A Jefferson Parish council member wants to see the troubled Bridge City Center for Youth closed and the juvenile inmates relocated.
However, as parish council member Deano Bonono tells WWL's Tommy Tucker, that likely won’t happen soon.
He says he, and the council along with other lawmakers will meet with Governor Edwards to discuss what to do with the juvenile detention center which he says has seen 20 inmate escape attempts in the last year.
“We got them on camera pulling on doors, looking in people’s yards, somebody is going to get hurt or killed and I don’t want that to happen, and that is why we are absolutely begging the state…close this facility and get these dangerous criminals out of there and into a more secure facility,” said Bonono.
He says the facility, run by the Office of Juvenile Justice, is a minimum-security facility and was never designed to hold some of the state’s most dangerous juvenile offenders like it currently does.
“You can tell that this is not a prison, these kids climb out windows, through roofs, so I’d like to see it done in the next six days, and transfer these kids out of there,” said Bonono.
The councilman says he and the entire Jefferson Parish council will call on Governor John Bel Edwards to take action and close the facility for good. They are joined by other lawmakers including State Senator Patrick Connick who also is asking the governor to take action.