After worker tests positive for COVID-19, Broward diverts juvenile detainees to Miami-Dade
Youths arrested in Broward County who meet criteria for juvenile detention will be diverted to Miami-Dade’s lockup beginning Friday as an employee of the Broward County Juvenile Detention Center has tested positive for the coronavirus.
Broward’s chief Juvenile Court judge, Michael Orlando, said early Friday morning that he had been informed by the detention center’s superintendent, Duviel Rosello, that the lockup, at 222 NW 22nd Ave., Fort Lauderdale, was being closed to new admissions. An unidentified staff member at the 95-bed facility was confirmed to have the virus leading to COVID-19, the global pandemic that has swept South Florida.
Later Friday morning, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice confirmed the positive test. “We found out last night that an employee at the Broward Regional Juvenile Detention Center is confirmed positive for COVID-19,” Amanda Slama wrote in an email to the Miami Herald.
Slama said none of the Broward lockup’s 32 youths — or any detained youth throughout the state — have yet tested positive.
DJJ, Slama said, “continues to take all necessary steps related to [COVID-19] in Florida. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in Florida, DJJ has coordinated a proactive and comprehensive response to keep all youth and staff safe within state-operated juvenile detention centers and residential commitment programs.”
“There will be no new admissions to Broward’s [detention center],” she added.
Whether any youths at the facility have contracted the virus may be difficult to determine, however.
For several weeks, Florida juvenile justice administrators had been tight-lipped about how many youths or employees, if any, had been tested for the highly contagious virus.
The agency has said it lacks the ability to perform tests unless and until a youth already is showing symptoms of the disease.
“We knew this was going to happen,” said Gordon Weekes, Broward’s chief assistant public defender, whose office represents the lion’s share of youths in detention. “It was not a matter of if, but a matter of when.”
Attorneys for indigent youths in Broward began inquiring about the safety of their clients last month when one boy appeared at the Broward County Courthouse wearing protective gear and showing flu-like symptoms.
But Weekes said DJJ administrators had been extremely stingy with details about what the agency was doing to protect detained youth, and the adults who oversee them.
“It has been so frustrating trying to get straight answers from DJJ, especially about the health and welfare of children during the COVID-19 outbreak,” Weekes said. “They should be very straightforward, and very aggressive in testing children and staff members and in notifying stakeholder and parents about the results of testing.”
Because people who have been stricken with COVID-19 can be asymptomatic for days, or weeks, before they become ill, routine testing is the only way to ensure the health of both children and adults who are in tight quarters within DJJ facilities, Weekes said.
DJJ’s top administrator has expressed offense at the public defender’s office’s suggestion that it is not doing enough to protect the youths in its custody.
“I understand your concern for the health of the youth and staff in the Broward Regional Juvenile Detention Center. I, too, am concerned, not only for them but for all youth and staff in the 21 detention centers and 51 residential commitment programs I oversee, as well as all the JACs and detention screening centers under my purview,” DJJ Secretary Simone Marstiller wrote in a March 31 email to Broward’s top juvenile public defender.
“Lest you think that I do not sufficiently appreciate the burden that rests on my shoulders, let me assure you that I feel acutely the weight of that burden,” she added.
“As you are aware, DJJ has implemented protocols in every one of its detention centers and residential commitment facilities that include daily screening of staff and essential visitors... daily objective monitoring of youths’ health status, social distancing and group size limits, increased frequency of environmental cleaning and disinfecting, and specific steps to take in the event of evidence of exposure to the virus,” Marstiller wrote.
Marstiller said such steps “may or may not require quarantine and testing, depending on the facts and circumstances presented, with direction from an appropriate medical professional.”
The Miami Herald has asked DJJ whether it had begun testing of youths in lockups and residential programs in the state. The agency has yet to answer.
A March 23 email from DJJ’s general counsel, Brian Berkowitz, to Broward’s top juvenile public defender, Nadine Girault, suggests that at that point, at least, testing only was being done when a youth was clearly symptomatic — and only under certain circumstances.
The teenager who appeared in court wearing a face mask was not tested “because he did not meet the criteria,” Berkowitz wrote, without specifying what the criteria were.
Medical care provided to detained youths has long been a concern among children’s advocates and attorneys for delinquent youths, particularly in South Florida.
Two nurses initially were indicted for their role in the June 9, 2003, appendicitis death of 17-year-old Omar Paisley at Miami’s lockup, and a grand jury reported that healthcare at the Miami-Dade Detention Center had been deplorable.
On Feb. 19, 2015, 14-year-old Andre Sheffield died of bacterial meningitis after suffering for days, and a 50-page inspector general report faulted the Brevard lockup’s top officer for failing to ensure that officers were properly trained in sick-call procedures.
A federal judge later ruled DJJ’s misconduct in fighting a lawsuit filed by Andre’s grandmother had been so willful and flagrant as to leave the agency with no defense.
The Herald reported that a total of 400 complaints of medical neglect had been investigated by juvenile justice administrators between 2007 and 2017, with 39 of them substantiated and another 23 deemed inconclusive. At least 12 children have died in DJJ’s custody since the year 2000.
Judge Orlando said “any newly arrested youth in Broward will still continue to be assessed at the Broward Juvenile Assessment Center, and ... any youth scoring for secure detention will instead be diverted to Dade’s detention center.”
He said hearings would still be conducted with detainees appearing remotely from Miami-Dade via Zoom.
Friday morning, two youths appeared via teleconferencing for a detention hearing, Weekes said. One girl was sent to Miami’s detention center. Neither youth was wearing a mask or any other protective gear, he added.
“Anyone in custody this week should be wearing masks, at least as a precaution,” Weekes said.
This story was originally published April 10, 2020 at 11:20 AM.