Colorado’s Division of Youth Services last month removed all youth from its Lookout Mountain detention center amid what advocates say were deteriorating safety conditions.
All 36 young people at Lookout Mountain Youth Services Center in Golden were temporarily transferred to other state-run facilities, DYS interim director Dave Lee told juvenile justice stakeholders in an Aug. 28 memo reviewed by The Denver Post. Many of the staff members there have also been temporarily relocated to support youth at their new centers.
Lee did not discuss the reasoning for the sudden move, only saying that this “will allow DYS to use available statewide resources to support youth currently assigned” to Lookout Mountain.
“The division takes action like this from time to time and comes as part of our ongoing commitment to ensuring the highest quality of care for the youth we serve,” he wrote.
A DYS spokesperson, when contacted by The Post last week, was similarly vague about why the state had emptied the long-troubled campus.
“The temporary transfer of youth and staff from the Lookout Mountain Youth Services Center to other DYS facilities is a result of our commitment to providing a supportive environment that enables youth to achieve success,” spokesperson Alex Urbach said in an email. “After careful consideration and an assessment of staffing capacity, the division transferred youth to other facilities to provide them with increased supports to meet the dynamic needs of (Lookout Mountain’s) complex youth population.”
Lee, through the DYS spokesperson, declined an interview request for this story.
Urbach said the division anticipates returning to normal operations “at some point this calendar year.”
Dana Walters Flores, Colorado campaign coordinator at the National Center for Youth Law, said her organization in early August received a critical mass of calls from parents and advocates saying Lookout Mountain “was in real trouble.”
“The conditions of confinement deteriorated rapidly in ways that felt unmanageable to staff and kids living there,” she said.
Staff had done everything they could and used all the tools at their disposal, Flores said. But reports kept coming about brutality, discrimination and the improper use of physical restraint by Lookout Mountain’s administration, she said.
At that point, she said, a number of organizations that go onto the campus to provide services got wind that “something potentially very dangerous was going to happen there.”
A second person, who spoke to The Post on condition of anonymity because they continue to work with youth inside DYS, said they grew so alarmed by a dangerous rumor circulating inside Lookout Mountain that they urged one of their teens to report it to the state child abuse hotline.
Flores said she reported the urgent concerns to DYS leadership as well as the Office of the Colorado Child Protection Ombudsman, which investigates youth safety issues, in mid-August. The ombudsman, Stephanie Villafuerte, declined to comment on the report.
Soon after, Lee announced the changes at Lookout Mountain. DYS officials did not respond to questions from The Post about safety concerns at the facility.
“I want to commend leadership at the division for recognizing this was a circumstance where they needed to proactively do something that I don’t know if there’s precedent for,” Flores said. “Moving all the youth from a facility in order to prevent injury or the loss of life to kids or staff is exactly how we hope that any youth correctional leader will behave. It took a lot of courage and creativity on their part to do what they did.”
Lookout Mountain has a history of riots, violence and escapes.
Five staff members in February were injured at the campus while responding to a series of violent incidents, police previously said. A “small number” of youth also sustained minor injuries, according to DYS.
In 2019, there were five high-profile security issues at the Golden complex, including a staff member arrested on suspicion of possessing child pornography, multiple escapes by violent young people and a riot between rival gangs, which injured three staff members.
The following year, the state split up Lookout Mountain into four distinct facilities, following evidence from other states that shows better outcomes at smaller centers. The state recently unified the complex back into one facility, which can house up to 96 young people.
An investigation by The Post published in March found DYS facilities around the state have seen rampant allegations of excessive force by staff members, serious injuries sustained by teens while being physically restrained and a litany of illicit drugs entering secure facilities, as well as several allegations of staff members engaging in sexual relationships with youth in their care.
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