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Four others suspended after suspected policy violations at detention facility.

Three officers at the Department of Juvenile Justice shortterm lock up in DeKalb County resigned and four others were suspended — the entire night shift — after the employees were confronted with suspicions that they had violated the agency’s policies.

D JJ spokesman Jim Shuler declined to specify which policies were at issue but said the problem was discovered during an investigation into an unsubstantiated report by a teenage boy locked up at the DeKalb Regional Youth Detention Center that he was sexually assaulted while he slept.

The Georgia Department of Corrections discovered the possible policy violations. DOC has been conducting D JJ internal investigations since the U.S. Department of Justice reported early last month that four state juvenile detention centers were among the 13 with the highest percentage of young inmates reporting inappropriate sexual contact with staff or other detained teenagers.

The day after the damning DO J report became pubic, D JJ Commissioner Avery Niles suspended 19 investigators and the former supervisor of the Office of Investigations, which almost emptied the unit of investigators. D JJ said the 20 suspensions last month came after it was discovered that there were 20 cases of alleged inappropriate sexual contact inside one of its institutions.

The 20 remain suspended with pay while the Georgia Bureau of Investigations and the Department of Corrections look into the open files and try to determine why those cases of alleged inappropriate sexual contact had been open more than 45 days, the time D JJ policy allows.

D JJ and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation initially looked into the sexual assault claim made by the teenager held at the DeKalb RYDC. It was while DOC was doing follow up that investigators came across “an unrelated case at DeKalb RYDC allegedly involving several D JJ staff members in potential policy violations.”

“A corrective action is already underway and a replacement night-shift staff is