How do we fully measure the culture at the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office?

Is this fully reflected in the sheer number of arrests within the agency?

Twenty-three sheriff’s deputies and three civilian staffers were arrested in 2018, many for violent crimes. Many of those deputies were detention officers at the Bexar County Adult Detention Center, meaning the (future) inmates really were running the asylum.

Is it reflected in the spate of inmate deaths?

Between 2016 and 2018, eight inmates killed themselves at the jail. All by hanging. Bexar County led the state in inmate suicides for that period. Harris County had five. Dallas County had three. Travis County had one.

Two other inmate suicide attempts here were thwarted in April. Another inmate died at the jail earlier this month. “An apparent medical episode,” a news release said. He was 19.

Is it reflected in the lack of a chief jailer?

For months, the county has been without one.

Assistant Chief Deputy Bobby Hogeland resigned in late September amid questions about some awfully expensive chairs he had purchased. The chairs were stylish, but they collectively cost $55,000.

“He was a nice guy,” Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff said at the time of Hogeland. “But he didn’t have any administrative experience.”

Although Hogeland resigned in September, the county did not post the position until Dec. 21, which is the same day it was sued by the family of Janice Dotson-Stephens, the grandmother with schizophrenia who languished in jail for five months on a misdemeanor charge (and may have never seen her court-appointed attorney, which is appalling). She should have been in treatment.

“She dies in the jail and nothing really happens,” said Leslie Sachanowicz, the attorney representing the family. “The lawsuit gets filed Dec. 21, and all of a sudden you have the jail posting.”

Maybe it was a coincidence. But maybe Dotson-Stephens would not have died in jail if there had been a permanent administrator overseeing operations. After all, her adult children have said they called the jail and were told she was not there. They would have paid her bond of $300.

Is this culture reflected in the spate of attempted jail escapes?

There have been many of late, but perhaps the most eye-popping one occurred in March when three murder suspects escaped from jail.

They climbed 20 feet in a recreation area, made their way through a hole cut in some mesh and slithered down with some bedsheets. Detention officers had dropped the ball on inspections, state records show. The jail was found to be in noncompliance, and shortly after the escape, Deputy Chief Laura Balditt, who had been serving as chief jailer, retired. And then came Hogeland and those chairs.

Is this broken culture reflected in how inmates are treated when they are in county custody?

State reports from recent years outline nude group strip searches of inmates not being conducted in a “reasonable and dignified manner.” They warn of leaky and broken toilets seeping into living areas, and they tell how inmates made their own utensils from shampoo bottles because detention officers weren’t providing them.

Yes, these are inmates accused of crimes, sometimes heinous ones. But how they are treated in custody is a reflection of our values, or more specifically, the culture of this agency.

The answer to these questions is that all of these issues have to be taken into account to fully appreciate the breadth and scope of what is wrong at the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office. So now that Sheriff Javier Salazar, who did not respond to interview requests, has hired a law enforcement psychologist to change the agency’s culture and to address the stress deputies are feeling, how deep and far is he willing to go?

Can he see this is bigger than the never-ending parade of mugshots for arrested deputies? That a troubled culture can seep into inmate safety and also public safety in the form of escapes and deputies breaking bad?

The arrest of a sheriff’s deputy should be a shocking event, not a routine occurrence. Same with an inmate suicide. Suspected murderers shouldn’t escape from jail. Mentally ill grandmothers shouldn’t get lost in the system for months on a misdemeanor charge only to die in jail.

But all these terrible things have happened, so what will it truly take for them to stop?

Written by Josh Brodesky

Courtesy of San Antonio Express-News

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