Grassroots criminal justice groups gathered Saturday morning in front of Bexar County Jail to demand Sheriff Javier Salazar and his office take accountability for mounting deaths at the detention center.
“Let’s be clear, incarceration should not be a death sentence,” Ananda Tomas, executive director of police reform group Act 4 SA, told the crowd of around 30 people. “But, in Bexar County, that’s exactly what it’s become.”
The Bexar County Jail has the highest number of deaths per capita in Texas, with 124 recorded county jail deaths between 2015 and 2025, according to the Texas Jail Project. The problem shows little sign of improving, with another six deaths recorded so far this year.
The leading cause of death in the lockup is “natural causes,” according to the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office, followed by suicides and accidents, respectively. However, Tomas said there’s more to the deaths than BCSO is releasing to the public.
“The root causes are clear: lack of medical care and attention that could save lives, or medical decisions that leave people in loosely monitored cells when they’re overdosing or detoxing, extreme temperatures that literally cook people in their cells, overuse of solitary confinement that breaks bodies and minds,” Tomas said. “It’s inhumane. These are not accidents; these are choices made by officials who treat incarcerated people as disposable, and that’s wrong.”
The Bexar County Sheriff’s Office didn’t respond by press time to the Current’s request for comment on the activists’ concerns.
While some of the deaths are among indigent people who can’t afford bail and deteriorate while inside, activists said others can be chalked up to staff not adequately doing their jobs.
Speaker Lydia Leos said guards failed to thoroughly search her son after he was booked into the jail. Scared that he might get in trouble for the drugs he had hidden away, he swallowed them inside his cell and died of an overdose.
Leos said the Sheriff’s Office refuses to take accountability for what happened to her son.
“Nobody knows who’s going to end up in these facilities,” she added. “Put yourselves in our shoes.”
Political figures ranging from Republican County Commissioner Grant Moody to county judge candidate Ron Nirenberg and district attorney hopeful Luz Elena Chapa have argued for building a new jail to alleviate overcrowding in the current facility.
“We have relied on costly contracts with nearby Kerr and Burnet counties to house 200 to 300 Bexar County inmates at any given time,” Moody wrote in a recent op-ed. “At current rates, these contracts cost the taxpayer more than $7 million annually — and that number is likely to grow because our county population is growing.”
However, at Saturday’s presser, Texas Civil Rights Project attorney Travis Fife argued it’s more cost-effective and humane to focus on expediting bail reform, which reduces overcrowding while improving inmate safety.
“If you cannot provide care to the more than 4,000 people who are in your custody and care, then you have to find a way to invest the funds to sustainably reduce and release them back into the community,” Fife said.
Sign Up for SA Current newsletters.
Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Or sign up for our RSS Feed
