A new report released on Tuesday shows the collaboration between an Austin-based criminal justice reform group and district attorneys nationwide, including Bexar County DA Joe Gonzales.
The Wren Collective has been linked to Gonzales and nearly 40 other district attorneys throughout the country.
The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund in Virginia, an organization that helps defend police officers who say they have been wrongfully accused, has been investigating the Wren Collective’s work with prosecutors across the country for more than a year.
The Wren Collective came to the group’s attention because of KSAT’s reporting that exposed its role in the San Antonio district attorney’s office.
“If not for Bexar County District Attorney involvement with the Wren Collective, we wouldn’t have even known about their existence,” said Sean Kennedy, policy director for the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund.
KSAT was first tipped off to the relationship in November 2023.
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KSAT received more than 200 pages of documents showing emails and texts between Gonzales, his then-First Assistant DA Christian Henricksen and Jessica Brand, the head of the Wren Collective. The documents revealed conversations about policies like bail reform on specific cases like the shooting of Erik Cantu.
“The Wren Collective was on our radar because of KSAT, because of the reporting at your station that brought to light their role in San Antonio’s district attorney’s office,” Kennedy said. “We started digging deeper and started investigating how many offices that we could find the Wren Collective involved in.”
>> Bexar County DA’s Office to recuse itself from pending Erik Cantu cases
According to Kennedy, the 62-page report shows the Wren Collective was quietly working with more than 40 prosecutors nationwide, including five in Texas, among them Gonzales.
“The Wren Collective’s mission is to produce policies for these offices that are hostile to public safety, in our view, and particularly hostile to law enforcement,” Kennedy said. “The Eric Cantu incident brought to light what exactly the Wren Collective was up to in Bexar County.”
The report also found Gonzales was conducting official business on four separate email accounts besides his Bexar County email. This was suspected when Gonzales asked Brand to contact him on a private account.
“It’s not necessarily illegal, but it is an attempt to hide their activities from the public, because if you don’t know what you’re asking for, you can’t ask for it,” Kennedy said.
“There wasn’t any transparency. There was influence peddling. There was apparent corruption in the sense that people outside were making decisions on behalf of the district attorney. That can’t happen again in Bexar County.”
In a statement to KSAT, Brand said her organization has been working with prosecutors and law enforcement on policies to help reduce crime while improving public safety. She added that her organization had nothing to hide.
“Wren’s work with prosecutors is no secret, and they could have just gone to our website, which makes clear what we do,” Brand said in an emailed statement. “It is strange that, when there are major mental health challenges in law enforcement and a recruitment crisis, this organization wants to focus on Wren and what LELDF surely knows is common practice — among conservative and progressive organizations alike who work with these offices — rather than how to help officers.”
Gonzales declined to comment on this story. He has announced he will not seek re-election next year.
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