The Bexar County Jail is bursting at the seams, with an average daily population of 5,242 inmates. That\u2019s up from 4,908 last year.<\/p>\n
Your tax dollars paid for $20 million in overtime for deputies at the jail and in this week\u2019s News 4 I-Team Waste Watch we reveal the county’s plan to cut back on overtime cost.<\/p>\n
The county opened the South Tower of the jail in 2018 to handle the increase of inmates, but now it is full.<\/p>\n
The Bexar County Sheriff’s Office is understaffed by more than 100 positions, so it’s had to cover the South Tower with current deputies working extra shifts at time and a half.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy daughter was 29 at the time of her death, leaving behind a five-year-old son and an infant daughter,” said Rexanne Seidler.<\/p>\n
Her daughter, Alexandra Gedminas, died in the jail in 2021 from what was determined to be drug related heart failure.<\/p>\n
Seidler says Alexandra fell and was disoriented the night before, and she believes her daughter would still be alive if deputies had been more attentive.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a retired registered nurse that used to be asked to work double shifts, it has a huge impact. I’m sorry but your focus isn’t there,” Seidler said.<\/p>\n
In 2025, eight inmates have died at the jail, last year we had 13 deaths.<\/p>\n
Whether staffing contributed to that is a topic of debate, but county commissioners are once again trying to cut down on overtime.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy is there so much overtime at the jail?” Reporter Jaie Avila asked Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithin jail standards one of the things they’re adamant about, for obvious reasons, is you have to maintain a ratio of deputies to inmates within the jail, so the more inmates you have, the more deputies you have to have physically in the building at any given time,” Salazar said.<\/p>\n
Salazar told us recently approved pay raises and signing bonuses have enabled him to fill more deputy positions.<\/p>\n
Once he fills the current vacancies the county will allow him to start hiring 70 additional contingency officers to staff the South Tower.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I had my druthers, and I have to have 70 deputies in this facility, I\u2019d rather have 70 that are not on overtime, they’re all well rested,” Salazar said.<\/p>\n
Since it could be a year until Salazar is ready to hire those contingency officers, the county is budgeting $15 million for overtime next year.<\/p>\n
The sheriff says another reason the jail is because he’s forced to house 300 prison inmates, because the state hasn’t made room for them in prisons.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need a lot more staffing to handle these problems,” Seidler said.<\/p>\n
The Bexar County Jail is so full, $4.5 million of your tax dollars are paying other counties to house them, because there’s not enough room for them here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Bexar County Jail is bursting at the seams, with an average daily population of 5,242 inmates. That\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":178225,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5133],"tags":[5229,7245,100938,100935,100934,61008,7202,7203,61856,100937,358,3187,100936,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-178224","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-bexar-county-jail","10":"tag-deputy-positions","11":"tag-inmate-population","12":"tag-jail-officers","13":"tag-overtime","14":"tag-san-antonio","15":"tag-sanantonio","16":"tag-sheriffs-office","17":"tag-staffing-issues","18":"tag-texas","19":"tag-tx","20":"tag-understaffed","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-united-states-of-america","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115097610744518918","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}