The County Jail’s Culture of Violence Prompted 2 Federal Investigations In 15 Years
The National Police Accountability Project (NPAP) and Houston-based attorney L. Lee Thweatt have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit on behalf of the family of Alexis Jovany Cardenas, a 32-year-old husband and father of four who died after multiple jail officers assaulted and restrained him while he was being released from the Harris County Jail. The Harris County Medical Examiner ruled his death a homicide.
On July 6, 2025, Mr. Cardenas was arrested on a decade-old municipal warrant for unpaid traffic tickets. Although his charges were dismissed shortly after being booked, he was not released until after midnight on July 8—nearly 17 hours later. In damning video footage released by the Harris County Sheriff’s Office (HCSO), Mr. Cardenas is shown trying to explain to two detention officers that he cannot leave the Jail in the middle of the night without a working cellphone or a plan for getting home safely. In response, the two officers assault Mr. Cardenas and are joined by several more, who are shown throwing him to the ground and pinning him face down to the floor, where they restrained him for over 7 minutes – long after he had stopped breathing.
Several more HCSO officers, including supervising sergeants, looked on as Mr. Cardenas struggled for his life and took his final breaths. Throughout the repeated assaults he suffered from HCSO officers, Mr. Cardenas was unarmed and non-threatening, having been deemed safe for release from the Jail for minor, non-violent traffic violations which were dismissed in their entirety 17 hours before his death.
“It is particularly outrageous that Sheriff Gonzales and his media team did not disclose during the August 1, 2025 press conference that all charges against Mr. Cardenas had been dismissed before he died in jail,” said L. Lee Thweatt. “They didn’t tell Mr. Cardenas’s family either. That lack of transparency was misleading and an abuse of the public trust by Harris County’s highest ranking elected peace officer.”
Mr. Cardenas’s killing was not an isolated tragedy. Harris County Jail has a long, documented history of beating inmates to death or until they are seriously injured, a culture of violence so pervasive and notorious that it prompted two separate federal investigations—one in 2008 by the U.S. Department of Justice and one in 2023 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The situation has only worsened under the leadership of Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, with use of force incidents per year tripling under his tenure, many under similar circumstances to the assault and death of Mr. Cardenas.
“Harris County Jail turned a decade old misdemeanor into a death sentence for a man who should not have been there in the first place,” said Lauren Bonds, Executive Director of the National Police Accountability Project. “The brutal, unnecessary attack left Mr. Cardenas’s family without a father, son, and husband and Harris County with yet another reminder of systemic violence and neglect that Sheriff Ed Gonzalez has known about for years.”
“Mr. Cardenas’s death is a horrific tragedy reflecting the deep cruelty that has taken root in Harris County Jail,” said Brittany Francis, Executive Director of Peoples’ Counsel, a nonprofit serving survivors of police violence in Houston. She added, “How could so many officers watch another human being die and do nothing to help him? Those looking to make a change in Harris County should consider joining the RISE Houston Coalition—a collective of residents and advocates fighting to end traffic stops for non-safety-related infractions. RISE recognizes that no one should lose their life over a traffic violation.”
Under an administration that has abandoned federal investigations into patterns and practices of violent policing, civil lawsuits remain one of the only remaining avenues for families Mr. Cardenas’s to achieve any semblance of justice for the death of a loved one in hopes no other family is forced to suffer a similarly senseless loss.