Local officials have different versions of a situation this week at New Orleans' Juvenile Justice Center.
The NOPD's SWAT responded to a disturbance Thursday night at the center.
Mayor LaToya Cantrell said she rushed to the center and "beat the negotiators to the scene,” after an initial police radio call stated there were seven youths armed with knives at the Intervention Center.
She said three of the inmates had locked themselves inside a cell and caused a "disruption,” but police were able to restore order without any violence.
"They didn't have any knives," Cantrell said at a Friday afternoon news conference. "It was not a riot at all, but it was disruption and the staff's inability to address the inmates at the time.”
But earlier Friday, Cantrell's newly appointed director of the Juvenile Justice Center, Kyshun Webster, said the three inmates who were holed up inside a cell had fashioned homemade weapons and made "homicidal threats" to the staff..District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro's description of events differed even more. He said police sources told him there had absolutely been a riot.
"The disturbance was dangerous and out of control, and not quickly quelled,” Cannizzaro said in a press statement.
Emergency call records indicate police were dispatched to the scene at 9:00, arrived at 9:02 and remained on the scene almost three hours, until 11:58 p.m.
The DA said the Cantrell administration asked prosecutors to get a judge's order to transfer two of the inmates, who were both facing charges as adults, to the city's adult jail, the Orleans Justice Center. Latrell Alexis, a 16-year-old who turns 17 in October, was being held in the Juvenile Justice Center on second-degree murder charges. Criminal Court Judge Karen Herman ordered Alexis moved to the adult jail Friday morning.
Alexis was charged in June with last Februarys shooting of a 14-year-old boy in Hollygrove.
The DA has not identified the other boy slated for transfer to the adult jail.
Webster and Emily Wolff, Cantrell's director of the Office of Youth and Families, said the request to transfer the two inmates did not come from the administration, but from the DA. That drew a rebuke from Cannizzaro.
"It is disturbing that these members of the city administration either are uninformed about the actions taken by their superiors and colleagues or are deliberately misleading the public about them,” Cannizzaro said. "We stand by our version of events, both in relation to the seriousness of last night's disturbance within the youth center and the request made by a high-ranking City Hall official asking that we seek the necessary court orders to transfer two of these violent detainees into the custody of the Orleans Justice Center.”
Cantrell then called her own press conference late Friday afternoon and contradicted her staff, saying her criminal justice commissioner, Tenisha Stevens, agreed with the assistant DA early Friday to have the two youths transferred to the adult jail.
That's significant because Cantrell has made safety at the Juvenile Justice Center a priority, and juvenile justice advocates are against housing anyone under 17 at the adult jail.
"While we don't yet know the details of last night's incident, we do know that these incidents have happened before and that sending kids to OPP has not prevented them from happening again,” said Aaron Clark-Rizzio, executive director of the advocacy group Louisiana Center for Children's Rights. "Recent efforts focused on making sure the facility is operating in a therapeutic, trauma-informed manner need to continue, in addition to fixing any remaining issues so that every child and staff member is safe and protected.”