Potter County Sheriff Brian Thomas gave a dire warning to Potter County Commissioners about the persistent jail overcrowding reaching a new level, during their regular meeting held Monday morning, July 27 at the Potter County Courthouse.
While giving his report, he said the jail that morning had a total of 603 people in it.
Thomas said most of the people being taken into custody as part of Operation Summer Shield public safety initiative in the city of Amarillo and county were being brought to the Potter County Jail.
From July 13 to 20, he said Potter County had 218 people booked in, and 209 were released, showing a very active revolving door — or a 30% increase. Thomas told the commissioners the overcrowding had caused them to fail their inspection with state jail standards before, and it also dropped the Potter County Jail down to 80% capacity.
“We have a dire need for something to go on out there,” he continued, stating that they were running out of options for jails to send the excess prisoners to.
Currently, Thomas said Potter County has one inmate in Lubbock County, 19 in Deaf Smith County, 10 in Garza County, and two in Randall County. He said that Canadian said they wouldn’t take any unruly inmates, which drew a comment and laugh from Judge Nancy Tanner and some in the audience.
“The other counties we have contracts with can’t take anymore,” Thomas said.
Thomas said he called the jail standards director and asked if they failed an inspection again if they were going to “shut my jail down” due to the overage, and the director laughed and said no, but he said they could downgrade their maximum capacity to 60% or 70%.
The sheriff said that, as an example, on Friday, July 24, they had a total of 395 people in jail for felony offenses. Of those, 78 were first degree felony offenses, including 25 for original murder charges, and the other charges included aggravated assault, burglary, aggravated robbery, sexual assault, arson and drugs. As far as second-degree felonies, the jail had 134 people, with 116 for third-degree felony charges and 67 for state jail felonies. The total number of people in jail for misdemeanor charges was 46. In addition, others were being held in the jail for federal holds, parole, out-of-county holds, probation violations and bond surrenders and bond forfeitures, totaling 136.
“So, we have a huge problem out there,” Thomas reiterated.
Thomas said a about a month and a half ago, he brought another inmate contract to the commisioners for Haskell County, which he acknowledged was expensive at $9,850 per person. About a year ago, they wanted a two-year contract, he said. “When I called him this time, he said well, we’d really like to stay with at least a year, but he said, I’ll give you six months.”
“I think six months is better than nothing at all,” Thomas said. “But we’ve got to do something, or we’re going to be looking at 60 or 70% as our capacity, which is going to lower all these numbers. And we just can’t do it right now. We are completely full.”
Operation Summer Shield is expected to continue for at least two more weeks, according to Thomas. He said he’s been tracking all the offenders they’ve been bringing in as a part of it, and there’s anywhere from 8 to 13 people brought into the jail every day, on every shift.
Tanner asked if they went with the Haskell County contract, how many inmates would they take, and Thomas said they could take 50. But after six months when the contract ended, they would have to bring them back.
Some of the offenders are picked up by Texas Department of Corrections (TDC), who will come out and pick them up and take them to a TDC unit, which really helps, but it’s not a secure number. “We’re lucky if they come in and pick up five or six (inmates). … They come in every week to pick them up. Sometimes they’ll pick up 20, next week maybe two. If I can get 50 out, that’s 50 beds that we have available, and right now that would get us under our 80%,” he said. “I mean, we’re in dire straits right now.”
Potter County Commissioner John Coffee brought up the contract and estimated total cost, which would be $900,000, and that they spent $1 million dollars last year and more on overtime. The sheriff said one positive was that they had gotten all the people out of a specialty hospital, which was costing upwards of nearly $2 million.
“I don’t know what else to tell you. I mean, this is your decision,” said Thomas. “This is the only thing that you guys have to decide is what we do with that jail as far as number wise … adding on, building or whatever it is. All I do is run the jail.”
Potter County Commissioner Warren Coble asked about whether under the contract they would have to pay for all of those 50 beds, and Potter County Auditor Brandon Boston said that under the agreement, they would have to pay for all of them, whether they used them or not. “This contract is different from every other interlocal that we have with other jails in that you pay for 50 beds regardless,” he said.
Thomas said he could fill those 50 beds easily, but Coffee replied, “that’s not sustainable for us. The court, and the county — we’re going to take that out of our fund balance, and that’s not budgeted or anything.”
Thomas said he understood that, but he was just giving him the information about the current problem, “and I’m giving you an option.” As expensive as it may be, unless they do something, when jail standards comes in and they fail the inspection, Thomas reiterated they would lower the jail’s maximum capacity.
Boston said that they could move around some line items with unspent funds, but the county wouldn’t want it taken out of the fund balance forever. “Whether you break it up to a six-month contract or an annual contract, it’s a little under $1.8 million a year,” he said. He added that it wasn’t sustainable to continually take it out of the fund balance without a recurring revenue stream to support it.
Thomas said that the six-month contract would at least get them out of the summer, when crime is at its peak, as well as the ongoing law enforcement initiative. “It’s totally up to y’all what we do,” he added. “Our overtime rate has gone up tremendously in the jail because we’re trying to get them out as fast as they come in.”
When Coffee asked about Childress taking inmates, Thomas said that Childress had a whole pod at their facility that was brand new and empty, but their county commissioners wouldn’t let them use it. He said he even offered to send officers down there to man the facility, and they wouldn’t accept it.
Thomas said Lubbock County has one person because it involved a special case of an inmate accused of aggravated assault of multiple Potter County Jail employees.
“We’re doing everything we can do,” he said.
DA speaks of impact from bail reform changes in state law
After Thomas spoke, Potter County 47th District Attorney Jason Herring presented the Texas constitutional side of the issue, which jails are facing as a result of a new state law passed last year to keep dangerous offenders in jail until they go on trial. The positive is that they are avoiding recidivism in many of those serious crimes, but the negative is the increasing numbers, and costs that go along with it.
“Currently I show that we have 139 people in the sheriff’s jail that will not leave it until their case is tried, pled or dismissed,” Herring said. He said many of the cases involved murder, aggravated assult, kidnapping, indecency with a child and other major offenses. Of those cases, he said most would take six months to a year or longer before their cases could be heard.
They had been moving through a lot of cases, but many of those involved defendants who had bonded out of jail. Herring emphasized the safety factor of having the offenders out of the public with the new law, but the numbers could keep going up.
“It’s not going to get better from here,” he warned, estimating they would hit 300 or 400 in jail awaiting trial by this time next year.
Thomas said initiatives like the summer one is derived from statistics, like the Project Safe Neighborhoods that started back in Amarillo in 2019, when it made a huge difference and crime numbers went down. But this time around, he was seeing people who had already been arrested, bonded out and then gone back out and committed another violation. “It’s not like they ran a stop light,” he said.
Herring said they still had recidivists and they’re working to mitigate that. They’re working to keep ahead of cases now, but he had concerns of where they were headed.
Thomas acknowledged the costs, saying “I understand, I’m a taxpayer just like the rest of you, but I want to do whatever I’ve got to do to keep the community safe.”
Coffee calls for serious cuts or tax increase, town hall mentioned
Coffee also noted the costs, even with just the new contract under discussion. “It’s going to be expensive. I’m not even sure with this ask we can levy a tax to our taxpayers. I think we’re in a quandry,” he said. “I’m concerned because of these things … we’re going to have to make some serious cuts.”
“Something’s gotta give,” Coffee added.
He said that they needed to look at the tax rate, and even though it’s 19 cents higher than Randall County and they’re trying to bring more people into the county, they were still going to have to consider it.
Potter County Commissioner Blair Shaeffer was asked about the results of the recent town hall meeting, and he said around 39 people attended.
Thomas said at the town hall, when they asked him why they needed a new jail, he quoted the same numbers shared with commissioners, and town hall attendees then agreed with him about the need.
The commissioners talked about making a motion on it that day, or putting the contract on the next meeting’s agenda. They asked Sheriff Thomas if two weeks was okay to put it on the agenda.
“You know, we had it on the agenda for last time and you decided to pass on that, and then we were going to have a special meeting … and you decided not to do that,” Thomas said to the court. “I thought it was on the agenda today.”
Thomas ended with, “It’s hard for me to say what’s going to happen in two weeks,” noting 100 people had been brought in over the past week.
“I do have some policemen out there that are fighting for us,” he said, noting one officer’s action as an example. “He pulled up to the sallyport and it was completely full, and there were 10 cars in the parking lot and he had a guy that was wanted for a parole violation. So, he turned around and left took him down to Randall County.”
No further discussion or action on the jail or contract was taken, and Judge Tanner moved on to the next item.
Sheriff Thomas addresses the elephant in the room — a new facility
In a brief meeting after the morning session, Thomas said that Potter County had an architectural contract for a few months concerning a new facility for the Potter County Jail.
“That’s up to those five people in there,” Thomas said, referring to the commissioners. He added that he didn’t know if an add-on to the current facility was feasible. “You have to realize the jail is 30 years old, and it never stops, so it’s really more like 90 years old.”
He said a contract to fix the air conditioning could only go to one vendor because they were the only ones who would bid on it and they were the original people who put it in. “Everyone else said said it was too old,” he said. “Other vendors said they weren’t working on it and couldn’t find parts for it.”
“We can hold 500 — that’s how many beds I have, but that doesn’t mean I can hold 599,” he said. Thomas explained that a person being held on a lesser crime, like traffic violation, can’t be put in jail with an inmate accused of murder, so that limits the space they can use.
Thomas said it was not wise to add on to an old house, when it would be cheaper to go and build a newer one: “We don’t have any choice.”
This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Potter County Sheriff warns about jail overcrowding
Reporting by Nell Williams, Amarillo Globe-News / Amarillo Globe-News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Nell Williams, Amarillo Globe-News | USA TODAY Network
