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.
The commission regulates county and municipal jails. It issues a notice of noncompliance when jails fail to meet Texas minimum jail standards or state law.
The commission’s director, Brandon Wood, told the Star-Telegram the board does not have the authority to deem Tarrant County noncompliant for any in-custody deaths it has reviewed, nor can it lobby the state Legislature for changes to laws. The commission has not begun its investigation into Yancy’s Dec. 27 death, he said.
Two of Yancy’s siblings addressed the commission on Feb. 6.
“The Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office is being operated by, in my opinion, an incompetent and noncompliant Sheriff,” Yancy’s brother Darren Yancy said during public comment. “Bill Waybourn is not doing his job, and it appears to be we’ve got problems there.”
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.
Critics have called for accountability in the jail due to the 69 deaths there since Sheriff Bill Waybourn took office in January 2017.
Nan Terry and Becky Delaune of the Justice Network of Tarrant County attended the meeting to make similar calls for accountability.
“Our concerns arise from the high death rate at the Tarrant County Jail and its unlawful actions,” the organization said in a statement emailed to the Star-Telegram.
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.
Johnson has sued Tarrant County, alleging “rampant” drug use in the jail. Wormley’s death was attributed to a fentanyl overdose after he had been incarcerated for six months.
Shannon Herklotz, who started as jail administrator in January, attended Thursday’s meeting. He initially declined to comment on the calls for a noncompliance order, saying it is not his decision to make.
“We’re attempting to do everything we can do to be compliant,” he said.
When asked if he believed the jail to be out of compliance, Herklotz said, “No.”
The Justice Network’s statement said it sent members to Thursday’s meeting in order to “let the TCJS Board know that the Tarrant County Jail needs monitoring and investigation. The Board must intervene to stop the death spiral.”
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.
“Fort Worth PD not doing the investigation is not technically Tarrant County’s fault or responsibility,” Woods said.
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.
Herklotz said that the Sheriff’s Office has requested the Texas Rangers conduct several investigations, but the agency declined.
“Not sure what to do when the Texas Rangers tells you they’re not going to show,” he said.
The custodial death report for Yancy on the Texas Attorney General’s website states that the Texas Rangers declined to respond to the Sheriff’s Office’s request that it investigate his death. The police department’s major case division and the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office are investigating the case, the report states.
The Texas Rangers and the medical examiner’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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.
“They didn’t catch this. For almost three years, they didn’t catch it,” she said in an interview. “They didn’t realize that 26 deaths had not been independently investigated. Now, when it was brought to their attention last year, in October … they could have done something, they could have remedied it, but they didn’t.”
The commission has issued noncompliance orders for other counties in response to jail deaths, she said.
It deemed Bexar County out of compliance with minimum standards for the second time in 18 months in November when it found that an inmate died after not receiving prescribed medications.
“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.”
The commission is not a law enforcement agency, Wood said, and it can only issue noncompliance orders in cases of violations of administrative rules.
“Our agency is tasked with enforcing the administrative rules,” he said. “We review every death in custody to determine if they violated the administrative rules and minimum jail standards.”
The commission has not begun to investigate Yancy’s death, he said.
This story was originally published February 6, 2025 at 3:33 PM.
