Tuesday, August 12, 2025

LA County Attorneys Urge Dismissal of Former Probation Chief’s Retaliation Suit

CITY NEWS SERVICE

A lawsuit by the former Los Angeles County Probation Department chief alleging he was terminated for coming forward about staffing shortages should be dismissed because the problems he was hired to fix instead “persisted and metastasized,” county attorneys argue in court papers filed Monday.

Adolfo Gonzales was fired in March 2023. In his Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit brought 11 months later, Gonzales contends he “candidly reported to … (Board of State and Community Corrections) inspectors” that there were staffing shortages in the Probation Department that violated state regulations and mandates.

Thereafter, the BSCC issued an audit report critical of juvenile halls based, in part, on the disclosures Gonzales made to the BSCC, which demanded corrective action to be taken to address violations caused by staffing shortages and which ultimately prompted Gonzales’ firing, the suit states.

However, in court papers filed Monday with Judge Michael Shultz in advance of an Oct. 28 hearing, county attorneys state that during Gonzales’ tenure, the department struggled with regulatory violations, staffing shortages and public scandals and therefore his one claim for retaliation should be dismissed.

“Plaintiff’s performance declined, his communication with the Board of Supervisors was sporadic and ineffective and his handling of a use-of-force incident, along with public criticism following the release of related video footage, prompted an oversight body, the public and members of the board to call for his resignation,” according to the county attorneys’ pleadings.

When Gonzales was hired in October 2021, the board expected him to, among other things, stabilize the department’s juvenile operations and implement a “care first, jails last” approach to serving the youth in juvenile hall, according to the county lawyers’ court papers.

“Instead, plaintiff careened the department from one self-created crisis to the next,” they argue. “The problems that plaintiff was hired to address persisted and metastasized.”

Rather than take responsibility, Gonzales sued “in an attempt to recast himself as the victim of some kind of whistleblower retaliation,” the county attorneys’ court papers further state.

With more than 6,500 employees and a budget of nearly $1 billion, the county’s Probation Department is the largest probation services agency in the United States.