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

From KERA News:

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.

Mason was loud, eclectic and bold. He was generous and he could befriend anyone, Mallory said.

“He really would show up for people that he loved,” she said. “That was something he was really good at.”

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.

“The lack of transparency is devastating. I mean, it’s just devastating, because you’re already grieving, and then you want answers, and you want to know why, and then you want to know how. And it’s just radio silence,” she said.

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.

Instead, Fort Worth police reviewed the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office’s investigation reports.

“Our department does review these investigations ONCE THEY ARE COMPLETED,” Fort Worth police spokesperson Officer Jimmy Pollozani wrote in an email, emphasizing the end of the sentence. “The investigative write-ups and files are prepared by Tarrant County detectives, and our review follows once the investigation has been finalized.”

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.

The Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office, or TCSO, maintains it has not violated the law.

“TCSO is adhering to the law and is confident we are in compliance with state standards,” spokesperson Robbie Hoy wrote in a Jan. 6 email. “Remember, all in-custody deaths are reviewed and investigated by Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office jail staff, the TCSO Criminal Investigations Division, an outside law enforcement agency, JPS Medical Staff, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office and the Texas Attorney General’s Office.”

Police reviews closed with little comment

The Fort Worth Police Department acknowledged it only reviewed death investigations, but it was previously unclear what those reviews involved.

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. In the review of William Burns’ death investigation, a detective noted that the sheriff’s department wrote down the wrong date of birth and time of death.

In the death of George Zink, another detective noted that Zink’s alleged crime was misstated in his in-custody death report.

In the death of Linda York, the detective pointed out a couple mistakes, like an “a.m.” timestamp instead of “p.m.”

But the detective’s own report contains an error, at one point referring to York as “Zink.”

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.

The lack of a third-party investigation has left some families grasping for information about what happened to their loved ones.

Trelynn Wormley died of a fentanyl overdose in 2022, six months into his jail stay, county records show.

His mother, Cassandra Johnson, is suing the county, demanding answers about how her son seems to have obtained drugs behind bars.

She has spoken at jail commission meetings in Austin multiple times, asking for a third-party investigation into her son’s death.

“I was hoping that you all would issue a jail noncompliance for violating state law, and you would force an independent investigation into his death. But you didn’t,” Johnson said in February. “So I’m asking again to do your job. Be the team to break this cycle. I need an investigation report, and I need a noncompliance to be issued to the jail.”

The sheriff’s office has previously said it has no intention of reopening cases that have already been reviewed by Fort Worth police, unless the need arises.

‘No repercussions’

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.

Sheriff Bill Waybourn contends that jail medical staff checked on Mason many times, and that when he collapsed before he died, he was with two nurses. His cause of death is pending an autopsy from the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office.

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.”

It’s not the sheriff’s office’s responsibility to confirm that the outside investigation happens. Tarrant County could only be penalized if the sheriff’s office explicitly told Fort Worth police not to investigate, Wood said.

“I’ve not been told that that ever occurred,” he said.

This is not a loophole, but a misinterpretation of the Sandra Bland Act, according to Michele Deitch. She helped craft the law and is director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at UT Austin.

Sheriff’s offices are not supposed to choose who investigates in-custody deaths, according to Deitch, who said the law actually gives that responsibility to Wood’s jail standards commission.

“The whole idea is to ensure independence in the investigation,” she said. “And if an agency is picking who’s going to investigate them, that’s no more trustworthy than investigating themselves.”

The lack of third-party death investigations in Tarrant County was first reported by Bolts magazine in October. Since then, the county has started assigning investigations to other local sheriff’s offices.

But for weeks and months, it remained unclear who would be investigating the latest deaths, or if the investigations would happen at all.

Weakening the Sandra Bland Act

Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old Prairie View A&M graduate from Illinois, died inside a Waller County jail cell in 2015. She was arrested during a traffic stop, and her death – which authorities ruled a suicide – made international headlines.

Bland’s family questioned her suicide, leading to a lot of public distrust, Deitch said. That’s why the Sandra Bland Act, passed in 2017, requires an outside law enforcement agency to investigate each in-custody death.

“That can be something that the public and policymakers can rely on as trustworthy,” Deitch said.

Waybourn took office the same year the Sandra Bland Act passed. Deaths in the jail have spiked under Waybourn, compared to his predecessor, and his handling of those deaths has become the most controversial issue of his tenure. Since 2022, Tarrant County has paid more than $4.3 million to end lawsuits over deaths in custody and allegations of mistreatment and neglect.

In February, state Sen. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, filed a bill that would weaken the Sandra Bland Act. Birdwell’s bill, if passed, would make deaths deemed “natural” exempt from the independent investigation requirement.

Birdwell filed a similar bill in 2023, which passed the Senate before dying in the House. Waybourn supported the measure.

The jail commission has talked to “several different entities” about the possibility of relaxing investigation requirements, Wood said.

“If the individual passed away under a doctor’s care, does it require the same level – if it is natural – of investigation, that another death that was not natural would?” he said.

Deaths deemed to be from natural causes can still result in accusations of wrongdoing.

Javonte Myers died in his Tarrant County Jail cell in 2020, from what the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office deemed a natural cause: a seizure disorder.

Still, after a Rangers investigation, two former Tarrant County jailers were indicted. They were accused of lying about checking on Myers. One of those jailers, Erik Gay, pleaded guilty last year and agreed to pay $250,000 in restitution. The other case, against Darien Kirk, is still pending.

Paul Parker is an independent death investigator and former executive officer of the San Diego County Citizens Law Enforcement Review Board, which investigates deaths or serious injuries connected to the local sheriff’s department.

Investigating every death in custody, of any cause, is imperative, Parker said.

“You gotta do a deep dive. You have to, because you will find the death may have been able to be prevented, or was the result of neglect, one or the other,” he said.

Third-party investigations can uncover wrongdoing. They can also show ways a jail can improve, Deitch said.

“We were hoping for a deeper inquiry that could get at some systemic issues, with an eye towards potentially preventing deaths in the future,” she said.

Who’s investigating now?

Before 2022, the Texas Rangers were the main outside investigating agency looking into Tarrant County jail deaths. When the Rangers left, independent investigations mostly stopped.

Rangers who investigated jail deaths would show up at the scene, review surveillance video and interview detention officers, investigation reports show.

The Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office previously said it switched to using Fort Worth police because the Rangers had manpower issues. The agency still went to the Rangers for cases of concern such as those involving misconduct, Hoy said.

After the initial reporting on the lack of outside investigations in Tarrant County, it was unclear if the problem would be fixed.

On Dec. 2, Vernon Ramsey died in custody. His death was assigned to the Fort Worth Police Department, according to an in-custody death report submitted to the Texas Attorney General’s Office.

When asked if Ramsey’s death would get an outside investigation, Wood said probably not. A month after Ramsey’s death, Tarrant County was struggling to find an agency that would take on the investigation, he said.

“Most entities will not step in and say, yes, we’ll take it over from here. They want to be involved from the beginning,” Wood said.

Later in December, Mason Yancy died. His death report noted that the sheriff’s office tried to get the Texas Rangers to investigate.

“The Texas Rangers were notified and declined to respond therefore FWPD major case and [Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s] office will be the investigating authority,” the report stated.

Wood confirmed that some law enforcement agencies are not willing to take on certain deaths. Investigations take time, resources and personnel, he said.

“Trying to find individuals that are willing to do the non-suspicious, non-homicide, non-suicide death, that’s the biggest issue, even in other counties, not just Tarrant,” Wood said.

The Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office already performs autopsies to figure out why people die in custody. It was unclear if the sheriff’s office was now treating them like the Rangers – an outside law enforcement agency that could conduct a third-party investigation under the Sandra Bland Act.

Wood said in January the jail commission was still trying to confirm whether the medical examiner’s office would count as an independent investigatory body.

The question turned out to be moot. Mason’s death was later assigned to the Collin County Sheriff’s Office.

Collin County has also been assigned to the deaths of Vernon Ramsey and Mclendon Caldwell, who died back in July, according to death reports submitted to the Texas Attorney General’s Office. The death of Kimberly Phillips on Feb. 18 went to the Denton County Sheriff’s Office.

When asked whether Collin and Denton would perform their own investigations – or just review Tarrant’s – Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Laurie Passman did not answer.

“Please reach out to those agencies to inquire about their procedures and processes,” she wrote in a Feb. 25 email.

The Collin County Sheriff’s Office’s investigations comply with the direction of the jail commission, spokesperson Sgt. Jessica Pond responded in an email.

“These investigations are separate, independent, and not aligned with any previous Tarrant County investigations,” she said.

The Denton County Sheriff’s Office did not respond by this story’s deadline.

Pond said Collin County was assigned the three death investigations on Feb. 12. That’s a month and a half after Mason Yancy died, more than two months after Vernon Ramsey died, and seven months after Mclendon Caldwell died.

Starting late can hurt the quality of an independent death investigation, Parker said. In an ideal scenario, the investigator would start right away.

“When you’re not there initially, you oftentimes will get a very, very sanitized version,” he said. “And quite frankly, when you’re not there, then you come in afterwards, you’re always looked at as not really belonging there.”

Ensuring third-party investigations happen

Going forward, Wood said the state can prevent this from happening again by keeping a closer eye on investigations – and to “reach out and do a better job of ensuring that these are actually investigations that are occurring.”

But to Deitch, the UT Austin professor, the state is still not interpreting the law correctly.

“I would hope that simply being made aware, through these journalistic investigations, that current practice is inconsistent with the letter and the spirit of the law, may result in changes in how [the jail commission] pursues these kinds of cases in the future,” she said.

Otherwise, it might take legislation or a lawsuit to fix the problem, Deitch said.

A pair of Tarrant County lawmakers have filed bills they say would strengthen the investigation process. State Rep. Nicole Collier, D-Fort Worth, wants to require the jail standards commission – not the sheriff’s office – to name an independent investigative agency immediately after a death in custody.

North Richland Hills Republican state Rep. David Lowe’s proposal would create an 11-member panel to collect and review reports of all in-custody deaths across Texas. As part of its monthly meetings, the committee would also make recommendations on how to reduce preventable deaths in county jails.

Mallory Yancy said she’s ready to fight to close the “massive loophole” in the Sandra Bland Act.

“It’s not fair that our family has to do this. I would want it to be any other family but ours,” she said. “But at the end of the day, the only thing, the only thing in my brain that’s keeping me from wanting to blow things up is, we can’t think he died for no reason.”

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