Family Sued Van Zandt Co Jail in Texas
When Jerome Van Zandt was booked into Harris County Jail in November 2020, he was optimistic. "In that location's no way I'll be hither more than three months," he told himself. A Navy veteran with 20 years of service, he had been caught with less than a gram of crack cocaine and charged with possession and evading arrest.
As he told Houston Public Media in 2021, he ran because, "to be honest with you, I feared for my life, existence an African American male and not feeling that I'm favored by the constabulary." His bond was $120,000, a sum far above what he and his family could afford.
Equally he recounts his first days in jail, Van Zandt's stories flow at a rapid prune. He suffers from anxiety, depression and postal service-traumatic stress disorder, he told the Observer, and his time in incarceration heightened those struggles. "If you put on orangish, you're guilty," he says, referring to the orange jumpsuit he wore behind bars. "They care for you similar an animal from twenty-four hours i."
Van Zandt spent seven months in jail. Ane of the low points arrived right around the time he was hoping to exit: the three-calendar month marker, when a punishing winter storm hammered Texas.
Like many jails and prisons throughout the state, Harris Canton's lost access to water during the tempest in February 2021. Van Zandt says the toilets filled with feces that festered for four days. At one point during the storm, instead of being served dinner, incarcerated people like Van Zandt were served a slightly larger lunch. Information technology was an apparent endeavor at rationing.
"Y'all should be good," a corrections officer told them, Van Zandt recounts.
Limited h2o bottles were available, merely as Kevin Mack, some other incarcerated human in Harris Canton Jail, told the Texas Tribune last year, those bottles became function of the prison house economy. Like marked-up ramen and newspaper for messages home, bottled water became an elusive commodity some people were hoarding and others were clamoring to get.
Van Zandt and others complained nigh the conditions behind bars, but the common refrain from guards was, "Anybody is suffering out at that place, besides."
"Aye, but we're incarcerated," Van Zandt would reply. "We can't get anywhere. Some of united states of america aren't getting enough to eat or drink, and nosotros have no idea if our people are OK."
Or, as Stonemason McCormick, a homo incarcerated at Dallas County Jail, told the Observer: "There was definitely a heightened sense of anxiety during that time. When the lights went out, some people'due south imaginations ran wild. They idea the guards would just abandon us hither."
At that place are many stories like this from across Texas: stories of debilitating anxiety, defoliation and neglect. But in interviews with incarcerated people, experts, attorneys and advocates, another story emerges, one of a system averse to the kind of reforms and resources that would meliorate conditions behind confined. While the winter tempest shined a light on the dreadful conditions endured by incarcerated people, little to goose egg appears to accept been done near information technology.
"Our needs aren't met by the city or the canton, even though they accept the dollars," says Tiara Cooper. A formerly incarcerated person, Cooper is a staunch advocate for jail reform who works with the coalition In Defense of Black Lives Dallas. "One time again, I feel like the city of Dallas is letting people downward, and incarcerated people especially. I don't meet a plan in place for if or when this happens again."
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Carswell Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth tin can hold upward of 1,300 prisoners.
Mike Brooks
June, a woman who was incarcerated at the Federal Medical Center, Carswell, in Fort Worth, calls that particular prison a "mindfuck."
The federal prison house's population is and then varied that, as she explains, "You'll be standing in line and the person in front of you is in that location because they bounced a $30,000 check, and the woman behind you lot killed 2 of her kids."
The Fort Worth facility houses many women with special medical needs, and it was those women who June (not her real name) was most worried well-nigh during the wintertime tempest.
"Some of the women who were living with us and going through this were in their 70s," she says. "Other women are anemic, or on oxygen. A couple hours after losing h2o, pandemonium breaks out because some people are panicking. Information technology's like a refugee situation in that place."
The picture she paints of Carswell during the tempest is eerily similar to the stories shared by incarcerated people in Houston, Galveston and Dallas: The intermittent power plunged the buildings into freezing temps. The merely warmth was institute in scarce blankets crusted with dirt. With the water out and aught available to drink, people scrambled to discreetly steal milk cartons or any liquid they could get their easily on. The carrion piled up and no one, including corrections officers, knew what to do.
But there is one maddening attribute that makes June's story stand out from the others: Her unit didn't have running water, but the edifice next door did. "Imagine beingness locked in a edifice without something you literally need to live, and y'all know the people next door have it," June says.
Some people carted h2o from ane building to the next using trash bags, just information technology was hardly plenty to affluent a toilet, let alone drink. (The corrections officers on duty didn't share that in that location was a boil-water observe in effect.)
And then, as toilets overflowed, people resorted to angling frozen feces out of the toilet bowls, while others tried to notice unimposing places to urinate. "Yous think, 'If I really demand to go, I can find somewhere,'" June says. "But and so yous multiply that past 250 people."
A sewage fill-in created what June describes as "ankle-deep feces and wastewater" throughout her building. According to her, corrections officers let that water sit down at that place for nearly a mean solar day. That is perhaps the virtually frustrating role of all: the lack of action and communication from the people upward top. "They made the officers be the confront of their inaction," June says of the prison's leadership. "At that place was no communication, no resolution."
In general, incarcerated people have scant opportunities to speak out. Their phone time is limited, and in-person visitations have been unavailable throughout much of the pandemic. Many incarcerated people (including Stonemason McCormick in Dallas) are "lost in the system" for months at a time, unaware of what's happening with their cases or awaiting courtroom dates that are repeatedly rescheduled.
Another option is to write and file a grievance, equally many people in lockup did during last year'due south winter storm.
In Galveston, people incarcerated in the county jail wrote that the lack of water was starting to infringe on their ceremonious rights. A couple bottles of water a day won't cutting it, they said.
"If yous can't provide my bones necessities," a woman named Allison wrote, "you need to bond me out. I'm starting to feel sick from dehydration. I have a fraud accuse. I didn't kill anyone, and I don't think I should be treated this poorly."
A homo named Keith wrote, "We haven't had drinking water or showers in two days. This is unconstitutional. There's hepatitis, HIV, COVID, who knows?"
It may be tempting to view these stories as an bibelot, but many advocates say jails and prisons throughout Texas are home to horrible conditions all yr long. "I had a adult female call me this summer and say, 'My brother's in prison house, and they're not giving him water,'" says Amite Dominick, president of Texas Prisons Community Advocates. "At that place's actually not much for me to practice other than call down there and say, 'Why aren't you giving him water?'"
Dominick's organization advocates for incarcerated people and their families, primarily focusing on the atmospheric condition behind bars. That involves a lot of education, particularly on the issue of air workout.
The majority of Texas prisons are not fully air-conditioned.
"People take died with internal torso temperatures of 106 to 109 degrees," she says. "Meanwhile, if I were to exit my canis familiaris in a car, I'thou going to jail. Nosotros wouldn't care for dogs similar this; how are nosotros treating human beings similar this?"
Dominick has an answer to her ain question: Information technology's all about politics. So many of Texas prisons are in diverse states of disrepair, she says. These facilities are only not fit to endure extreme cold or extreme heat, and considering of the stigma surrounding incarcerated people, there'south piffling political will to provide the funding needed for repairs or whatsoever changes that would improve living conditions. For instance, multiple legislative attempts to add together air conditioning to scorching Texas prisons have failed in recent years.
"The reality is, in Texas, nosotros are cooking people in prisons," state Rep. Terry Canales, a Democrat from Edinburg, said on the floor of the Legislature in 2022 in an try to fund air-conditioning. "This is the right matter to do, it is the humane affair to practise, and it's something nosotros should have washed a long time agone."
At that place is also picayune to no motivation to close or partially close some of Texas' nearly decrepit jails and prisons. In Dallas, advocates like Cooper take cited the horror stories of the winter storm as a key reason why parts of the canton jail should be closed.
Even some corrections officers agree with her.
"We're forced to work overtime considering we merely don't have plenty people to staff the jail," 1 officer told the Observer. "That means we've got people in hither working multiple 14- or 16-hour days a week. If we closed parts of the jail, we wouldn't have this problem anymore."
Several of their coworkers shared similar sentiments, and they all asked to remain bearding for fright of retaliation. Sheriff Marian Brown recently told The Dallas Morning News, "[Due west]e continue to piece of work to get to a point where overtime is not a necessity," but to Cooper, that misses the point. The way she sees it, closing office of the jail could solve multiple problems at once: The reduced space could encourage a reduction in depression-level arrests, and in turn, corrections officers wouldn't be as overwhelmed. Virtually importantly, atmospheric condition inside the jail could improve.
Even so on the betoken of population reduction, Cooper continues to face scarlet tape and roadblocks.
"The Commissioners Court passes the buck to the sheriff, who passes the buck to the police, who pass the buck back to the sheriff," Cooper says. "Some of them will say they want to see reductions, simply are there real signs that they desire to do something? No. When it comes downward to really being the champion and pushing the needle forward, we don't see anything."
Meanwhile, Cooper can't shake the retentivity of some of the calls she received during last year's winter storm. At the time, she was helping the loved ones of incarcerated people find whatsoever shred of information they could near their families. "And then many mothers and partners and grandparents had no idea what was going on with their loved ones," she says. "I could feel the pain in their voices."
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Dallas County Jail has not been a comfortable place during winter storms.
Mike Brooks
Tammy Hinton was experiencing some deja vu this calendar month. Hinton, Mason McCormick's longtime girlfriend, was preparing for another freezing cold snap, this ane called Winter Storm Landon. "It's hard having him incarcerated, considering we have a kid together," Hinton says. "And then that means, while he is locked upwardly, I'm having to exercise everything for our son by myself."
While Van Zandt is effusive and speaks passionately, McCormick is oft stoic. He talks about his incarceration in a matter-of-fact tone, his voice rarely fluctuating. He is, above all else, unfailingly polite. "How're you feeling?" he asks over the phone from Dallas Canton Jail. "You set up for the storm?"
In his words, McCormick has been "in and out of jail quite a flake," and as a result, he has a unique perspective on the inner workings of the organization. Apart from a six-month stint in Johnson County Jail south of Fort Worth, he has spent the last two-and-a-one-half years incarcerated on drug charges in Dallas. During that time, he has befriended plenty of guys who, despite being charged with a misdemeanor, have sat in jail for three or iv months without knowing the status of their cases.
Winter Storm Uri in 2022 was a new low bespeak.
When the lights went out, McCormick says officers fabricated him and the others in his "pod" stay in their pitch-black quarters for roughly four hours. The lack of water and noesis led to some wild theorizing among the men, including the thought that they had been abandoned. "The officers weren't very forthcoming with a contingency program, merely you kind of got the sense that they didn't know, either," McCormick says. "I don't think there was a plan."
He also hasn't noticed any policy changes since those days in darkness. There is ane difference, though. "I have noticed they've been doing more fire drills lately," he says. "I don't know if that'southward related or non, though."
When reached for annotate, the sheriff's office said there have been "no changes" to jail policy concerning weather condition preparedness. "The Dallas County Emergency Management Teams are equipped with plans regarding astringent weather," a spokeswoman said.
The Bureau of Prisons shared a similar, albeit murkier, response. "Every Bureau of Prisons facility has contingency plans in place to accost a big range of concerns or incidents, to include natural disasters, and is fully equipped and prepared to implement these plans as necessary," spokesman Emery Nelson wrote in an email. "For safety and security reasons, the Bureau of Prison's contingency plans are sensitive in nature and are non available to the public."
Beyond the stories of February 2021, there are common sense steps experts insist jails tin have to remedy defoliation and reduce chaos. Jessica Pishko, an attorney and author currently working on a book about sheriffs, says communication should be one focus. "Most people in jail are getting information from watching Telly, not the sheriffs themselves," she says. "That tin create a lot of panic during a fourth dimension like the winter storm, because people aren't really certain what'south happening and if their families are OK."
Another selection, she explains, is to simply release people who pose no threat to the community. At the fourth dimension of publication, Dallas County Jail is housing most 6,000 people, roughly eighty% of its capacity. Police accept stopped absorbing people for some small-scale offenses, including small amounts of marijuana, simply arrests for other misdemeanors go along unabated. Additionally, data bear witness that Dallas police abort Black people for misdemeanors far more ofttimes than their white counterparts. From 2013 to 2020, 77% of all arrests were made for depression-level, irenic offenses.
As Cooper has witnessed, attempts to reduce those numbers are oftentimes met with countless finger-pointing and the kind of hardline police-and-order rhetoric that is baked into Dallas' Deoxyribonucleic acid. "Criminal justice reform is just not a topic that anyone in Dallas County leadership wants to deal with," Pishko says. "The right is not willing to exercise any criminal justice reform at all."
Of grade, Dallas County Jail is not the only facility plagued by crowded populations and dangerous conditions. In early on Jan this year, Harris County Jail was and so overcrowded that hundreds of its occupants were recently moved to a jail in Louisiana.
"It does not appear that the Harris Canton Jail is safe," Pishko adds. "A few months ago, a 19-year-old was booked into the jail and killed by another inmate, and I was similar, 'Why was he there? He was a skinny, intellectually disabled kid, and they let someone impale him. That's like Sheriff 101.'"
The sheriffs in both Harris County and Dallas County take seen their budgets increase by millions in recent years. The Observer asked the local sheriff's department if whatsoever of those new millions would exist used to improve jail weather condition, simply the questions were directed to the Part of Budget and Evaluation. That office has yet to respond. Also, the Harris County sheriff's department didn't respond to questions. Meanwhile, the sheriffs in both counties continue to exceed their budgets.
In 2020, Sheriff Dark-brown's section spent $xiv.4 million in overtime. It was originally provided for $ii.5 one thousand thousand. As Cooper argues, that'due south money that could get to programs and initiatives focused on housing, education, homelessness and jobs.
Then again, as Dominick points out, coin isn't really the issue, or at least non in the fashion people recollect information technology is. Taxpayers may not realize how much of their coin goes to prisons.
Co-ordinate to The Marshall Project, American taxpayers pay roughly $80 billion toward annual prison costs every year. In Texas, spending on prisons and jails has far outpaced spending on education.
"I similar to quote Representative Canales, who said, 'I don't recall we have a coin trouble; I think we have a requite-a-damn trouble," Dominick says. "I don't think people truly understand how much money they spend on incarceration, and I don't remember they sympathize how bad it is in at that place."
That's why Jerome Van Zandt, a Republican, thinks criminal justice reform should exist bipartisan. By telephone in belatedly January, Van Zandt offered a seemingly endless flow of anecdotes about his seven months behind bars. He touched on the commissary, the cramped quarters and the endless fighting. "There was e'er something going on," he says.
But there was one story he seemed eager to share more than the others, a story to which he kept returning: his own. He doesn't have anything confronting the constabulary, he says. He was merely scared, so he ran.
Yes, he knows he screwed upwardly, and no, he doesn't want a complimentary laissez passer. Only he doesn't think he deserves the treatment he received in jail. And on that solar day in autumn 2020, before the cuffs, before he ran, he wants you lot to know that he wasn't trying to hurt anyone. "I don't know what y'all'd call information technology," he says. "I gauge mayhap you'd call it a cry for help."
Source: https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/frozen-in-place-how-winter-storms-push-texas-jails-and-prisons-to-the-brink-13346249
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