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BLM protesters settle the part of their suit against former DA Jackie Lacey
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LA County completes move of juvenile detainees to Los Padrinos in Downey By City News Service
By City News Service
The front entrance and waiting area at Los Padrinos | Photo courtesy of County of Los Angeles Probation
M (Left to right) Former District Attorney Jackie Lacey and co-founder of the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter Melina Abdulla. | Photo of Lacey courtesy of LA County District Attorney’s Office / Photo of Abdulla by Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0)
T
hree Black Lives Matter demonstrators confronted at gunpoint by former Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey’s late husband have settled their part of the case against the county’s top prosecutor. The plaintiffs in the Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit are Melina Abdullah, Dahlia Ferlito and Justin Marks. In court papers filed Thursday with Judge Theresa M. Traber, the plaintiffs’ attorneys state that in light of their clients’ acceptance of Jackie Lacey’s compromise settlement offer -- the terms of which were not divulged --
the only remaining causes of action are against the estate of David Lacey for assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Trial is scheduled Aug. 1. Abdullah is a professor and former chair of the Department of Pan-African Studies at Cal State Los Angeles and a co-founder of the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter. Lacey was criticized by Abdullah and other activists for declining to prosecute some law enforcement officers involved in fatal on-duty shootings during her two terms in office. For several years,
protesters, including BLM members, gathered in the hundreds outside the Hall of Justice, where Lacey’s office was located, every Wednesday to protest against Lacey, some with signs, noise amplifiers and drums, while chanting slogans such as, “Bye, Jackie” and “Jackie Lacey Must Go.” The confrontation occurred when members of the group showed up at the couple’s Granada Hills residence the morning of March 2, 2020. The plaintiffs went to the Laceys’ home seeking to confront her for allegedly refusing to meet with them.
Lacey’s husband, David Lacey, opened the door after the plaintiffs rang the bell. Video images show him pointing a gun and saying he would shoot if the visitors did not get off his porch. David Lacey died Sept. 5. The encounter at the Lacey home occurred a day before Lacey -- now 66 years old and the first woman and first Black prosecutor to hold the top post since the office was created in 1850 -was forced into a runoff with former San Francisco County District Attorney George Gascón, who ultimately was elected.
ore than 100 juvenile detainees were successfully transferred out of the troubled Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar to the renovated Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey, completing a statemandated transfer of all L.A. County pre-disposition detainees out of two facilities deemed unsuitable for housing, county officials said Wednesday. The move of 106 pre-disposition youths -- those whose criminal cases have not yet been adjudicated -- out of Nidorf Hall was completed Tuesday, according to the county Probation Department. They joined roughly 170 youths who were transferred last week to Los Padrinos from Central Juvenile Hall in Lincoln Heights. According to the county, a total of 274 youths are now housed at Los Padrinos. The county had been facing a July 23 deadline set by the Board of State and Community Corrections to move all pre-disposition youths out of Nidorf and Central halls, both of which it determined to be unsuitable for housing youth detainees. The board cited a laundry list of ongoing violations of state standards at the facilities, including sanitary conditions of the housing units, detainees’ access to school and other programs and staffing shortfalls. Nidorf will continue to be home to a Security Youth Track Facility for post-disposition juvenile offenders. About 60 youth are being housed in that facility. “We’ve gone from Mission Impossible to mission accomplished,” Guillermo Viera Rosa, the county’s
See Los Padrinos Page 28