Things got very heated during a public meeting on the planned Juvenile detention facility on Wednesday night. The juvenile center is planned to be built in Waldorf, but Waldorf residents are not welcoming it with open arms. At times, the discussion got combative.
Department of Juvenile Services plans to build the facility in Waldorf, near the White Oaks Community. That drew the ire of residents in the area, many of them saying they had no idea until they read about the proposal in the local media.
Larry Harley of Indian Head started things off with a proposal of his own.
“I have 20.3 acres of land in Indian Head,” Harley said. “It’s 9 miles from La Plata, at 5000 Hawthorne Road. It’s an ideal place to put something like that because you wouldn’t have impact like lady stated about residential. There are only two commercial buildings, a bar and a center across the street. I came to offer 20.3 acres of land already developed for this kind of place.”
“Facilities are overcrowded,” Keith Quaine of Waldorf said. “They know this, I know this. 3-5 of their inmates, sorry juveniles, escape every week. There is evidence to suggest that reports of aggression are under-reported. In 2011, there have been 57 assaults with injuries and 14 youth-on-staff assaults at Cheltenham alone.
“There are an increasing number of incidents, as high as 200%. How they manage children is not what I want 600 feet from my daughter or a half mile from my daughter’s school. It takes hundreds of days for juveniles to go to trial. We don’t need it here.”
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