BEXAR COUNTY, Texas — On Tuesday, the Bexar County Commissioners Court approved nearly $2.3 million for the Bexar County Sheriff's Office to pay for deputy overtime in the county jail.
The sheriffs office estimates it will use 48,544 hours of overtime between October 11, 2023, and January 12, 2024, which comes out to more than 500 hours a day.
Sheriff Javier Salazar told KENS 5 every dollar would be spent for overtime at the Bexar County Adult Detention Center. He said the jail should have around 950 deputies if fully staffed. He said the jail is currently short around 250 deputies which is more than 25 percent. That's left many deputies pulling double shifts. The jail currently has around 4200 inmates.
"There is instances where we say, 'hey look there is no relief, I can't let you go home'," Salazar said. "Some of it is not factored in. So on Wednesday, some will know they have to work a double shift."
At the same time, Salazar said he had to make sure that everyone got paid the overtime they deserved.
"I'm not going to allow my deputies to go unpaid for the overtime that they are rightly working," Salazar said.
Fortunately, the sheriff said they should have a lot more help around February. He said roughly 50 cadets are being trained right now and another 70-80 people "are in the pipeline" for positions in the jail.
"We are looking at another 100 to 120 new bodies by mid-January or February timeframe because of the accelerated hiring that we are doing with these folk," Salazar told commissioners on Tuesday.
Commissioners said they hoped to see enough progress made in the next three months that the need for overtime would be significantly decreased.
Salazar also said the county's previous pay raise for deputies has helped retain deputies and has even helped bring back former deputies that had moved to another job. He hoped that the raise would help the county keep more deputies in the future.
"If we can just manage to retain those that we have, which we have slowed that bleeding quite a bit, we should be sitting in a better position," Salazar told commissioners.