Republican Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn has won reelection, after a race that focused on deaths in jail custody during his tenure.
With all precincts reporting, unofficial results from the Tarrant County Elections office showed Waybourn won 54% of the vote. His Democratic challenger, Patrick Moses, got 46%.
Waybourn argued he should get another term because he’s initiated projects that are still underway – like the construction of a new sheriff’s training academy and the work of his human trafficking unit.
Waybourn's handling of the county jail has drawn controversy. More than 65 people have died in Tarrant County custody since Waybourn took office in 2017, some under allegations of misconduct and neglect.
Earlier this year, two jailers were indicted for murder after the killing of Anthony Johnson Jr., a Marine veteran who was diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, according to his family.
During an altercation in April, jailers pepper-sprayed Johnson, and one knelt on his back for more than a minute, video of the incident shows. His death was declared a homicide by chemical and mechanical asphyxiation.
Jailers who do wrong face consequences, Waybourn told KERA and the Fort Worth Report during his campaign.
“We’re going to have isolated incidents where things go bad, where officers do wrong, because we still have human beings behind that badge,” he said. “We’ll never, ever get away from that. But all we can do is train better, to try to raise our standards, to try to see where our weaknesses are and improve on them and hold people accountable to those standards in which we set.”
Waybourn’s critics say the deaths are not isolated incidents. This year, a former detention officer pleaded guilty to lying about checking on Javonte Myers, who died of a seizure disorder in his cell.
In 2019, Robert Miller died after detention officers pepper sprayed him. The county attributed his death to a sickle cell crisis, but a Fort Worth Star-Telegram investigation disputed that conclusion, finding that Miller did not have sickle cell disease.
Miller’s death spurred Moses to run for sheriff, he told KERA and the Fort Worth Report. He's a retired federal law enforcement official and a minister. He promised to start a civilian review board to examine every death in custody.
“The work of transforming the culture and ensuring that the right people are in place, providing leadership for detention, providing leadership for every part of the sheriff’s office — I’m prepared for that from day one,” he said.
Moses’ campaign faced multiple challenges, one of the biggest being that Democrats don’t tend to win countywide races in Tarrant County.
Moses also paused his campaign for several months after he won the primary. He had to focus on finishing his doctorate at TCU’s Brite Divinity School, he said.
When asked if he was worried about that affecting his chances, he gave a mixed answer.
“As one who would pretend to be a politician, I would say yes,” he said. “But as one who is really an optimist, I would say no.”
Waybourn has also promised greater transparency. In May, he welcomed third-party experts who evaluated the jail’s physical and mental health care systems.
However, the state says the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office has been breaking the law when it comes to one important transparency measure – which the sheriff’s office disputes.
State law requires jails to get a third-party investigation of every jail death. Waybourn has not been doing that, according to the Texas Commission on Jail Standards.
Over the last seven years, Waybourn has created a national profile as a conservative sheriff, appearing on Fox News and Glenn Beck’s podcast. In those appearances, he often focuses on immigration, even testifying before Congress on the issue in April.
Waybourn was also one of the founding partners of Tarrant County’s Election Integrity Task Force, a team of sheriff’s office and district attorney’s office employees assigned to election crime cases, which are rare.
As of June, the task force had gotten 82 complaints and filed zero criminal cases, according to Tarrant County Administrator Chandler Merritt.
Got a tip? Email Miranda Suarez at msuarez@kera.org. You can follow Miranda on X @MirandaRSuarez.
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