On November 22, 2021, the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office in San Antonio, Texas, filed a custodial death report on Richard Altamirano. The report states that the inmate had refused a diabetic check at some point during incarceration. At age 58, Mr. Altamirano died in Bexar County Jail’s custody on November 8, 2021. 

The afore-referenced article about Texas county jails focused, in part, on one jail in particular. A new sheriff responsible for the jail ultimately spoke out about his concerns related to inmate medical care. He said that he had not been there long before he became concerned about medical care, and he investigated the complaints. Among his discoveries was that it may take six weeks for an inmate’s request to see a physician to be reviewed.

The sheriff detailed one incident in which an inmate stated during the booking process on a Friday that he needed daily insulin to treat his diabetes. At that point, the inmate was informed that until he could see a doctor the following Wednesday, he would not be able to have any insulin. The inmate, fortunately, was released by Monday. However, his condition was already serious, and the former inmate went directly to a hospital for adjustment of his blood sugar.

The sheriff ran into numerous complications in his effort to improve procedures for providing inmates with needed medical care. Before anything was resolved, the number of inmates who died in that jail spiked alarmingly.

See Part 1 and Part 2 of this series.

On this website, there is never an intention to imply that a person or entity has been a participant in misdeeds. Providing help to Texas county jail inmates is the purpose of posts on this site.

–Guest Contributor