Austin American-Statesman: Man sues Travis County, officers after saying he attempted suicide in jail: ‘Broken system’

First, Jason Walker tried strangling himself with his shirt collar in his Travis County Jail cell, he said. When that proved unsuccessful, he attempted suicide by diving headfirst off a desk.

Walker said the impact fractured his C5 vertebra, compressing his spinal cord and paralyzing him. Jail employees found him in a pool of his own blood. 

For several days leading up to his suicide attempt, Walker had been experiencing a psychotic break. Two years later, Walker, 33, has filed a lawsuit against Travis County, the city of Austin, individual jail employees, Austin Police Department officers and Travis County sheriff’s deputies.

His complaint, which demands a jury trial, maintains that his civil rights were infringed upon and that both law enforcement and jail employees overlooked the signs of his mental illness. Instead of receiving care for his psychosis, he was arrested, charged with criminal trespass and then placed in solitary confinement for about 60 hours, in the lowest tier of the jail’s mental health housing.

The county jail has become a catchall for both lawbreakers and mentally ill people, due to a lack of appropriate facilities or programs to treat mental illness, according to Krish Gundu, co-founder and executive director of Texas Jail Project, a jail reform advocacy group. 

People arrested for minor grievances are sent into county jails to contain their law-breaking behaviors. For individuals without familial or mental health support, this can create a self-perpetuating cycle until they can receive care from a state hospital or until they die, Gundu said. She noted that the 2017 Sandra Bland Act should theoretically divert low-level offenders with mental illness or substance abuse issues to relevant treatment centers, but about 32 people died by suicide inside Texas county jails in 2022, Gundu’s advocacy group found.