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Garcia blames chain of command for inmate's mistreatment

Garcia blames 'bad directions' from supervisors for filthy jail cell

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Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia spoke to the editorial board.
Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia spoke to the editorial board.Melissa Phillip/Staff

Acknowledging his jailers were aware of a mentally ill inmate's squalid living conditions, Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia on Monday blamed breakdowns in his jail's chain of command for the incident that led to criminal charges for two jail supervisors and disciplinary actions for 33 others.

"The front-line employees did what they needed to do," Garcia said, explaining that his staff alerted their superiors that Terry Goodwin's cell was dirty and that he was refusing to leave it. "They got bad direction from their supervisors."

Garcia's comments to the Chronicle's editorial board were his most extensive since he fired six supervisors and suspended 29 others two weeks ago for their treatment of Goodwin, now 24. Incarcerated on a marijuana possession charge, Goodwin was found in the fall of 2013 having been left in his cell for weeks among insects, feces and the shredded remnants of his jail uniform.

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A Harris County grand jury indicted two of the jail supervisors in April with two counts of tampering with a governmental record, a felony, for allegedly signing off on records indicating Goodwin's cell had been checked for trash. They could face two to 10 years behind bars and up to $10,000 in fines.

However, Garcia acknowledged that the detention officers could have done more than they did.

"The front-line employees stopped by saying, 'Well, I told somebody,'" the sheriff said. "It was a poor attempt to deal with someone who had proven to be violent - already assaulted inmates, already assaulted staff."

Goodwin was charged in June 2013 with assaulting a public servant after allegedly hitting a jailer, court records show. He pleaded guilty in March of the following year.

The sheriff's office has yet to release records associated with the disciplinary actions announced April 24.

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Garcia, who widely is expected to run for mayor of Houston and would have to step down as the county's top lawman to do so, defended his record as sheriff, one that has been colored in recent weeks by Goodwin's case and another inmate's death from meningitis in April.

"I'm proud of where we're at," Garcia said, citing a reduction in the jail's population and operating costs, as well as technological innovations at the agency. "I'm proud of the successes that we've had."

Garcia's staff questioned Department of Public Safety figures showing a decline in the department's clearance rates between 2008, when Garcia's predecessor left office, and 2013.

In those five years, the sheriff's office's murder clearance rate dropped from 65 percent to 37 percent and the clearance rate for reported rapes dropped from 42 percent to 15 percent, DPS records show. Robbery and assault clearance rates also fell by 8 percent.

Garcia attributed the lower clearance rates to delays in the agency's crime reporting and a hiring freeze that reduced manpower in the sheriff's office.

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Rebecca Elliott covers City Hall for the Houston Chronicle, having previously written about local politics, namely the 2015 Houston mayor’s race. She joined the Chronicle in 2014 as a crime and general assignment reporter in Fort Bend County. A New York City native, she also has reported on politics for Reuters, POLITICO and BuzzFeed.