San Antonio’s mayor and City Council members are zeroing in on a glitch in Bexar County’s criminal justice system that costs taxpayers millions every year — and is also at the heart of a six-year quarrel between city and county leaders.
The Texas criminal code requires anyone placed under arrest to go before a magistrate “without unnecessary delay” to hear the charges against them, their rights and their bail amount. In Bexar County, anyone taken into custody by the San Antonio Police Department undergoes two such hearings before their bail is set — one in municipal court, the other at the county jail complex.
The duplicative system drives up costs and increases the time it takes to process arrestees to 16 hours or more in some cases, according to a county-commissioned study by UTHealth Houston’s School of Public Health…