City to move all youth offenders with symptoms

The city has begun shuffling youths between its two juvenile detention centers so ones showing symptoms of coronavirus are kept under one roof in the Bronx and ones without symptoms are in Brooklyn, the Daily News has learned, in a plan raising safety concerns among staff.

About 11 youths with symptoms were scheduled to be sent this Sunday from Crossroads Juvenile Center in Brooklyn to Horizon Juvenile Center in the Bronx, according to a Horizon staffer, citing comments from supervisors.

Meanwhile, Horizon is shipping out youths who haven’t shown symptoms, including 15 who left for Crossroads in recent days, the source said.

“We are alarmed by the Agency’s dangerous and unwise decision to concentrate all children who have tested positive for the Coronavirus into the Horizon Juvenile Detention Center,” Darek Robinson, president of the SEIU Local 371 union of social services workers, wrote in a Thursday letter to the Administration for Children Services (ACS).

“Even if it were possible to confine all who contract the virus under one roof, by doing so ACS concentrates the risk to one segment of the workforce, [sowing dissension] and inevitable staffing shortages,” he added.

Robinson called on ACS to abandon its plan to house youths with coronavirus symptoms under one roof and demanded protective equipment like gloves and masks for staff.

ACS said four youths at Horizon tested positive for COVID, but insisted Friday there were no plans to transfer anyone from Crossroads.

But an ACS spokeswoman insisted the “consolidation plan” — in which youths are to get their temperatures checked every day and sent to a “special housing unit” at Horizon if they show symptoms — is “the best way for us to prevent the spread of COVID-19 among youth and staff, as it will minimize exposure.”

“The safety and health of the youth and the staff in our secure detention facilities is our number-one priority,” Chanel Caraway said in a statement.