More Problems for L.A. County Juvenile System

The problems at Los Angeles County’s reeling juvenile detention system intensified Wednesday as two more teenagers escaped custody and an inmate started a fire at a juvenile hall.

The two escapees, both girls, bolted from a community center where they had been taken to have tattoos removed, the Probation Department said.

The escapes followed a break-out Tuesday by two boys from a probation camp in the San Gabriel Valley. One had not been captured as of Wednesday evening.

And those incidents come less than a week after four gang members escaped from Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar last Thursday. All but one of the escapees remains at large.

Officials from the Probation Department are also investigating the fire, which was started at Nidorf, detention chief Ron Barrett said.

Barrett said it appeared that an inmate set fire to a bulletin board in one of the classrooms about 11 a.m. Wednesday, possibly with a lighter.

Barrett said the blaze was quickly extinguished and no one was injured, but classes for several hundred youths were canceled.

Though inmates are not permitted to have lighters, staff at the county’s juvenile detention facilities complain that contraband is widely available.

The Probation Department, which operates juvenile halls and camps that hold about 4,000 offenders, does not systematically track drugs, weapons and other contraband seized from inmates, the department said.