Unfair Park from p4 ID,” Malone said. The phony ID had his cli- ent’s real name, real address and all of his real information on it. But because of an is- sue with a birth certificate, he had a problem getting a real one and decided to get one at a flea market. He ended up getting arrested for it. The young man clearly had mental health problems, Malone recalled, and when he was arrested, he broke down in tears. Malone understood this client didn’t need to be punished. He needed help. The young man went to the Burkburnett City Jail, north of Wichita Falls, and one of the officers didn’t turn off his lapel microphone. Every- thing that followed wound up being re- corded. The jailers berated him, called him names like “pansy” and made fun of him for asking for his mom, all for no reason, ac- cording to Malone. Eventually, the young man hanged himself in the cell with the drawstring of his pants. Malone thought it could have been pre- vented had the jailers changed him into jail clothing, which doesn’t include a drawstring. But they didn’t. “He was help- less,” the lawyer recalled. “We’re talking about a mentally ill young man who, ac- cording to what he told the officers, had attempted suicide not too long before. I made a decision pretty quickly when I be- gan to work on that case that I was going to devote my practice to doing nothing but this since that time.” According to the Texas Justice Initia- tive, some 12,218 people have died in cus- tody in Texas since 2005. Suicides make up 11% of those, roughly the same percent- ages of deaths as homicide at 12%. Com- bined, suicide and homicide make up almost a quarter of in-custody deaths. Cases that fall into these categories can be gruesome and sad. Krish Gundu, co-founder and executive director of Texas Jail Project, a group dedi- cated to the ethical treatment of the state’s incarcerated population, explained that a large portion of people in jails are in pretrial, meaning they haven’t been convicted of any- thing; they just can’t afford bail to get out. (Chris Cabler was one such person, who ended up losing his life before he was ever tried.) Gundu said that when Texas Jail Project started, about half of incarcerated people were in pretrial; now that number is getting closer to three quarters. “[They] are spending anywhere from six months to a year, to three years pretrial in jail, which makes no sense at all,” Gundu said. “If we could cut down that population, it would be so much easier to take care of the folks that can’t be let out … the system is so overwhelmed, it’s collapsing under its own weight. It’s not safe for the staff that works in there, it’s not safe for the people that are in cages.” Malone knows all about gruesome and 66 sad experiences. Take, for instance, a few of his past cases. A man in a city of Jasper jail vomited up a black substance and a baggie, but no one called for medical help; his body was later found. Another man, Gabriel Oli- vas, who was suicidal, poured gasoline on himself with a lighter in his hand and the of- ficers decided to use a Taser on him. He times don’t even know who they are, being housed in a metal box with a concrete floor for months and years on end without even being convicted of anything, which is im- portant to point out.” But Malone believes that a lack of re- sources doesn’t give a free pass to cities or counties, which have a duty to honor every- one’s constitutional rights. Plus, the problem isn’t as simple as just providing more beds. The way Malone sees it, part of the problem boils down to compensation for jailers. In some counties, the pay is no more than what fast-food restaurant workers receive. “How in the world are you going to live on $12 or $13 an hour in today’s society?” Malone asked. “And think about this: A sheriff’s dep- uty, what do we give them? We give them a nice police vehicle with lights and a siren. We give them a uniform; we give them a Taser; we give them a firearm … They have all these things with which they can inflict force. We endow them with power to pull over anybody they want to pull over. And then we pay them $13 an hour. I mean, what do you expect?” HISTORY OF NONCOMPLIANCE D went up in flames and died from the burns. A man named Daniel McCoy, in Williamson County, thought he was Cronos, the son of Uranus in Greek mythology, and sustained a hypoxic brain injury, dying before he could receive any medical care. “When I tell people what I do, they say, ‘Gosh, how in the world can you deal with those cases day in and day out?’” Malone said. “I have to distance myself a bit from what happened, or I just couldn’t do it. [But] I really get satisfaction out of doing the best I can for these families who have been through horrible situations.” From January to June 2022, there were eight officially documented deaths in Dallas County jails. One, an “Anglo” person, was deemed a suicide. The other seven deaths consisted of one Asian, one Hispanic and five African-Americans, who disproportion- ately populate jails in the United States. LEGACY OF SLAVERY I n the U.S., Gundu argued, the entire con- cept of how jail is run today was born from the ruins of slavery. “When we abol- ished slavery, there was a huge labor short- age, and the way to fill that labor shortage was to start arresting people for petty stuff,” she said. “If you go back historically and look at jail populations, they would always spike during harvest season. And when they were done picking and whatever else that needed to be done, they would be let out.” At the height of mass incarceration in the U.S., she added, the rate of Black people in jail was six times the highest number of Black people held in prisons in apartheid South Africa. When she first heard that, she couldn’t believe it. “I needed so many other pieces of corroboration before I believed that piece of data,” Gundu said. “That right Chris Cabler killed himself while jailed. Nathan Hunsinger/Courtesy Cabler family there should tell us something.” Then, there are those who have a mental illness or are living on the streets. “You see people who should be going to mental health crisis centers, or the ERs, or a sub- stance abuse crisis center, but they’re ending up in jails, so they’re criminalizing home- lessness, or criminalizing mental illness, or criminalizing disabilities,” Gundu said. “Jails are now the warehouses for people with mental illness.” Getting arrested can turn deadly for many, but lawsuits against officers, jails or prisons are neither easy nor quick. In part, that’s due to qualified immunity, a legal principle that provides protection for gov- ernment officials and police officers against legal retribution unless it can be shown that they clearly violated policy or broke the law. Cases can take years to even be tried let alone resolved, and people who are incar- cerated — and their families, for that matter — often can’t afford to pay lawyers for that amount of time. It’s expensive work, but Malone’s firm doesn’t take money from their clients un- less the case pays out. In a best-case sce- nario, only the civil justice system can get money for his clients, but Malone’s satis- fied that there’s at least some form of com- pensation. That’s why he doesn’t expect his caseload to ease up any time soon. After all, the state doesn’t have enough facilities to house peo- ple with mental health ailments or enough resources to provide the right kind of assis- tance in every case. “The waiting period for beds [at a mental care facility] seems to be getting longer and longer,” Malone said. “We see seriously mentally ill people, who at allas County Jail isn’t exempt from the problems plaguing detention cen- ters around the state. The Texas Commission on Jail Standards (TCJS), an entity formed in 1975 to ensure all Texas county jails conform to minimum stan- dards, has found Dallas County noncom- pliant more than once. It was cited in February of this year on four counts, in- cluding incorrect documentation when compared to video evidence, documenta- tion not being available to show that “cri- sis” inmates were provided with a change of clothes at least once per week and doc- umentation not available to show that washable items like sheets and towels were provided to “crisis” inmates. Also, around 40 doors to multiple-occupancy cells were in disrepair. The county was cited for five instances of noncompliance in February 2021 and for one instance in October 2018. Each year, TCJS puts together a list of current noncompliant jails, which are re- moved once they achieve compliance. Texas Jail Project also provides a list of noncom- pliant jails, but retains information on the ci- tations after the issues have been remedied. Malone thinks part of the problem with jails is education and management. He says jails should be managed properly and the rules need to be enforced. Jailers who don’t do their observations or who falsify records should be fired, and the Texas Rangers should be called. “They have to manage these people … just like at a hospi- tal,” he said. “Nurses can’t just hang out at the nursing station in ICU for hours on end while you’ve got seriously ill patients, and likewise in a jail,” he said. “You’re talking about people who, unless you feed them, they don’t eat. Unless you provide the medical care, they don’t get it. Unless you provide the mental health care, they don’t get it.” TCJS checks the records, or sheets, kept by jails to make sure they are compliant. But in Texas, falsifying records is a serious problem. There was one case, in Hill County, when a man committed sui- >> p8 MONTH XX–MONTH XX, 2014 SEPTEMBER 1–7, 2022 DALLAS OBSERVER DALLAS OBSERVER | CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | MOVIES | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | SCHUTZE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS | CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | CULTURE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS dallasobserver.comdallasobserver.com
