For sheriff
In a tough call, voters should go with Gonzalez to clean up Harris County Jail.
Being sheriff of Harris County is a bit like being a rancher. No matter what, at the end of the day you’re going to end up smelling like cow pies.
The Harris County jail is a stinking, overcrowded hive of around 10,000 souls, about 75 percent of whom haven’t been convicted of a crime. Even the best manager is going to end up with stink on his sheriff’s uniform. Voters have the difficult job of determining whether negative headlines coming out of the department reflect decades’ worth of structural failures or poor direction from the top office.
Part of the problem stems from the sheriff’s dual duties: providing police patrols for the 2 million people in unincorporated Harris County, and also running the jail. The first is the job of a law enforcement professional. The second is the job of an experienced manager who can handle a massive criminal justice facility that essentially serves as the largest de facto mental health unit in the state. Do the job poorly, and innocent people will die, criminals will unnecessarily suffer and taxpayers will be stuck with the bill.
At the beginning of this campaign we believed that Sheriff Ron Hickman should get the benefit of a doubt on his challenging task. The longtime Precinct 4 constable was appointed to his position by Commissioners Court when Adrian Garcia decided to run for mayor in May 2015. Since then, we’ve seen a series of problems created more by policy choices than inexorable jail conditions. A scandal in his former constable’s department places these problems in a wider pattern of questionable management. Because of these issues, we encourage voters to support Democratic challenger Ed Gonzalez for sheriff.
More than 100 cases have been thrown out at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center because Precinct 4 improperly destroyed more than 20,000 pieces of evidence. People may even have been wrongfully incarcerated. Federal investigators are still trying to figure out exactly what happened, but some fingers are pointing to a single officer who apparently had been inappropriately destroying evidence since 2007 — well within Hickman’s time as boss. We still don’t know what Hickman knew, when he knew it, and what he could have done to prevent this cascading failure of criminal justice. Could Hickman stop a similar problem from happening on his watch as sheriff?
He certainly didn’t predict the consequences of replacing jail guards with deputies: fewer patrols, overtime skyrocketing by 500 percent, exhausted employees and low morale. The budget has been pushed to the limit, and it is putting the county’s crime-fighting abilities at risk.
This personnel change may have been worthwhile if it made the jail safer. Yet this past May, Chronicle reporters James Pinkerton and Lauren Caruba documented four inmate deaths from assaults or head trauma suffered in the jail, including one man held on misdemeanor charges killed by another inmate.
Garcia used every trick in his book to squeeze the budget and prevent jail overcrowding. Hickman put that book back on the shelf. That’s the attitude that we’ve come to expect from Harris County’s eight constables, which often serve more as political fiefdoms than well-oiled law enforcement agencies.
From a press release attacking the District Attorney to deputies’ inappropriate relations with a witness in the Darren Goforth shooting case, we see a sheriff’s department in need of better management. At the jail, we see more taxpayer dollars spent to get similar results. We’ve lost confidence in Hickman. This would be an easier call if Gonzalez were running a stronger race for office. The former three-term District H city councilman has the reputation of being soft-spoken and his campaign has adopted that personality. Nevertheless, Gonzalez built a record as a policymaker dedicated to diverting people from our jail — one of the major challenges facing the sheriff’s office. He was a key proponent behind Houston’s sobering center, which is one of the best jail diversion institutions in the region. As a former police sergeant with 18 years of service, Gonzalez knows the daily challenges of his patrol deputies. On council he was an effective mayor pro tem, where he saw up close the hard work of crafting a budget. In that position he stood out as a smart, if quiet, policymaker who surrounded himself with quality staff. In contrast, Hickman seems to surround himself with the good ol’ boys of his constable’s office.
Most important, Gonzalez has called for a jail administrator to run the facility. It is time to put a professional in charge.
The cow pies — and the stink — are piling up at the sheriff’s office. Voters should give Gonzalez a chance to clean up the mess.