Inmate Released Without Court Ordered GPS Monitor



Albert Polito erroneously released
Inmate Albert Polito

Early Friday morning, inmate Albert Polito who was arrested for violation of a protective order, was released from the Bexar County jail without having been fitted with a GPS monitor as ordered by the court.  We believe this is number 15 for this year.  According to the Sheriff’s Office, the release occurred because of outdated conditions for release.  So what does that mean?  Is this another incident where the officers were not given the new orders on their side or did the judicial side fail to get the orders to the officers?

What I can say is that, no matter which scenario it was, it was another lack of communication issue.  Communication has been an ongoing problem at the jail under Sheriff Javier Salazar.  Again, we say this is an issue the change management specialist should be working on but, same as last time, we have not heard a peep out of him.  All we can assume is that the change management specialist is either incompetent at his job or he’s too busy working on Salazar’s campaign instead of doing his job.

Another problem that has been going on at the jail is the inability of Salazar and Serrato to run a large organization.  Just because a person manages to make it into a leadership position doesn’t mean they are leaders.  Salazar and Serrato were just sergeants.  They only had 15, maybe 17 men under them.  Now they have approximately 2,000 employees with a job duties so diverse that they could spend decades trying to figure out everything that is done there and still not get to it all.

In the article by KSAT 12, Salazar shows his inexperience, again.  The new protocol requires that pretrial services sign off on the release when the court has ordered conditions on the release.  So let’s see.  A mistake happens, Salazar says a sergeant needs to sign off on the releases.  Another mistake happens, Salazar says two sergeants have to sign off on the releases.  Another mistake happens, Salazar says chiefs will physically be in booking (second video on the page at mark 4:58) monitoring the situation to ensure no more mistakes are made.  Another mistake happens, Salazar says that three captains will oversee booking (we imagine that’s one per shift).  Another mistake happens, and Salazar says that pretrial will have to sign off on releases.

This is just ridiculous.  It’s the sign of someone who does not know how to lead.  All Salazar is doing is making the process more complicated which means more places for errors to happen.  Before Salazar, there were nowhere near this many mistaken releases.  A competent person would realize that something is going wrong with the way things are being handled under him and would study the situation to try to find out what is happening.  Instead, we have a sheriff who blames others and makes knee-jerk decisions.

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