Jefferson Parish’s Sheriff is angry, he seen juveniles, particularly the ones housed at the Bridge City Juvenile Justice Center, getting away with criminal activity and not being held accountable.
Speaking with WWL’s Newell Normand, the Sheriff brought the issue into the light:
“We’ve talked about our problems with Bridge City, I mean that’s not a Jefferson Parish facility, although it’s located in Jefferson Parish, but our bigger problems with that facility are the juveniles.”
Lopinto is talking about criminal violence against facility guards and staff by the inmates and the crimes committed by those who manage to escape and commit more crime.
“When you have a person who’s doing juvenile life to the age of 21, and they commit a battery on a correctional officer or do an escape—unless it’s a crime of violence that they can be charged as an adult for there’s no penalty.”
One example is a 17-year-old escapee who shot a New Orleans resident during a carjacking. He’s facing a number of crimes and it’s been announced will be tried as an adult.
Lopinto says juvenile crime is tracked closely by his department. In one instance a juvenile was responsible for as many as nine car burglaries, he says those nine burglaries skewed the numbers of crimes in the Parish.
“So you’re a 15-year-old in there for a carjacking, you have a crime of violence, you’re already serving juvenile life and you escape, what are they going to give you, juvenile life?”
But Lopinto isn’t taking this lying down.
“I’m going to go to the legislature next year and say ‘look crimes that are committed inside a facility [like Bridge City] they should be automatically tacked on. Tacked on, on top of the 21 year age of juvenile life. It shouldn’t be a position where they basically have a free ride.’”
