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Sheriff Who?

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The National Latino Peace Officers Association's Dallas chapter feuded with the county's first Latina sheriff last year after claiming that the department's DWI task force selectively targeted Hispanic neighborhoods, resulting in a disproportionate number of Hispanic drivers being arrested for drunken driving. Even Anglo officers have complained that the task force was unfairly going after Hispanics, in part because they were less likely to contest the charges. Peritz says the department ordered an investigation of the union's claims and found them to be unfounded, but the Dallas chapter insists that a problem exists. "This pattern is deeply disturbing, as is your repeated refusal to take corrective measures," reads a letter from a union official to Valdez. "Sheriff Valdez, it is far more irresponsible to allow your deputies to abuse the public trust. It is far more troubling that you have let nearly a year go by without rectifying this situation."

The theme of Valdez's lack of hands-on management style came up again this week when the county auditor's office released the Sheriff's Department's overtime expenses for the first half of the 2006 fiscal year. From October 2005 to March 2006, the department had nearly 35 detention service officers earn more than $15,000 each in overtime, almost as much as they earned in non-overtime pay. One jail employee made an incredible $35,000 in overtime pay for the six-month period, with two others making more than $20,000.

Peritz explains that the department has been forced to pay overtime costs in order to adequately staff the jail and keep up with state standards. Dallas County Commissioner Ken Mayfield, however, says that the department is just about fully staffed and that Valdez, not unlike her predecessor, is paying scant attention to overtime costs.

"Overtime is just ridiculous. These numbers are just ridiculous," Mayfield says. "There's very little management being exercised."

After it became clear that the health care crisis at the jail was not going to magically disappear, the U.S. Justice Department announced in November that it would investigate health and sanitation at the jail. Justice, which finished the bulk of its investigation earlier this spring, is expected to deliver its strongest words about the county's former medical provider, UTMB. The department also will likely single out the county's malfunctioning computer system for sanction. It's not clear what exactly they're going to tell us about our sheriff, although Justice Department investigators have noted problems with the operation of the jail as well, according to a county employee. In any case, whether the Department of Justice chooses to apportion blame among Valdez, the medical provider and county or if it just brands them together as a part of a monolithic jail-health industrial complex, few people expect that the agency will merely slap everyone's collective wrist.

"There's little likelihood DOJ will let them off the hook easily," says Mark Haney, who is one of the attorneys representing Mims and who has talked to investigators about the jail.

Through her spokesman, Valdez declined to answer any questions about the Justice Department's investigation. On the subject of jail health, however, she says that Chief Deputy Edgar McMillan, who is responsible for inmate detention, issued a written directive last year giving supervisors the authority to take action whenever they believe the medical department has failed its duties, "even to the point of sending the affected inmate to the hospital."

But a Sheriff's Department employee points out that Valdez has made no significant changes concerning how officers and supervisors are trained. This is a significant issue, especially considering that the department's own internal affairs investigators blamed the guards after Mims went without water. Through her spokesman, Valdez does not specify any change she's made in training other than those mandated by law. Insiders say the sheriff has no chance to improve the operation of the jail if she fails to overhaul how the jailers approach their jobs.

"There is a big difference in providing the minimum standards required to keep an employee licensed and providing extra training to improve things," says one employee at the Sheriff's Department.

In interviews with guards and supervisors, many of them are quick to pin the blame for the jail's problems on UTMB for failing to grasp the enormity of health problems at a big urban jail like Dallas. But for families of inmates who have died, there is plenty of blame to go around.

In February 2005, Alice Lynch-Fullen visited her brother Christopher Lynch at the Lew Sterrett Justice Center after he was arrested on rape charges in Grand Prairie. When Fullen saw her brother, she saw ligature marks on his neck suggesting he had tried to hang himself. She begged him, "Don't let me bury you; I can't bury you."

He was not responsive.

Desperate and distraught over her brother's mental state, Fullen pleaded with guards to look after him. "I said I wasn't going to leave until I talked to someone, and they laughed at me."

Fullen finally met with a sergeant who sent two guards to look at her brother. The guards radioed back and told her that Lynch said what his sister thought were ligature marks was really a rash. "I told her it's not a rash. I used to be a nurse. And they said 'You're just babying him.'"

Lynch was later convicted on multiple counts of rape, and if you think that whatever last happened to him behind bars is just punishment, consider that his plight as a ward of Dallas County has been shared by people charged with simple assault and driving with a suspended license--innocent and guilty alike. Or forget about him and think about his family. To Fullen, her brother was a giant teddy bear of a man, a loving son and father who rebuilt their parent's home after it burned.

Throughout Lynch's stay in jail, Fullen and her parents along with Lynch's wife continued to receive letters from jail that hinted at suicidal tendencies. Over the next few months, the sister continued to plead with jail officials to put her brother on suicide watch. They refused. On October 10, while Fullen was at the Texas State Fair with her family, a detective with the Sheriff's Department told her that Christopher Lynch was dead.

"I started screaming in the middle of the state fair. People are staring, and I'm just saying, 'Chris is dead, Chris is dead.'"

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