Problems Continue Under Sheriff Javier Salazar
Deputy Resigns After Questioning
Bexar County deputy, Milton Martinez, resigned after he was questioned regarding the suspicion that he was bringing in contraband (tobacco) for the inmates. According to the KSAT article, the Public Integrity Unit conducted their questioning of Martinez on Monday. Once the investigation is complete the case will be turned over to the District Attorney’s Office.
Milton Martinez was hired in January of 2018. Sheriff Salazar has long since been trying to blame the problems at the jail on past administrations. He has bragged about the changes he has made to stop people like this from getting hired. We always knew his arrogance would come back to bite him. Milton Martinez is not the only one who was hired by this administration who ended up being a bad decision. The sheriff has even bragged about reviewing the applications himself. Well, Sheriff, why did you let Martinez get hired?
Attempted Escape
You may wonder why we didn’t make an attempted jail escape a main story all on its own. Normally it would be. An inmate, Marco Alvarez, who has multiple violent charges attempts to escape the Bexar County Jail.
At first the KSAT article just said the inmate had forged releasing paperwork. That seemed strange to us. Where did he get the paperwork? How would he know what paperwork the jail used and that he needed to get? Was it some kind of conspiracy? Then the article gets up dated and says it’s his identification card.
From what we have learned over the years, the inmates walk around with an identification card when they are outside of their living units. When an inmate is going to be released the officers write the code RCO1 on the card. We don’t know what that literally stands for but it’s been used for years and is a code that indicates the inmate is getting released.
We can only assume Mr. Alvarez wrote RCO1 on his card and went into the booking area but as we have heard over and over from the erroneous releases that have occurred, there are processes that inmates have to go through to actually be released. It doesn’t seem likely that writing four characters on a card could have brought an inmate that close to being released. And if it did bring him that close, then they Sheriff shouldn’t be patting himself on the back for a job well done, he should be jumping all over his jail administrators for having a system that is so easily circumvented.
You can read the KSAT article here but in our opinion, this feels like a manufactured ‘good job’ story by the Sheriff’s Office.