Cory Shaffer
Advance Ohio Media, Cleveland
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Cuyahoga County juvenile court officials last week agreed to reverse the October 2017 firing of a juvenile jail officer accused of throwing urine on a teenage inmate and instead allowed her to resign.
The agreement provided to cleveland.com Wednesday settled a grievance brought by the Laborer’s Local Union 860 on behalf of former youth detention officer Leonor Rivera.
The deal was finalized April 25, one day after cleveland.com revealed that Rivera was hired as a corrections officer at the Cuyahoga County Jail four months after a juvenile court official found her actions were “an embarrassment to the court and jeopardized the integrity of the court.”
The county’s juvenile court also agreed to let Rivera keep her accrued sick time and her years of service, and to give a neutral job recommendation that simply confirmed her employment dates should any potential employers ask about her time as a detention officer, according to the agreement.
Rivera signed the agreement on April 24. A representative of the labor union, juvenile court administrator Teresa Neff and a member of the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office all signed the agreement the next day.
Cleveland.com on April 25 sent a list of questions about Rivera’s February 2018 hiring at the county jail to county spokeswoman Mary Louise Madigan and as of Wednesday had yet to receive a response. Madigan said that she was still working with the county’s human resources department to compile answers to the questions.
The county earlier this month agreed to pay $70,000 to the family of the teenage boy who said Rivera tossed urine on him during a July 5, 2017 staff meeting in the juvenile detention center. The settlement agreement allowed the county to avoid facing a potential lawsuit filed by the boy’s family.
An internal disciplinary investigation concluded that Rivera’s supervisor, Garth Beckles, orchestrated the entire July 5, 2017 incident as payback for the teenager throwing urine on Rivera two days earlier.
Both Beckles and Rivera claimed in internal reviews that the liquid she threw on the boy was warm, salted water, and not urine.
Rivera said during the hearing that she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after the boy threw urine on her, and that she was having flashbacks when she threw the liquid on him, according to a report. Rivera could not explain why she took an empty milk carton into a locker room, then came back out with a paper towel covering it, the report said.
Other inmates in the detention center said Rivera told them she threw urine on the boy.
Rivera’s supervisor in a Sept. 29, 2017 report concluded that it was impossible to determine exactly what the liquid was nearly three months after the incident. The supervisor wrote that throwing any liquid on a teen, but especially one that the child thinks is urine, could be traumatizing, and that Beckles and Rivera carried out the act to intimidate and humiliate the teen and “displayed abuse of power.”
Rivera was hired as a detention officer at the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Detention Center in December 2016. Unlike the county jail, which is staffed by employees of the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department, the juvenile detention center is staffed and managed by the county’s juvenile court.
She also worked as a security officer at Euclid City Schools, a corrections officer at a youth prison in Cuyahoga Hills, and at the city of Cleveland, where in 2010 she was demoted from corrections officer to guard, according to her application.
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