Wayne Joseph Dunlap was arrested and placed in the Killeen Police Department City Jail on the morning of December 1, 2022. Mr. Dunlap, age 46, exhibited medical problems during the booking process. He was later found unresponsive in his cell and, 17 hours after his entry in the Killeen City Jail, Mr. Dunlap was pronounced deceased.

Harris County Jail Defends its Record

The Chief of Staff of the Harris County Sheriff’s Office pointed out that the in-custody death rate in the Harris County jail system is at 0.295%, which is below the national average. The jail’s custodial death rate, he said, is also comparable to the inmate death rates in the state’s five other largest county jails. Those counties are Bexar, Dallas, Travis, Tarrant, and El Paso.

Harris County has been attempting to reduce the rising rate of violent crimes, a problem trending throughout the nation. An increasing jail population is one of the outflows of increasing crime, and the latest three inmate deaths in Harris County occurred in the midst of these conditions.

The Houston Police Department (HPD) recently reported a 3% decrease in the overall volume of crime. The violent crime rate in Houston decreased during the first half of 2022. However, the murder and assault rate is on pace with 2019. According to Texas Crime Reports for 2019, there were 97 murders and 860 rapes in Harris County that year, both an increase from the year before. Rapes jumped most significantly, with 591 in 2018.

Learn more in Part 1 and this continuing series.

County and municipal jail inmates in Texas can find helpful resources on this website. There is no intention of insinuating that any entity or person has participated in wrongs.

–Guest Contributor