Fort Worth Star-Telegram: Fort Worth PD doesn’t investigate jail deaths. So how did it end up on sheriff’s list?

The Fort Worth Police Department said it was not aware that its officers appear on the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office’s list of law enforcement agencies approved to investigate in-custody deaths.

Sgt. John Phillips and Lt. Richard Demore of the Fort Worth Police Department appear as secondary investigator and secondary investigator supervisor on the Custodial Death Notification Roster the Sheriff’s Office submitted to the Texas Commission on Jail Standards in October 2021. Demore was unaware his name was on the document, the department said.

The Police Department said its officers do not investigate jail deaths for the Sheriff’s Office, despite the names of two listed as investigators.

The Sandra Bland Act requires the jail commission to appoint a third-party law enforcement agency for independent investigations of deaths in county jails.

A Star-Telegram investigation published in February found that by having sheriff’s offices and jail administrators submit the rosters, rather than making the appointments itself, the jail commission has been in violation of the law for over seven years.

The first of the 26 jail deaths that were not independently investigated was that of Leon Jacobs on Oct. 30, 2021, the same month the roster was submitted.

Krishnaveni Gundu, executive director of the advocacy group Texas Jail Project, linked these 26 cases directly to the roster.

The fact that the roster remains on file with the jail commission nearly five months after it was widely reported that the outside agency listed on it was not conducting investigations “is yet another example of the Sheriff’s gross disregard and contempt for state laws,” she said.

“At what point will the state regulatory agency decide to do its job and hold (the Sheriff’s Office) accountable by issuing a non-compliance?”

Earlier this week, the Sheriff’s Office failed to comply with state law requiring it file a report with the Attorney General’s Office within 30 days of a death in custody. The office blamed it on on a “clerical error.”

The Sheriff’s Office, Police Department, jail commission and other law enforcement agencies have a “circle-the-wagons” culture based more on protecting each other than rendering justice, according to Katherine Godby, board chair of the advocacy group Justice Network of Tarrant County.