Scrawled on a piece of lined paper is a date, April 27, 2023, and the time, 8:50 to 9:51.
“One hour and one minute,” it says. “Too damn long.”
Over the next five pages, the girl describes witnessing a friend being beaten by guards at the East Mesa Juvenile Detention Facility, one of San Diego’s two juvenile lockups.
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“(She is) screaming that they are hurting her. (She is) screaming for help for 5 minutes. 8 officers on (her), holding her down. (She is) not struggling, just laying still and telling them they are hurting her.”
“(She) is cuffed the whole time, not resisting,” her friend wrote.
The teen gave the written account to Elizabeth Uremovic, a substitute teacher at the facility who had encouraged her students to speak up if they believed their rights were violated.
Over the next year, Uremovic — affectionately known by her students as “white grandma” — collected more such written complaints.
One youth described blacking out after being “punched and kneed in the head” by probation officers. Another described being kicked, punched and slammed to the ground.
“I still have PTSD from this moment,” she wrote. “I really thought I was going to die.”
Several described being denied phone calls home as punishment.
“I get lonely because I’ve been down for so long and away from my family,” one boy wrote. “Me not calling home every day like I always do worries my people because they don’t know if I’m doing good or dead.”
Last week Uremovic learned that California Attorney General Rob Bonta had opened an investigation into San Diego juvenile detention facilities. She was sure it was because of the complaint she’d sent to Bonta’s office. Last September, she’d received a letter saying her complaint had been forwarded to the Bureau of Children’s Justice.
“BCJ uses complaints like yours to develop information about patterns or practices that might indicate the need for formal investigation or law enforcement action by our office, including in the juvenile justice area,” the letter read.
Bonta’s office declined to say what prompted the investigation, saying only that it aims to determine whether any “unlawful activity or practices” occurred in the facilities and to identify potential reforms.
Probation Department spokesperson Chuck Westerheide told The San Diego Union-Tribune that all allegations of misconduct are taken seriously and probation officials were aware of Uremovic’s complaints.
“The department thoroughly investigated allegations made by Ms. Uremovic and none were substantiated,” Westerheide said via email.
In an interview, Uremovic described three instances when she saw students with visible injuries to their faces that they told her were from altercations with guards. She said she was fired in May 2024, more than a year and a half into her role teaching at East Mesa, after telling her boss she had filed complaints with multiple state agencies.
Her allegations echo those made in complaints submitted to local oversight agencies and findings from a civilian panel’s inspections.
A 2023 report by the Juvenile Justice Commission, a court-appointed citizens’ panel that conducts annual inspections of San Diego County’s two juvenile detention facilities, said parents had reached out to commissioners to complain about “abuse by the guards” at East Mesa.
“Recently a number of families have said there have been incidents where correctional staff are beating up detainees,” commissioners wrote.
The families didn’t complain to the Probation Department because they feared their children would face retaliation, the report said.
Commissioners said parents told them that probation officers had used restraints on their children and that their kids had faced unexplained cuts to visiting hours and had lost weight because they weren’t getting enough food.
“One parent’s youth experienced excessive force when put in his cell, was physically abused by officers and told he should go to county (jail) and learn some manners,” commissioners reported.
In a response dated June 5, 2024 — more than a year after commissioners’ April 27, 2023, inspection, and one day before their scheduled 2024 inspection — the probation department said it had met with parents over these concerns.
“The Probation Department appreciates the JJC bringing these grievances and complaints to our attention,” the letter says. “We will investigate to the extent we have enough information and will address these issues as may be warranted.”
The county’s Citizens’ Law Enforcement Review Board, or CLERB, has also fielded complaints from parents alleging misconduct San Diego County juvenile facilities.
CLERB findings from June 2023 show that a woman identified as “Veronica B” submitted a complaint on behalf of her son, alleging that while he was detained at East Mesa, a probation officer used profanity against him, dared the boy to hit him and placed his knee on the boy’s neck.
The board voted to sustain the profanity finding but determined there was not enough evidence to prove or disprove the other allegations.
A living area pod in the East Mesa Juvenile Detention Facility in San Diego. (San Diego County Probation Department)
Last May, the board found that two probation officers used excessive force against a developmentally disabled boy housed at the Youth Transition Campus in Kearny Mesa.
One officer grabbed the boy’s head and “smashed it down on the concrete floor,” said CLERB’s summary of the case.
Sharon Kalish, the boy’s mother who filed the complaint, testified that her son’s disability had made it difficult for him to process what he was being told by officers.
And in October, the board dismissed a case involving an incident at East Mesa partly because probation officials declined to turn over records.
A summary of the complaint alleged that a probation officer repeatedly used the N-word and showed explicit films to boys. It said another officer had considered documenting the violations but didn’t out of fear of retaliation.
The Union-Tribune also recently reviewed three videos, apparently from 2022, that depict what appears to be excessive force used by probation officers to break up fights at East Mesa.
The Juvenile Justice Commission has repeatedly flagged the use of pepper spray to break up fights at East Mesa.
“The number of violent incidents involving (pepper spray) are still concerning to the Juvenile Justice Commission, especially when recognizing the staff Mandt training and lack of programming for youth,” the 2023 report said. “The Mandt system helps develop a culture that provides for emotional, physiological, and physical safety for everyone involved. The number of (pepper spray) incidents should be decreasing, not remaining steady.”
California is an outlier in allowing the use of pepper spray in juvenile detention facilities at all. According to a survey by the Council of Juvenile Justice Administrations, by March of this year two-thirds of states had banned it.
Commissioners who inspected East Mesa last year again flagged the use of pepper spray. They noted that it was used primarily to stop fights, but also that the reports probation officers must submit after using it didn’t say whether any effort were made to prevent the fights in the first place.
“The fights seemed to stem from ongoing issues between youth, but few reports mentioned any steps taken by staff to intervene or mediate before a fight broke out,” commissioners found.
There’s evidence that conditions at East Mesa are improving.
Westerheide, the Probation Department spokesperson, sent the Union-Tribune a graph that appears to show that after steadily rising for years, earlier this year incidents involving use of force and pepper spray at East Mesa have begun to decline.
“One way we have reduced use of (pepper) spray and/or force is to train staff on de-escalation techniques,” he said. “Probation facilities have also increased the number of Senior and Supervising Probation Officers in each unit to provide on the job training, guidance, and mentorship to new staff.”
Data provided by the Probation Department show 54 uses of pepper spray from January through April, compared to 167 uses over the same period last year.
The Juvenile Justice Commission’s 2024 report commended the Probation Department for its changes to how use-of-force incidents are reviewed and for establishing a youth advisory council that allows one youth per pod — the facility is split up into multiple such living areas — to meet with the facility supervisor to discuss complaints and make suggestions for improvement.
“The youth feel heard as some things suggested by youth are incorporated,” the report says. “Youth did however express a need for respect from probation staff.”
Uremovic doesn’t recall seeing many positive interactions between youth and staff during her time at East Mesa, something she said is desperately needed. Many of her students were in foster care — some cycling in and out of juvenile detention — or had parents who’d been incarcerated.
“So your whole life is just, there’s no structure, there’s no family,” she said. “A little bit of attention, kindness, to those kids — it just completely changes them.”