimidate young people who might speak out.
Earlier this month, Leonard said, officers approached a young man outside of his attorney's presence at Barry J. Nidorf Hall in Sylmar and asked him to sign an affidavit confirming the accuracy of a report. A probation department spokesman said the matter is under investigation.
“It's about protecting the status quo rather than doing something proactive to improve the situation and protect children,” Leonard said.
Times staff writer Rebecca Ellis contributed to this report.
