Fort Worth PD doesn’t investigate jail deaths. So how did it end up on sheriff’s list?
.jpg "The Police Department did not clarify how its officers ended up on the roster of jail death investigators if it was never conducting those investigations.")
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 Star-Telegram received the roster through an open records request to the jail commission.
The Texas Rangers are listed as the primary investigating agency on the roster. The secondary investigator is tasked with the investigation when the primary declines for whatever reason.
The Texas Rangers did not immediately respond to a request for comment about 26 deaths in the Tarrant County jail that were not independently investigated per the 2017 Sandra Bland Act. Tarrant County Jail Administrator Shannon Herklotz told the Star-Telegram in February that the Rangers do sometimes decline to investigate.
A police department spokesperson said Demore “had not previously seen the provided document, nor did he know who had submitted the form.” The spokesperson was also unaware of the roster. He did not mention Phillips or clarify if he is still with the department. His name is not on the most recent city employee salary database.
The Sheriff’s Office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The Police Department said its officers do not investigate jail deaths for the Sheriff’s Office, despite the names of two listed as investigators.
“Members of our department conduct reviews, and both of the listed officers were assigned to the unit which conducts the review,” the police spokesperson said in an email exchange.
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.
County medical examiner’s offices are among the acceptable agencies for sheriff’s offices to choose, according to the roster, but medical examiner’s offices are not law enforcement agencies.
Jail commission Executive Director Brandon Wood did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The jail commission’s public records office said that the roster is the most recent one it has on file for the Sheriff’s Office.
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.
“More disturbing is the fact that (the jail commission) continues to let (the Sheriff’s Office) get away with violating basic protocols and procedures mandated by the law in question,” 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.
“The people in charge of these institutions have relationships with each other that seem pretty incestuous,” she said. “It’s an attitude of, ‘Well, I’m above the law because I am the law.’ It’s absolutely outrageous that they get so defensive about having people look at what’s going on in there.”
Cassandra Johnson’s son Trelynn Wormley died in the Tarrant County jail’s Green Bay facility in July 2022. His death was attributed to a fentanyl overdose, and Johnson has sued the county, alleging that “drugs run rampant” in the jail.
His death is one of the 26 that were not independently investigated.
Johnson denounced all the finger-pointing she has seen in her attempt to get answers in her son’s case.
“I don’t know the law and the politics,” she said. “But I do know when something is not right.”
