A 5-year-old’s birthday party was held Saturday, but there were more tears than laughter at the gathering. Soon after the cake crumbs were cleared away, relatives began making funeral arrangements for the birthday boy’s father, who died July 8 after being tased by a detention officer during his release from the Harris County Jail.
Late last month, the sheriff’s department confirmed that 10 men have died at the Harris County Jail so far this year, including three in a 48-hour period in June. Within a week, the number of jail deaths rose to 12.
Only 11 in-custody deaths show up on the sheriff’s department’s public list. Alexis Cardenas, the father of the 5-year-old and three other children, isn’t counted because, some say, he technically wasn’t in custody. But if he wasn’t in custody, why was an officer authorized to tase him, asked Krish Gundu, cofounder and executive director of the Texas Jail Project.
There’s also a question of why Cardenas, whose family says was likely in the throes of a mental health crisis, was taken to jail instead of a hospital.
Cardenas had been in jail since Sunday, July 6, when the Houston Police Department arrested him on a “failure to appear” charge on a traffic ticket he’d received several years ago, his cousin Melissa Cardenas said. During his release two days later, officials with the Harris County Sheriff’s Department said Alexis Cardenas engaged in a physical altercation with detention officers who were attempting to escort him out of the jail.
“[Cardenas] was being escorted to an exit door when he physically resisted detention officers as they attempted to walk him outside the building,” sheriff’s department officials said in a press release. “One detention officer deployed his Taser in an effort to gain control of Cardenas, but it was not immediately effective. At one point, Cardenas briefly forced his way back into the secure area of the jail where inmates were being processed for release.”
Multiple officers eventually “gained control over Cardenas,” the press release states.
“Once control was established, they noticed that Cardenas was unresponsive,” according to the release. “A detention officer then administered CPR while jail medical staff responded to the area to administer aid. Cardenas was then taken to St. Joseph Hospital, where he was pronounced deceased at 1:57 a.m.”
The Texas Rangers are investigating the incident, and an autopsy will be performed by the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences to determine Alexis Cardenas’ cause of death.
Melissa Cardenas addressed the matter before the Harris County Commissioners Court last week, arguing that her cousin shouldn’t have been in the county jail in the first place.
“He approached a police officer fearing for his life,” she said. “The police officer offered to take him home but ran his identification. He was arrested and booked on a minor traffic incident that he committed years ago.
“Our family is left in the dark,” she added. “We found out through social media that he was tased as he was being released but yet his death isn’t counted as an in-custody death. Why is it that businesses are being held accountable for any accidents that happen but Harris County is immune?”
Amaal Sharif, community organizer for the Texas Jail Project, joined Melissa Cardenas at the Commissioners Court meeting last week and questioned county officials about the rise in misdemeanor arrests.
“There was absolutely no need for [Alexis Cardenas] to be booked for a traffic violation,” Sharif said. “We urge the court to look into why the jail is booking people on Class C misdemeanors when it is still noncompliant as of June 30.”
No one has provided any answers or context for the death, Melissa Cardenas said. Commissioners and Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo told the grieving cousin at last week’s meeting that they were sorry for her loss and would follow up. She said she received a call from Hidalgo’s office but the staffer couldn’t provide any information and wanted to know if lawyers were involved.
The Sheriff’s Office Internal Affairs department is investigating to determine whether all relevant policies were followed, officials said at the time of the death, adding that they would publicly release video footage within 45 days, per department policy.
Melissa Cardenas grew up with her cousin Alexis; he and his mother lived with her family, and Alexis, who was an electrical contractor at the time of his death, went to Westbury High School.
“He was like my brother,” she said. “My dad basically raised him. We were very close. He was a protector, the one who says, I got your back no matter what. My dad owns horses and every time I called him, he was with my dad and the horses. He was the one who would show up at all of our aunts’ houses on Mother’s Day with the roses. He would give his last dollar and say God is going to bless me 10 times more.”
His children, ages 14, 12, 7 and 5, are having a hard time understanding what happened, Melissa Cardenas said.
“His 7-year-old picks up on things,” she said. “I took her to breakfast yesterday. She was feeling a little left out because we threw a party for the youngest. I asked her how she felt about what’s going on. She said, I know my daddy died. She said she was worried about who was going to pick her up from school because he picked her up from school every day.”
Melissa Cardenas said her cousin may have been experiencing depression and mental health issues. A few years ago, Alexis Cardenas suffered a “freak accident” with his lawn mower and lost fingers on his right hand.
“He’s been going through it mentally and emotionally because he wasn’t on disability. He was going to interviews and having a hard time getting a job,” she said.
On the day of his arrest, Alexis Cardenas approached a Houston police officer in a parking lot and asked for help, according to an account from his wife.
“He felt like his life was in danger. He felt unsafe,” Melissa Cardenas said. “The cop offered to give him a ride home. Alexis said he didn’t want to go home; that something was going to happen to him and his family was there.”
The officer asked for his ID and found the old warrant. The cop then took Alexis Cardenas’ car keys to his wife before taking him to jail, family members said. Once he got to jail, no one in his family heard from him again.
The family was contacted by county officials about nine hours after Alexis’ death, saying he’d suffered from a medical emergency and collapsed upon exiting, Melissa Cardenas said. No one mentioned a Taser.
“We don’t know what happened,” Melissa Cardenas said. “He was healthy; he was 32 years old. He was 5 [feet], 7 [inches], maybe 200 pounds. I don’t understand why they couldn’t control him. Even if he was having a mental breakdown or was paranoid, how many people did it take to control him to where he was unresponsive?”
Alexis wasn’t one to start a fight but he would defend himself, she added. She’s been told by people familiar with the situation that he didn’t want to leave the jail, possibly because he believed harm awaited him in the outside world.
“I think he was experiencing depression and hopelessness,” she said. “These are people who are trained to be around people who aren’t stable. What person in their right mind wouldn’t want to leave jail? If he’s telling you, ‘I feel unsafe leaving,’ call someone over to help him. Take him to the mental health facility.”
She said she hopes the video, when it’s released, will show what happened and maybe how things could have been handled differently.
“He is a father; he is a brother,” Melissa Cardenas told Commissioners Court. “He has four children he is leaving behind. We have no answers. Nothing about what happened makes any sense.”
While the Harris County Jail has been scrutinized for years for its overcrowding and outsourcing inmates to Mississippi and Louisiana, a more significant problem is the ratio of staff to prisoners, Judge Hidalgo said in a July 2 interview on the Houston Matters radio show.
“These folks are not even convicted, and if they were, the vast majority of them are not getting a death sentence,” Hidalgo said. “I don’t have enough words to explain the tragedy of the situation. I think it continues to happen, and I think it’s important not to normalize it. My heart goes out to those families.”
When you have a large population that can hover around 10,000 people, some are sick and some will die, “but I can’t pretend that these are all deaths that couldn’t be prevented,” she said.
As of Monday, Harris County’s jail population was 8,674, with more than 1,500 of those inmates housed in other states. About 79 percent have a “mental health indicator,” and 28 percent are on psychotropic medication, according to the sheriff’s department dashboard.
Sheriff’s Department Senior Policy and Communications Advisor Jason Spencer said the jail currently has 148 detention officer vacancies and is on track to hire and train at least 110 new employees during academies that start July 21 and August 18.
“At our current pace of hiring and attrition, we expect to be fully staffed sometime this fall, at which time we intend to request Commissioners Court approval for 200 more detention officer positions,” Spencer said.
City and county jails in the Lone Star State are overseen by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, which has found the Harris County lockup noncompliant since 2022.
Sharif, the Texas Jail Project employee, pressed county officials at last week’s meeting about the noncompliance issue and outsourcing contracts with Louisiana and Mississippi.
The outsourcing contracts are up for review at the end of the year and should be canceled, forcing Harris County to reduce its inmate population and move people through the system faster, critics have said. Harris County spends about $54 million per year to house inmates outside of Texas, according to reports.
“Despite a consistent decline in our jail population, we have not seen that reflected in the number of people being sent out to Mississippi and Louisiana,” Sharif said. “We reviewed the contracts and saw that, since the out-of-state beds are already paid for, [Harris County] has no real incentive to stop shipping people out of state.
“The only way that we can truly stop this is if we tweak or cancel those contracts,” she added.
