Two Tarrant County jailers who were fired following the in-custody death of Anthony Johnson Jr. have been reinstated, according to the sheriff's office.
Sheriff Bill Waybourn announced detention officer Rafael Moreno and his supervisor Lt. Joel Garcia were fired during a press conference May 16 before releasing five minutes of videos showing the events preceding Johnson's death.
But after meeting with attorneys from the Civil Division of the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office, Waybourn said he was advised to withdraw Moreno and Garcia's terminations. Now they are both reinstated and placed on administrative leave.
Waybourn said he withdrew their terminations due to civil service administration guidelines.
"Though I do not agree, under an abundance of caution, I withdrew the terminations in order to assure that the process was completed and all evidence was gathered for this administrative purpose," he wrote in a statement.
Waybourn added that the sheriff's office should be able to terminate someone when there is "evidence of egregious behavior."
"This is a troubling development, but I want to assure the citizens of Tarrant County that this does not change my commitment to getting justice in this case," he said.
In the two videos, Johnson is first asked to exit his cell on the second floor. One video was security camera footage, the other was cell phone video taken by Garcia.
Johnson and the jailers can be seen getting into a physical altercation until he's restrained on the floor. Johnson said “I can’t breathe” at least once during the video, during which Moreno kneels on Johnson's back for more than a minute.
Detention officers are trained to not kneel on someone's back if they're already restrained as Johnson was, Waybourn said.
"He was using a technique that, number one, he was not trained to do, and number two, that we do not tolerate, nor do we want done," he said at a news conference this week.
Garcia was fired for not having better control of the situation and stopping Moreno, he said.
Randy Moore, an attorney representing Garcia, said there was no due process for Garcia or Moreno and called Waybourn's calls for justice "incredulous."
"We're already charging, convicting, and executing two officers in the media without a complete investigation and that's just not the way it's supposed to work," he said.
Since the release of the video, Waybourn has faced calls to resign.
Commissioner Alisa Simmons questioned Waybourn's leadership during a press conference last week, saying the number of in-custody deaths made him unqualified to serve.
"We need someone at the top in the sheriff's office who is attentive, who is available, who's paying attention to what's happening in his jail," Simmons said. "We should not have this level, this number of deaths at the jail."
This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.
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