BEXAR COUNTY, Texas – Bexar County Precinct 3 Commissioner Grant Moody arrived at commissioners’ court in April 2023 with an ambitious plan to provide the sheriff’s office with a much-needed injection of law enforcement personnel.
A request from Moody that spring day included: moving funds to add 12 new patrol deputies immediately, unfreezing an additional 12 positions, budgeting for an additional 50 patrol positions the next fiscal year, and commissioning a study to be completed by the end of that July to determine the appropriate number of law enforcement positions for BCSO moving forward.
Even though commissioners during that meeting voted unanimously to have the study completed, county officials confirm it has still not taken place more than 900 days later.
“To put it simply: I think we have a problem. And the longer we wait to address these issues, the more difficult fixing the problem will become,” Moody said in April 2023.
That day, he presented data he compiled, which showed BCSO had an estimated .6 deputies per 1,000 residents, compared to the national average at the time of 2.8 members of rural law enforcement per 1,000 residents.
A BCSO budget request presented just months earlier stated the county was “way behind” other parts of the country, with an estimated ratio that was closer to 1.3 BCSO deputies per 1,000 residents, higher than Moody’s estimate, but still less than half of the national average.
Moody, in a recent interview with KSAT, expressed frustration that the study did not happen, even after commissioners instructed staff to move forward with it.
“If the core decides to take action, especially unanimous action towards moving forward with a study, then that study should occur,” Moody said.
Court members bristled at parts of Moody’s plan
While portions of Moody’s request were voted down by commissioners that day, he did land approval to have the study done and to have the county remove contingencies to unfreeze 12 positions.
Votes on the various parts of the plan came during a more than one-hour and 10-minute discussion of it.
Precinct 2 Commissioner Justin Rodriguez, that day, supported a BCSO staffing analysis.
“And I think it should be done by both the sheriff and the budget office, and maybe we can come up with a number that’s more accurate,” Rodriguez said during the discussion.
Precinct 1 Commissioner Rebeca Clay-Flores also supported a staffing study but told the court she had not been included in conversations about possibly adding BCSO staff.
“I like no surprises,” Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai said during the discussion. He then remarked that Moody’s proposal would have been better presented as a budget workshop item.
What happened after the unanimous vote on the study?
Reached for comment via email, Bexar County Manager David Smith explained what occurred since the vote on the study nearly two and a half years ago:
“A draft scope of work and deliverables for a law enforcement study was developed with the Sheriff’s office and was shared with Commissioners Court in July 2024. As this was during the budget cycle, Courtmembers asked me to put it aside until after the budget was adopted so that it could be discussed amongst their colleagues at a later time. Funding for the study itself has yet to be identified and approved by Commissioners Court and no funding was requested during the recently completed budget process by any members of the Court or the Sheriff’s Office.”
BCSO officials declined to make Sheriff Javier Salazar available for an interview for this story.
BCSO also declined to release a statement, despite repeated requests from KSAT sent over multiple weeks.
A spokesman for Sakai said the judge had left town for a trip before the spokesman had a chance to ask him about the study not being completed.
“From a good governance standpoint, we want to know what we should have. Maybe we’re understaffed. Maybe we’re overstaffed. We don’t know if we don’t have a study and we don’t have some data to base it on. And that was the whole point on commissioning a study,” Moody recently told KSAT.
BCSO has added patrol deputies in recent budget cycles, but far below the level requested by Moody
While county budget records show there was no increase in the number of BCSO patrol positions in Fiscal Year 2024, the county increased the number of law enforcement deputies from 270 to 294 last fiscal year. The jump in personnel also included the addition of four sergeants, raising the personnel assigned to that position from 33 to 37.
In the most recent budget passed by commissioners last month, BCSO climbed from 294 to 316 law enforcement deputies and was given two more law enforcement sergeants, to increase that total to 39.
Reached for comment, leadership for the Deputy Sheriff’s Association of Bexar County told KSAT via email:
“The Deputy Sheriff’s Association has not received any update from County staff on whether the patrol staffing study has begun. We continue to welcome and encourage data-driven policymaking, and we would be eager to see this effort move forward. We are confident that once the study is completed, it will demonstrate what our deputies experience daily —that the need for additional patrol officers in unincorporated Bexar County is real and pressing. Population growth in these areas continues at a rapid pace, yet the number of patrol deputies has not kept up. For comparison, Harris County deploys more than 200 patrol officers per 100,000 residents in unincorporated areas, while the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office currently employs around 90 patrol officers per 100,000 unincorporated residents. This disparity means fewer boots on the ground and, inevitably, slower response times to the calls we receive. Our deputies remain committed to protecting the community, but the growing imbalance between population and patrol strength makes it increasingly difficult to meet residents’ expectations for timely service."
Read more reporting on the KSAT Investigates page.