When 32-year-old Veronica Carmona Peranez was in the police vehicle that transported her to Brownsville City Jail in Brownsville, Texas, she reportedly banged her head against the partition panel in the vehicle at least two times. Once at the jail, Ms. Peranez was placed in a padded cell and seemingly not checked on between 6:20 pm and 10:02 pm. She was then discovered to be unresponsive and was pronounced dead 4 hours and 4 minutes after being booked.

The Texas Commission on Jail Standards (TCJS) conducts an annual inspection at all Texas county jails. It is frequently discovered that jails are non-compliant in areas that affect inmate safety. The following is an example.

RULE §273.6(3) – Restraints

A TCJS inspector cited this restraint requirement in a Jail Inspection Report dated December 15-16, 2019, for a Texas county jail. The personal observations of an inmate in a restraint chair must be made at intervals no longer than every 15 minutes. During these face-to-face checks, it must be confirmed that the circulation to the inmate’s extremities has not been cut off.

• According to the inspector, the restraint chair logs indicate that the time frame for 15-minute observation checks was exceeded by the jail staff on multiple occasions for a period of 1 to 22 minutes.

See Part 1 and Part 2 of this three-part series.

Each of the posts on this website is provided as a way of helping Texas county jail inmates, whether incarcerated currently or previously. There is no intention on this site to implicate that persons or entities have been engaged in improprieties.

–Guest Contributor