Fort Worth Report: Fort Worth police didn’t investigate Tarrant jail deaths. State says there are no consequences

Mallory Yancy grabs a basket and pulls out colorful shirt after colorful shirt. Her brother, Mason, used to pair these with a patterned kimono, a feather earring and a cowboy hat, she remembered. 

Mallory’s Arlington home is now full of her brother’s belongings. Mason was booked into the Tarrant County Jail on Christmas Eve for a drug charge. He died there three days later, at the age of 31. 

Under the Sandra Bland Act, all in-custody deaths in Texas jails must be investigated by an outside law enforcement agency. But when Mallory spoke to KERA News and the Fort Worth Report in February, she said she didn’t know who — if anyone — was investigating her brother’s death. 

Mallory knew that in recent years, more than 25 deaths in Tarrant County custody were assigned to the Fort Worth Police Department. Officers never actually investigated those deaths. 

The state’s jail watchdog agency, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, admitted to missing the violations for years. Sheriff’s offices can do their own investigations, but a third-party investigation is still required.

Through a public records request, KERA News and the Fort Worth Report obtained copies of the sheriff’s office’s internal investigations and Fort Worth police’s reviews. The jail commission charged $515.25 for 3,400 pages of records. 

The case files contain documents about 15 in-custody deaths where the Fort Worth Police Department was appointed as the independent investigator. These deaths took place from 2021 to 2023. Most of them were attributed to natural causes, like cancer, or accidents, like drug overdoses. 

The jail commission withheld records for another 10 deaths, arguing they should not be released because the investigations were incomplete.  

 The records show Fort Worth police reviews came months — sometimes years — after the deaths. Detectives offered no substantive comments on either the death or the sheriff’s office’s internal investigations.

Fort Worth police made small corrections in three cases.

Otherwise, the review “finds this investigation to be consistent, thorough and complete,” the detective wrote. Police used the same language to close out each file. 

Mason Yancy’s death is among the cases that remain open. His sister Mallory believes he died due to his diabetes, and that he didn’t get the medical care he needed in jail.

If the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office failed to get a third-party investigation again, it could be declared noncompliant with the state’s minimum jail standards, the jail commission’s executive director, Brandon Wood, said last year. The designation, published in an online database, doesn’t come with fines.  

But, in a follow-up interview in January, Wood revealed an apparent loophole in the law.  

Sheriff’s offices pick an outside law enforcement agency to investigate deaths, but if that investigation doesn’t happen, there’s nothing the state can do, he said. 

“I could write a strongly worded letter to Fort Worth PD, perhaps, but there’s no repercussions,” Wood said. “There’s no penalty outlined in statute for an appointed agency if they do not conduct that outside investigation.” 

Full Article at Fort Worth Report