Texas Youth Commission
director Dimitria D. Pope talks about project reform Wednesday afternoon during
the State of the Agency town hall meeting at the UTPB library.
KEVIN BUEHLER|ODESSA AMERICAN
Texas Youth Commission
executives confronted its frontline employees Wednesday when it kicked off a
six-stop “state of the agency” tour in Odessa, and the peace offering organized
by the Austin-based agency’s new executive director didn’t go without
appreciation.
“I thought you people in Austin were the worst people in the world,” Lilly
Ontiveros, a West Texas State School employee, said. “… I’m finding out you
were in it with us, feeling the same thing we’re feeling.”
The tour, which is in Waco today, started at the closest metropolitan area to
the West Texas State School, the all-male detention center that made national
headlines when a statewide scandal erupted in February.
The lack of prosecution of two facility administrators in connection to sexual
misconduct with teenage male inmates re-emerged in media reports and the
fallout led to the sweeping agency reform signed into law in early June.
Feeling beaten down by constant investigations, disconnected from upper
management and continually worried that their jobs were on the line, many
employees’ moods soured amid the controversy, they said.
The attitude brightened for the 65 attending the meeting, but the reconnection
to administrators doesn’t mean the West Texas State School and the Sheffield
Boot Camp are safe from closure.
Currently two facilities, the Marlin orientation unit and John Shero State
Juvenile Correctional Facility in San Saba, are being closed as youth
facilities.
Acting Executive Director Dimitria Pope said she didn’t know if any other
facilities would be shuttered. But if that decision is made, it won’t be
without fully auditing every campus on an objective level with a vulnerability
assessment conducted by an outside independent agency.
These assessments will be completed by November or December, Pope hoped, and
they will take into account each campus’ physical plant, support system,
environment, safety and security, staffing and other factors.
Then if a closure is made based on the agency’s inmate population, Pope was
forthcoming with who will make the judgment.
“That final decision is going to be on Dimitria Pope’s shoulders,” she said.
Legislation mandates have reduced the agency’s youth population to 3,151
inmates. Heading into 2007, the population was about 4,000.
Administrators, specifically Pope, approached
“I don’t know if you’ve sat in the central office or if you even know where the
central office even is,” Pope said. “I wanted to bring it to the people in
their territory. … At least we can limit people saying we don’t know what’s
going on in
Donna Garcia, community relations director at the West Texas State School, has
felt she has been in the dark since the scandal became a talking point for
every state legislator.
“We didn’t know anything,” Garcia said after the meeting.
Garcia, admittedly emotional, began to cry when she addressed the executives
during the question-and-answer phase of the meeting.
The dynamic and seemingly sincere Pope walked up to her and cupped Garcia’s
clasped hands, which hung over the chair in front of her.
“Hold your head up and fight with us,” Pope told Garcia.
Pope wants the
Pope maintains an open-door policy and encouraged even the newest juvenile
correction officers to say hello to her when they see her.
Tell her how
Transparency, Pope called it.
A healing process, Ontiveros said.