Email
Isn’t the idea behind creating a separate lockup for juveniles to keep them safe from adult predators?
Not to make them easy pickin’s?
Yet the latter has allegedly happened twice in the past six months at the Bernalillo County Juvenile Detention and Youth Services Center, first to a 17-year-old male detainee whose alleged rape in a broom closet last fall appears on a videotape, and now to a 19-year-old who is set to deliver a baby conceived last year while she was incarcerated.
Bernalillo County needs to do an immediate and complete review of its juvenile lockup policies and procedures — including corrections officer screening — because Deputy County Manager Tom Swisstack’s lame comment that those are “active and accredited” doesn’t negate criminal charges in the first case or civil claims in the second. His equally lame comments regarding the impending birth — with ex-jail guard Edward Edmon as the purported proud papa — amount to “I imagine the director conducted a thorough investigation or the officer wouldn’t have been discharged.”
He imagines? Is that why county taxpayers hand him $107,000 a year? In fact, Edmon was fired because he didn’t show up to work three days in a row, not because of the rape allegations.
County Commission Chairwoman Maggie Hart Stebbins says the county will consider expanding its surveillance system to reduce blind spots. A spokesman says there are now “stricter procedures for escorting clients in the facility.” And County Manager Tom Zdunek says officials are “working to establish a culture of zero tolerance for sexual assault in detention facilities.”
But the first case was recorded on a surveillance camera. Both involved jail guards who must be entrusted with escorting detainees. And the fact the county has to work toward zero tolerance for the rape of minors is abhorrent and unacceptable.
A lawsuit filed on behalf of Shauna H. alleges she was targeted, pressured and coerced into sex after seeing Edmon punish another detainee who refused to submit to his advances. A criminal complaint says Edmon allegedly told her he would “never get caught having sex with her because he knew all the areas of the facility where cameras did not cover, the ‘blind spots.’ ”
You don’t have to “imagine” that is a textbook example of someone in power abusing someone entrusted to their care.
It is disturbing that there have been more than one alleged instance of abuse of power in so short a time.
As these cases work their way through the courts, Swisstack and the county need to work on ensuring that the detention center’s policies and procedures not only keep the community safe from the juveniles who are in county custody, but that those juveniles are safe from predatory county employees as well.
This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.
