Rios addressed the fact that the county incurs daily prisoner care expenses from City of Eagle Pass Police Department arrestees at the Tom Bowles Detention Center, and that the expenses have become such a burden on the county that they recommend that they begin charging the city for those type of services. 

“We have a lot of inmates that are being detained by the police department that are being brought in and for whatever reason they sit in jail for long periods time,” Rios explained. “While they’re going through the process they need to be indicted, they have to go through the court system, sentenced, and at that point they either serve their time or they go on to state prison.” 

Rios then gave an example of an inmate that is in the custody of the Sheriff Department but was arrested by the EPPD.

”We have an inmate who has been there for 489 days that was arrested by the EPPD,” said Rios. “It took him 10 months to get indicted and the case wasn’t referred to the District Attorney until later to get that done.” 

Rios gave a detailed report as to how much the county could be billing for housing such inmates in a years time. 

“As you can see in my report the total that we could have billed from June 2016 to now would be $337,977,” said Rios.

  He gave other examples as to the cost being incurred by the county in regards to city intake inmates including medical expenses from emergency room visits and other medical needs. 

“We have one inmate arrested by EPPD who was hospitalized twice with one of the visits costing $7,143 or so and the other almost $4,108,” said Rios.

Legal Counsel Robert Wilson notified the court that the responsibility falls upon Maverick County on state charges, and the county can only charge on city ordinance related items. Wilson did state that he would continue looking into the issue and report back to the court in a future meeting.