Sarah Grunau/ Houston Public Media

Several family members of people who have died in the Harris County Jail grilled Sheriff Ed Gonzalez after a state jail commission meeting Thursday in Austin.

Gonzalez and other representatives of the Harris County Sheriff’s Office appeared before the Texas Commission on Jail Standards to discuss the county’s continued failure to meet the state’s minimum standards for jail quality.

After the commission’s brief discussion on an ongoing remedial order to get the downtown Houston jail into compliance, more than a dozen friends and family members of deceased inmates shuffled out of the board room behind Gonzalez. Debra Smith, whose daughter Kristan Smith died inside of the jail in 2022, told the sheriff she still doesn’t have all the answers about how her

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