A sweeping policy implemented last year that forced hundreds of Los Angeles County field probation officers to take unpaid leaves if they had work restrictions preventing them from redeploying to the troubled Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall has financially devastated some of the department’s oldest employees and is further diminishing the county’s ability to supervise high-risk probationers.

As a result, some officers have turned to early retirements to avoid foreclosures, while others wait to rotate in and out of a limited number of temporary positions for those with injuries or other restrictions.

In November, the Probation Department reported 656 employees — about 16% of the department’s total — were on continuous leaves of absence, according to the most recently available data. Of those, about 215 had received temporary assignments at the time, while another 152 were waiting for placement.

The department’s stance is that employees must be able to perform “all the essential functions of their current classification, including the legally mandated requirements for Peace Officers,” according to probation spokesperson Vicky Waters. State law requires peace officers to be “free from any physical, emotional, or mental condition … that might adversely affect the exercise of the powers of a peace officer.”

‘Can’t go on like this’

One field officer, who spoke on a condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation, was sent home and forced to use his sick time for more than 100 days after a work-related injury prevented him from redeploying to the dangerously understaffed Los Padrinos. The injury did not in any way impact his ability to do the office job he’d done for years without issue, yet he wasn’t allowed to continue in that role, he said.

“In order to be full duty, you basically have to go to the hall,” he said.

When he landed a “temporary modified assignment” from the rotation last year, the department sent him back to his old office, to his same desk, where he did the same work he’d done before he presented a medical note saying he could not redeploy to Los Padrinos.

The assignment lasted for about three months before he rotated out and was placed on leave again, he said. Now, someone else is collecting overtime to do the same job, while he sits at home burning through his sick time once again.

“When they told me they didn’t have a place for me, I told them, ‘my cubicle is empty,’ ” he said.

The officer, who has spent more than two decades with the department, said his salary will effectively be halved if the 90-days-on, 90-days-off rotation continues. His family already is cutting back, putting off replacing an old car and scrimping wherever possible to make sure their bills are covered.

“I’m behind,” he said. “I’m just praying for some type of relief in the near future. I can’t go on like this.”

The officer isn’t sure what to tell his wife and friends when they ask why he can only work three months at a time, instead of year round, he said. Probation officials declined to provide an explanation when asked why some officers have been reassigned to their old jobs on a temporary basis.

“I’m not able to provide info on a specific person’s accommodation or individual circumstances. However, I can tell you we follow the accommodation process, policies and laws for anyone who requests it,” Waters said.

Eduardo Mundo, chair of the county’s Probation Oversight Commission, described such decisions as a “failure to lead” and accused Probation Chief Viera Rosa of “throwing pasta at the wall and seeing what sticks.”

“Unfortunately, nothing is sticking,” he said. “It’s not good for anybody.”

Plea for mutual aid

Mundo has urged the department to bring the officers sent home back, particularly as the field offices now face their own staffing crisis.

In December, the Probation Department sent out a plea for mutual aid, asking the Sheriff’s Department and the county’s more than 45 municipal police departments to use their officers and equipment to conduct “compliance checks” on probationers due to a “significant void” in probation’s ability to supervise “high-risk probationers, including those convicted of sexual assault, domestic violence, gang-related crimes, and other offenses.”

In a statement, Waters said the department is “aggressively implementing necessary reforms to stabilize and improve conditions in our juvenile facilities.” That change requires “decisive action,” she said, and the department is dedicated to ensuring that “every facility is staffed, structured and supported in a way that prioritizes public safety, rehabilitation and reentry.”

“We recognize that some long-serving employees face challenges in meeting peace officer requirements due to age, injury or other medical conditions,” Waters said. “The Department remains committed to providing accommodations whenever possible so that employees are informed about their options, including alternative job placements and retirement pathways.”

Employees who are off for six months or more can apply for long-term disability, Waters said. A leave donation program also exists for employees who have exhausted their accrued leave times, but are unable to return to work.

Aging workforce

The department continues to struggle with an aging workforce. More than half of the sworn probation officers are at least 50 years old, including 19 officers who are older than 70, according to demographics provided by the county. At Los Padrinos, those officers could find themselves tasked with restraining an 18-year-old, risking injury, or reprimand, if the restraint is later deemed excessive.

“People want to work, they just don’t want to risk their life doing it,” the field officer said.

Probation does not participate in the safety retirement program offered to law enforcement agencies by the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association. As a result, the average age of retirement in the past three years has been 61, according to the Probation Department. By comparison, the average retirement age for a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy was 53 in 2022.

The lack of an early retirement program can make it more difficult to persuade potential hires to choose the Probation Department over working in a police department.

“While we recognize that the absence of a safety retirement plan affects our competitiveness in law enforcement recruitment, any potential discussions regarding changes would need to include multiple stakeholders beyond just Probation,” Waters said.

Early retirement

The Los Angeles County Deputy Probation Officers’ Union has come out in support of early retirement for its members.

“Probation officers, like all peace officers, engage in dangerous and arduous work and should be afforded the same retirement benefits as their counterparts in law enforcement,” said Stacy Ford, the union’s president. “The current system, which requires probation officers to stay in the department for additional years before they can retire, contributes to the injuries and physical limitations that many officers experience over the course of our careers.”

The forced leaves already have accelerated retirement plans for some officers.

A former field officer told the Southern California News Group she retired four years earlier than planned, at 61 at a lower rate, because her only other options were to redeploy to Los Padrinos, where the injuries she sustained on the job could be exacerbated, or continue to stay on leave and risk losing her home.

“I’d never been late on my mortgage in my entire life of being a homeowner, not once, and for two months I couldn’t pay my mortgage,” said the officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to a pending workers’ compensation case. “I was about to lose my home and everything, and it was like nobody cared.”

The former field officer had worked in traditional probation overseeing juveniles in South Los Angeles for more than 30 years and would have stayed at least until 65 if the department hadn’t sent her home. Her job had fewer physical requirements compared to working in Los Padrinos, she said.

The officer had not worked in a juvenile detention facility in decades, she said. “I dedicated my life to this department and they just tossed me to the side,” she said.

Lawsuit alleges discrimination

Arnold Peter, an attorney representing a potential class of up to 800 probation officers in a lawsuit against the county, said his clients are facing the same hardships.

“Many of them are experiencing direct financial loss,” Peter said. “It runs the gamut starting from vacations being canceled, to having to pull kids out of private schools, having to cut back on the number of times you eat out or order food, to homes being under risk of foreclosure and cars being repossessed.”

The litigation accuses the department of discriminating against officers based on medical disabilities, of failing to provide reasonable accommodations, and of retaliation. Three of the field officers in the case allege they sustained injuries after they were redeployed to Los Padrinos.

There are significant differences between the job classifications for those working in the field and those deployed to the juvenile hall, according to the lawsuit. The Deputy Probation Officer II field position is classified as requiring “light” physical effort, including the occasional lifting of “up to 10 pounds,” while Detention Services Officer jobs are classified as “arduous” with “extraordinary physical activity” needed at times, according to an amended complaint and a description on the Probation Department’s website.

Peter is hopeful the case will prompt reinstatement of the officers to their respective field offices with back pay — as well as damages — to cover the losses from the unpaid leaves.

Los Angeles County has denied the allegations and is pushing to have the lawsuit thrown out. County attorneys argued in recent filings that placing officers on leave until they are able to perform their full duties is a reasonable accommodation, as nothing prevents the officers from returning to work once their medical restrictions are lifted.

“As courts have recognized, in providing reasonable accommodations, ‘an employer is not required to choose the best accommodation or the specific accommodation the employee seeks,’ ” wrote attorney Zachary Sarnoff.

Staffing crisis intractable

Viera Rosa implemented the mandate that field officers must be capable of redeploying, or they will be sent home, last year after earlier redeployments failed to muster the necessary numbers to fix the staffing shortage that has plagued Los Padrinos since it opened in the summer of 2023.

That policy hadn’t been enforced prior to Viera Rosa’s arrival. But the dire need for officers at Los Padrinos changed that. The juvenile hall was reopened in 2023 after state officials forced the closure of its two predecessors, Barry J. Nidorf and Central juvenile halls, due to similar understaffing.

Initially, Viera Rosa required field officers to work at the juvenile hall twice a week. Then, he redeployed more than 200 field officers to the facility full-time on 90-day rotations.

That larger redeployment effort, starting in February 2024, did make a difference and temporarily staved off state regulators who had warned that Los Padrinos could be closed too if the county didn’t improve the staffing.

But it didn’t take long for the plan to unravel.

Once the first rotation ended, the department struggled to find enough people for the second. Morale, already low from years of unstable leadership, plummeted further as officers lives were upended by sudden shifts to their schedules and work locations. Aging officers planning to spend their final years at low stress desk jobs were now expected to supervise juveniles in a chaotic — and violent — environment.

By June, half of the 541 regular employees at Los Padrinos were on leave and dozens were still calling out every day, according to figures provided to the county Probation Oversight Commission. The constant call-outs have been attributed to safety concerns and are compounded by worries that the employees will be held over for additional shifts when others don’t show up.

County defiant on Los Padrinos

The Board of State and Community Corrections, the regulatory body overseeing California’s jails and juvenile halls, ultimately ordered Los Padrinos to close following a series of failed inspections in late 2024, but, so far, the county has refused to comply, arguing it has nowhere else to send the roughly 230 youth in custody at the facility.

Probation has unveiled plans to reduce the population at Los Padrinos to bolster recruitment and incentivize transfers and potentially to further consolidate its facilities, but the future of Los Padrinos remains up in the air.

The BSCC denied an attempt by L.A. County to appeal the decision that led to the facility being declared “unsuitable” for the confinement of youth. However, the state board has since conducted a new reinspection at Los Padrinos that could reverse the closure order if the facility manages to pass again. That inspection is still ongoing.

Superior Court Judge Miguel Espinoza also has taken up the question of whether Los Padrinos should be emptied as part of a juvenile murder case. He has delayed making a decision on the matter three times so far out of concern his actions could destabilize the county’s other juvenile facilities.