Oklahoma Attollo Boys Group Home Closes

“A group home for boys, which was run by Muskogee County Council of Youth Services and was hotly contested in the City Council, closed down after one year of operation.

Attollo Boys Group Home at …closed its doors Dec. 18, MCCOYS Interim Director Cindy Perkins said.

“We evaluated what programs we have, and we decided to reduce our child welfare residential programs that provide long-term care,” Perkins said. “And we thought we’d focus our efforts on short-term residential services.”

Preceding the closure was an inordinate number of calls for police to the group home, mostly for missing persons, according to police reports.
“Anytime someone would go AWOL, we had to call,” Perkins said.

For a three-month period starting in August, there were three runaway juvenile reports and two assaults. From about Nov. 6 to Dec. 7, there were 30 reports for missing or runaway juveniles, at least three assaults, one burglary and one report of vandalism, according to police reports.

“It would take me awhile to calculate how many calls we have at Attollo boys home, but in general it’s been two to three times a week for a while, sometimes less,” Muskogee Police Department Public Information Officer Lincoln Anderson said. “The biggest issue with responding to a place repeatedly, especially in a situation such as that one, is that it isn’t fixing the problem.”

The children and teenagers who were housed at the group home were either placed into other facilities or returned home, Perkins said.

Back in October 2014, MCCOYS purchased the facility, a former church, under the impression it was zoned for commercial use. Former director of MCCOYS Mark Winters spearheaded the effort to rezone the property, which was voted down by the city council on Oct. 8, 2014.”

Boys group home closed after one year in operation [Muskogee Phoenix 1/10/16 by Harrison Grimwood]

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