Ten people from the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention
Center were rushed to the hospitals on Monday by the Chicago Fire Department due
to a fight triggered in the West side building. During the 13-minute fight 16
youths were also injured.
The fight broke out in the chapel at a Black History Month
presentation between two students, according to Earl Dunlap, transitional
administrator at the embattled detention center on Chicago's
West Side.
Another boy encouraged the others to fight and demolish property,
thus almost half of the 78 youths who were gathered in the chapel started
fighting.
According to Dunlap, there were 17 staffers in the chapel when
the melee started, about 9:10 a.m., and 10 minutes later 16 others came to help
stop the fight.
Ten staffers were rushed to hospitals suffering from cuts,
bruises, chest pains and a knee injury.
Almost nine of them were released. Sixteen youths were also
injured and received treatment at a medical facility in the center.
Dunlap said that police arrived at 10 a.m.
According to Dunlap, there wasn’t any real motive for the
fight because there wasn’t any exchange of words, and the third boy saw the
opportunity to trigger chaos.
He said: "He was there to start a brouhaha. It was an
exercise in raising hell. The objective was destructive more than anything else,"
Chicago Tribune reports.
Dunlap was brought at the center in 1100 S. Hamilton Ave. last summer to
modernize the practices.
He recognized that the fight from Monday showed the need for
a trained staff.
He said: "This staff out here has been blamed for a lot
of things, but they have not been given the tools that are needed to do what
needs to be done,"
Benjamin Wolf, an attorney at the ACLU, said that the staff
has to be trained to deal with these kinds of situations.
Wolf said: “It was not a problem of understaffing. It's more
a question of staff skills both anticipating these kinds of things and dealing
with them when they happen.”
Dunlap said that half of the youths will receive disciplinary
hearings in order to determine their punishment.
