Eight people have died in custody at the Bexar County Jail so far this year — double the number reported by this time in 2024, when 13 people died in total — despite reforms meant to make the jail safer.
Seven of the deaths have been reported so far to the Texas Attorney General’s Custodial Death Report database, though filings can be delayed. The eighth jail death was reported by KSAT on July 15.
The rising death toll comes just months after the jail regained compliance with the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, following a November citation that required procedural changes in inmate holding areas and medication distribution.
That same month, the sheriff’s office entered the final phase of “Operation Lifeguard,” a four-part plan launched to curb in-custody deaths through expanded medical screening, cell monitoring technology and staff training.
But with this year’s death count already double what it was at this point in 2024, the impact of those reforms remains unclear.
Of the eight deaths, three were ruled suicides and two were tied to complications from substance withdrawal symptoms, according to public records and media reports.
Two others were the result of assaults in custody — including the death of Francisco Bazan, in which a former Bexar County Sheriff’s Office deputy, Clemente Lopez, was charged with murder and engaging in organized criminal activity. Lopez is accused of opening a cell door and allowing other inmates to carry out a violent assault on Bazan.
The deaths underscore the complexity of challenges still facing the jail, even as new policies roll out.
Some reforms under Operation Lifeguard — like CPR and suicide prevention training — have become standard practice, Sheriff Javier Salazar told the Report in an interview on Thursday. Others remain stalled or only partially implemented, often due to staffing shortages or legal barriers.
“There are certain things that have not yet been fully implemented,” Salazar said. “We’ve sent some [deputies] through EMT training. They have the training behind them, but we can’t start using them in that capacity yet — the district attorney’s office has yet to approve that.”
Other reforms have expanded. Radar-based heart rate monitors, originally installed in 14 infirmary cells, are now being used in 100 cells across the jail.
“We’re still the only major county jail in the state to be utilizing the technology. We’re big proponents of it,” Salazar said. “We actually haven’t had a death in those areas where the radar technology is being employed.”
The system currently only works in single-occupancy cells, he said, though upgrades allowing for multiple occupants are in development.
Salazar said staffing shortages and inmate overcrowding continue to make prevention difficult — even with reforms underway.
“It’s a little bit of everything. There’s always a staffing perspective to it. There’s drug interactions or drug withdrawal aspects to it. We’re overcrowded,” he said. “I’ve been a big proponent of, if somebody doesn’t absolutely need to be in this jail, if there’s somewhere else they need to be, then we need to have them there.”
In October, Salazar issued a directive stating that individuals experiencing withdrawal, insulin dependency or other medical complications would be rejected from booking unless cleared by a doctor. The policy, meant to prevent deaths tied to medical neglect, mandated that arresting officers take such individuals to a hospital before they could be booked into the jail.
But in practice the rollout wasn’t so clear-cut, prompting pushback from local law enforcement agencies, including the San Antonio Police Department over public safety concerns.
In response, the sheriff’s office revised the policy’s language to be less rigid.
Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar speaks during a Commissioner’s Court meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023. Credit: Scott Ball / San Antonio Report
“We backed off it a bit. We could see where it was being misconstrued, it was probably worded a little too strongly,” he said.“It is still being implemented, but I think that we have backed off, being so severe in some of these cases.”
Even so, he acknowledged that drug and alcohol withdrawal can become dangerous without much warning.
“We know that withdrawals are one of those things that you could be fine until you’re not,” Salazar said.”It could be a matter of minutes or hours before you start showing signs, and then all of a sudden, you’ve taken a sharp decline. We’ve got to still be careful with things like that.”
Krishnaveni Gundu, co-founder and executive director of Texas Jail Project,a nonprofit organization that advocates for and with people incarcerated in Texas county jails and their loved ones, said the recent deaths raise concerns about whether the jail has made meaningful change — or simply done the minimum to regain compliance.
“We have to remember that the Texas Commission on Jail Standards are called minimum jail standards. The commission is a regulatory agency, not oversight,” Gundu said. “They’re floor level standards, meeting them doesn’t actually meaningfully translate into better conditions, better care or safer conditions and care for detainees and staff.”
She said even if the jail meets those minimums, it does little to address the underlying reality: many of the people entering the jail are in medical or mental health crisis — and jail isn’t equipped to care for them.
“Jails are not equipped to provide that emergency level crisis care. They’re not set up to even identify that in the kind of screenings that they do sometimes,” Gundu said. “It puts people at a very high level of risk. If we really care about public safety, the way we look at public safety needs to change.”
Rather than treating county jails as default detox or psychiatric facilities, Gundu said that more states and counties need to invest in alternatives that prioritize health, housing and long-term support.
“More affordable housing, wraparound services, substance use disorder treatment, crisis respite, crisis stabilization — a continuum of care for people who have cycled through for years,” she added.