Grassroots felony justice teams gathered Saturday morning in entrance of Bexar County Jail to demand Sheriff Javier Salazar and his workplace take accountability for mounting deaths on the detention heart.
“Let’s be clear, incarceration shouldn’t be a demise sentence,” Ananda Tomas, govt director of police reform group Act 4 SA, advised the group of round 30 folks. “However, in Bexar County, that’s precisely what it’s turn into.”
The Bexar County Jail has the very best variety of deaths per capita in Texas, with 124 recorded county jail deaths between 2015 and 2025, in line with the Texas Jail Challenge. The issue reveals little signal of enhancing, with one other six deaths recorded thus far this yr.
The main explanation for demise within the lockup is “pure causes,” in line with the Bexar County Sheriff’s Workplace, adopted by suicides and accidents, respectively. Nonetheless, Tomas mentioned there’s extra to the deaths than BCSO is releasing to the general public.
“The foundation causes are clear: lack of medical care and a spotlight that would save lives, or medical choices that depart folks in loosely monitored cells after they’re overdosing or detoxing, excessive temperatures that actually prepare dinner folks of their cells, overuse of solitary confinement that breaks our bodies and minds,” Tomas mentioned. “It’s inhumane. These usually are not accidents; these are selections made by officers who deal with incarcerated folks as disposable, and that’s mistaken.”
The Bexar County Sheriff’s Workplace didn’t reply by press time to the Present’s request for touch upon the activists’ issues.
Whereas a few of the deaths are amongst indigent individuals who can’t afford bail and deteriorate whereas inside, activists mentioned others could be chalked as much as workers not adequately doing their jobs.
Speaker Lydia Leos mentioned guards did not totally search her son after he was booked into the jail. Scared that he would possibly get in hassle for the medicine he had hidden away, he swallowed them inside his cell and died of an overdose.
Leos mentioned the Sheriff’s Workplace refuses to take accountability for what occurred to her son.
“No one is aware of who’s going to finish up in these amenities,” she added. “Put yourselves in our sneakers.”
Political figures starting from Republican County Commissioner Grant Moody to county decide candidate Ron Nirenberg and district legal professional hopeful Luz Elena Chapa have argued for constructing a brand new jail to alleviate overcrowding within the present facility.
“We have now relied on pricey contracts with close by Kerr and Burnet counties to accommodate 200 to 300 Bexar County inmates at any given time,” Moody wrote in a current op-ed. “At present charges, these contracts value the taxpayer greater than $7 million yearly — and that quantity is more likely to develop as a result of our county inhabitants is rising.”
Nonetheless, at Saturday’s presser, Texas Civil Rights Challenge legal professional Travis Fife argued it’s less expensive and humane to give attention to expediting bail reform, which reduces overcrowding whereas enhancing inmate security.
“For those who can not present care to the greater than 4,000 people who find themselves in your custody and care, then it’s a must to discover a option to make investments the funds to sustainably cut back and launch them again into the group,” Fife mentioned.
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The inspection got here days after an inmate dedicated suicide on the jail, the eighth to die whereas in custody there this yr.
