LA County Probation Department cuts 13 bureau chiefs in sudden restructuring

The Los Angeles County Probation Department is eliminating 13 of its bureau chiefs and removing an entire layer of its upper management in hopes of speeding up reform efforts.

Probation Chief Guillermo Viera Rosa announced the “unprecedented restructuring” of the agency in a news release Friday afternoon, June 28. Flattening the organization will “make for quicker implementation of new policies, clearer lines of authority, better internal feedback and greater transparency,” officials said. The goal is to push decision-making closer to line staff, probationers, detained youth and their families, they said.

“This management restructuring represents a major step toward resizing and reorienting the Department under the County’s ‘Care First, Jails Last’ initiative to enact criminal justice reform,” Viera Rosa said. “A streamlined organization will not only allow us to enact internal reforms more effectively, but it will also align us better with the new County Departments of Youth Development, and Justice, Care and Opportunities.”

Those affected by the restructuring will be offered positions in other county departments, according to probation officials.

Bureau chiefs typically reported to the deputy director of probation and were responsible for ensuring each of their respective bureaus — such as adult field services or detention services — operated in line with the department’s strategic goals and standards, according to job postings. That didn’t always happen, especially when new administrations attempted to create change, according to Eduardo Mundo, a former supervising probation officer and chair of the Probation Oversight Commission.

“I get the feeling that the middle managers were more obstructionists than helpful,” he said. “You have these midlevel managers who have been there a long time and are preserving a system that stopped working a decade ago.”

Mundo is celebrating the change as he claims certain bureau chiefs hindered the Probation Oversight Commission’s efforts to get data. Removing those barriers will help the oversight commission, advocates and the Board of Supervisors accomplish their respective goals.

“This housecleaning had to happen and it’s great that it’s finally happening,” Mundo said. “It means he’s (Viera Rosa) going to be able to do the things he has to do, that others couldn’t do.”

The Probation Department has been under fire for more than a year due to a staffing crisis that left its juvenile detention facilities in such a poor condition that state regulators forced the closure of two juvenile halls in 2023 and nearly shuttered two more this year.

Excessive call-outs and medical leaves among juvenile hall staff led the department to redeploy hundreds of officers from the traditional probation side to the detention facilities. That decision has prompted lawsuits and an unfair labor practices claim and made Viera Rosa unpopular with some rank-and-file officers.

Viera Rosa, during a presentation to the board in May, described the department as reaching a turning point where it can now focus on improving the quality of the county’s facilities, rather than solely putting out fires. But critics remain skeptical as a parade of probation chiefs over the past decade have promised change while conditions in the juvenile halls continued to deteriorate.

Viera Rosa’s presentation envisioned a future where other county agencies, such as the Department of Youth Development — originally supposed to take control of the juvenile facilities by 2025 — would have a say in the facilities’ day-to-day operations.

The Probation Department requested the bureau chiefs’ positions be defunded as part of the revised budget approved by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on June 24. The same budget added 28 new positions to the Department of Youth Development and 10 new positions to the Justice, Care and Opportunities Department. Both departments provide support services to probation.