A Farce Known as Youth Rehabilitation

From an incident report filed Aug. 10 by a correctional officer working at the D.C. Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services' Oak Hill center:

[Another officer told me to] "call a code blue and request assistance. [He] told [me] to go to the back door of the unit to let the staff in. Immediately upon leaving the area it became a riotous situation. Several staff entered [and] repeatedly asked all the residents to go to their rooms.

"All of a sudden the riotous situation was totally out of control. Residents were fighting staff. [One resident] hit an officer in his face. [A second resident] began attacking [a] female officer. He was throwing punch after punch hitting her several times. Chairs were being thrown. An officer got hit in the back and head with a blue chair. [I] got hit and scratched under my right eye. All of the residents were involved. Because the riotous situation was so out of control, Ofc [name withheld] continued to request more staff to come and assist us."

So, why this eighth column since Oct. 6 about the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services?

David Gaither, an employee of a nonprofit group that contracts with the department, thinks he knows. In a Dec. 9 e-mail, Gaither accused me of conducting a "witch hunt" and said that he "spoke with a good friend who has a good friend who works at the Post. They said that Colby is trying to revive his dwindling career by trying to get a department head removed."

Sorry, David. There's no career to revive. I retired from The Post in January.

Here's why I write: Despite the rosy scenario painted by DYRS director Vincent Schiraldi and his devotees, all is not well within that $58 million, D.C. taxpayer-supported department.

I have stacks of incident reports detailing assaults by youths on staff members and on other youths at the Oak Hill center. These reports do not predate Schiraldi's 2005 arrival. The incidents occurred this year, some only a few weeks ago.

Want a glimpse of reality at the department? Revisit the D.C. Council's Dec. 4 oversight hearing.

As Schiraldi testified about his special unit for tracking down runaway youths, few noticed that in the audience was a department-committed youth with an outstanding custody order (also known as a warrant). The order was issued by Superior Court Judge Patricia Broderick after the youth failed to appear for a Nov. 28 status hearing on drug possession.

There is a second outstanding custody order on the youth for absconding from a group home Nov. 23.

A rehabilitation services worker who advised me of the situation spoke with the youth at the hearing but didn't know at the time that he was wanted by the police.