Fort Worth Star-Telegram: Families, activists ask state to deem Tarrant County out of compliance for jail deaths

Families, friends and supporters of people who have died in Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office custody pleaded with members of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards to place the jail on its noncompliance list at the state board’s Feb. 6 meeting.

Relatives of Mason Yancy, who died in the jail in December, and Trelynn Wormley, who died there in July 2022, also urged the commissioners to take their pleas to the state Legislature to strengthen a law requiring an outside agency to investigate deaths of people in sheriff’s department custody.

Cassandra Johnson, Wormley’s mother, returned to the commission after speaking at its previous meeting in November. At that session, she told commissioners she had just found out that her son’s death was never investigated by a third-party party agency as required by the Sandra Bland Act.

“After I spoke with this commission the last time, I was hoping that you all would issue a jail noncompliance for violating the state law, and you would force an independent investigation into his death,” Johnson said. “But you didn’t, so I’m asking again to do your job, be the team to break this cycle.”

Bolts Magazine reported in October that the Fort Worth Police Department has not investigated over 20 in-custody deaths over the previous three years, despite being listed as the outside agency tasked with investigating them.

Passed after the 2015 death of Sandra Bland in the Waller County jail, the law requires such third-party investigations into in-custody deaths, among other requirements.

Nan Terry and Becky Delaune of the Justice Network of Tarrant County attended the meeting to make similar calls for accountability.

The actions the Justice Network listed as unlawful include the violations of the Sandra Bland Act, a lack of detox protocols, failures to provide life-saving medications and interventions, and “deaths by fentanyl toxicity of suspicious origin which, without an outside investigation won’t be rectified.”

Yancy’s family has accused the Sheriff’s Office of causing his death by failing to provide him his diabetes medicine.

Robert Buker, who knew Yancy through his Second Amendment activism, told the commission that his son is incarcerated in the Tarrant County jail and receiving only half of the medications he needs to treat his congenital heart condition. Buker also told the Tarrant County Commissioners Court about his son at recent sessions.

Wood, the commission’s executive director, told the Star-Telegram after the meeting that the commission does not have the authority to issue an order of noncompliance to the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office in this case.

The violations of the Sandra Bland Act fall on the Fort Worth Police Department, Woods said, which does not administer the county jail.

The Texas Government Code tasks the jail commission with assigning the third-party agency for the independent investigation. Wood said the Sheriff’s Office provided them with the Fort Worth Police Department as this outside investigating agency, and the commission approved it.

But the police department was never assigned this task, according to Sgt. Joshua Johnson, who added that its role is limited to an administrative review of the completed investigation by the Sheriff’s Office.

“Any assertion that our department has failed to investigate would be a misrepresentation, as such investigations do not fall within our purview,” Johnson said.

The jail commission has “dropped the ball” on holding the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office accountable for in-custody deaths, according to Krishnaveni Gundu, executive director of the advocacy group Texas Jail Project.

The commission has issued noncompliance orders for other counties in response to jail deaths, she said.

“They routinely issue noncompliances on medical complaints that we send in even after the person’s left the jail or if they’ve died,” Gundu said. “If they find something in the complaint that’s valid, they issue non compliance. So this thing that, oh, we can’t go back and issue noncompliance makes no sense at all.”

Full Article at Fort Worth Star-Telegram