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BEAUMONT (AP) – A Texas man has been sentenced to more than three years in prison after pleading guilty to kicking a cat that court records say was later set on fire.

Documents in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas show Donaldvan Williams of Beaumont was sentenced Tuesday to 40 months in prison as part of an agreement in which he earlier pleaded guilty to animal crushing, aiding and abetting.

The attorney for Williams, 30, did not immediately return a phone call for comment.

Federal prosecutors worked with Texas state prosecutors to determine whether to file charges in state or federal court, according to Davilyn Walston, spokesperson for U.S. Attorney Damien Diggs.

“A lot of times, when you have offenders that are particularly egregious … the state penalties aren’t as harsh,” Walston said.

Williams could have faced as little as ( two years in prison if convicted of animal torture or cruelty under Texas law.

He was charged under the federal Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act, which prohibits harm to animals and bans videos of animal cruelty.

The documents say Williams and Decorius Mire found the cat in a parking lot in October 2021 and Williams kicked the animal like a football while Mire recorded the kick with his cell phone and later posted the video on social media.

The indictment in the case states that a third unknown, person set the cat on fire shortly after it was kicked 15-20 feet.

Mire also pleaded guilty as part of a plea agreement and was sentenced in July 2023 to 18 months in prison.

DALLAS (AP) – Officers at a juvenile detention center in Dallas kept kids isolated for days and falsified logs of observation checks and school attendance, an investigation from the Texas Juvenile Justice Department found.

State investigators say that staffers at the Dr. Jerome McNeil Jr. Detention Center used the Special Needs Unit to circumvent state law and essentially keep juveniles in their sleeping quarters for extended periods of time.

“They spent the vast majority of their days inside their cells, sometimes up to 24 hours a day, without regular access to education, large muscle exercise, outdoor recreation, or showers,” state investigators wrote in a report released Monday.

The full investigation was not made public, though TJJD provided the investigation’s executive summary.

The agency’s Office of the Inspector General said that they will continue to monitor the situation. Also, a division of the agency will continue to have oversight duties and responsibilities related to allegations of wrongdoing at Dallas County’s juvenile facilities. The superintendent of the detention center did not respond to requests for comment.

Officers also falsified documents meant to record observation checks and school attendance in order to conceal the actual practices occurring in the detention facility, the investigation found. OIG investigators collected over 18,000 pages of observation checks from January 2023 to June 2023. However, there were 176 of the 191 observation sheets missing for multiple dates and shifts.

“In some instances, inspectors found that all of the logs for a particular section and shift had the exact same times and observation codes for each juvenile resident on the section,” the report found.

Other allegations reported and investigated by OIG included children not being fed sufficiently and phone and visitation rights taken away due to behavior issues, although the investigation could not find these to be true or false.

The Special Needs Unit was created in 2009 to help children with mental health diagnoses who are also on probation. The program closed in 2023, the same year the OIG investigation took place, but the exact reasons for the closure are unknown.

This week’s report comes after the U.S. Department of Justice found unconstitutional conditions at all of Texas’ five juvenile detention facilities last month. They noted abusive and poor conditions and listed many remedial measures including limiting periods of isolation. Investigators found other wrongdoings such as pepper spray use on children and failure to apply sexual abuse reduction measures.

The state’s report says former Dallas County Juvenile Detention Center Executive Director Darryl Beatty should have been aware of what was happening within the special needs unit.

“While he may not have had an active role in creating the policies and procedure that allowed for neglect of juvenile residents, he had ample opportunity to take corrective action,” the OIG report said.

Beatty earlier this year denied the allegations, but resigned after media reports about conditions inside the juvenile facility, WFAA reported.

Barbara Kessler, spokesperson for TJJD, said Dallas officials are taking corrective actions and the state investigation is now closed.

“Investigators will continue to monitor the situation and can open new abuse, neglect, or exploitation investigations if warranted,” Kessler wrote in an email.

MORGAN CITY, La. (AP) — Francine weakened to a tropical storm late Wednesday after striking Louisiana as a Category 2 hurricane that blacked out more than 275,000 homes and businesses, sent storm surge rushing into coastal communities and raised flood fears in New Orleans and beyond as drenching rains spread over the northern Gulf Coast.

The storm was forecast to be downgraded to a tropical depression Thursday as it churned northward over Mississippi, the National Hurricane Center said. Some 4 to 6 inches (10 to 15 centimeters) of rain were possible in portions of Mississippi and neighboring states, forecasters said, warning of the potential threat of scattered flash flooding as farflung as Jackson, Mississippi; Birmingham, Alabama; Memphis, Tennessee; and Atlanta.

Francine slammed the Louisiana coast Wednesday evening with 100 mph (155 kph) winds in coastal Terrebonne Parish. battering a fragile coastal region that hasn’t fully recovered from a series of devastating hurricanes in 2020 and 2021. It then moved at a fast clip of 17 mph (26 kph) toward New Orleans, pounding the city with torrential rains overnight.

There were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries. TV news broadcasts from coastal communities showed waves from nearby lakes, rivers and Gulf waters thrashing sea walls. Water poured into city streets amid blinding downpours. Oak and cypress trees leaned in the high winds, and some utility poles swayed back and forth.

“It’s a little bit worse than what I expected to be honest with you,” said Alvin Cockerham, fire chief of Morgan City about 30 miles (50 kilometers) from where the storm’s center made landfall. “I pulled all my trucks back to the station. It’s too dangerous to be out there in this.”

Power outages in Louisiana topped 362,546 a few hours after landfall, spread out widely across southeast Louisiana, according to the tracking site poweroutage.us.

Sheltering at her mother’s home just outside Morgan City, Laura Leftwich said blasts of wind had swept away two large birdhouses outside. She had a generator powering an internet connection so she could video chat with friends, holding her computer to a window to show them water overflowing in the street.

If the storm had been any more intense, “I wouldn’t have the guts to look outside,” said Leftwich, 40. “It’s a little scary.”

The sixth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, Francine drew fuel from exceedingly warm Gulf of Mexico waters, strengthening to a Category 2 storm before landfall.

In addition to torrential rains, there was a lingering threat of spin-off tornadoes from the storm Thursday.

Much of Louisiana and Mississippi could get 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters) of rain, with the possibility of 12 inches (30 centimeters) in some spots, said Brad Reinhart, a senior hurricane specialist at the hurricane center.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry said the National Guard would fan out to parishes impacted by Francine. They have food, water, nearly 400 high-water vehicles, about 100 boats and 50 helicopters to respond to the storm, including for possible search-and-rescue operations.

Since the mid-19th century, some 57 hurricanes have tracked over or made landfall in Louisiana, according to The Weather Channel. Among them are some of the strongest, costliest and deadliest storms in U.S. history.

Morgan City, home to around 11,500 people, sits on the banks of the Atchafalaya River in south Louisiana and is surrounded by lakes and marsh. It’s described on the city’s website as “gateway to the Gulf of Mexico for the shrimping and oilfield industries.”

President Joe Biden granted an emergency declaration to help Louisiana secure expedited federal money and assistance. Landry and Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves also declared states of emergency.

The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said it distributed more than 100,000 sandbags to the southern part of the state and the Department of Education reported a number of school district closures for Wednesday and Thursday.

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Cline reported from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Associated Press writers Kevin McGill in New Orleans, Curt Anderson in St. Petersburg, Florida, and Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, contributed to this story.

HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports the oil and gas industry has dominated Houston’s job market for decades, employing more people than nearly any other segment of the city’s economy. Now, its reign over Houston is waning as the industry consolidates and slashes its spending. Houston is expected to take a significant hit as Shell moves to cut 20% of its global oil and gas development and exploration division, Reuters reported. Experts say the proposed cuts point to a larger trend: energy giants spending less and less on the geoscience and exploratory drilling needed to find and develop new oil reserves. Leading international oil companies such as Shell, Exxon Mobil and their peers are spending about 67% less than they were in 2013 on exploring new oil territories, said Hassan Eltorie, an executive director at S&P Global Commodity Insights. And, in Houston, the impact of those cuts have been significant.

The industry’s share of the city’s overall workforce is falling as the companies consolidate, produce more oil with fewer employees and spend less on long-term prospects. Oil and gas companies — including those that work in the oil field, transport oil and gas through pipelines and process it into gasoline and chemicals — employ about 290,000 people in Houston. That’s down from roughly 350,000 jobs at the industry’s employment peak in 2014, said Patrick Jankowski, the Greater Houston Partnership’s longtime chief economist and senior vice president for research. In 2014, the industry employed more people than any other segment of the city’s economy, Jankowski said. Now, it’s the fifth largest employer, overtaken by health care, retail, hospitality and government. Still, the industry is producing more domestic oil than ever before. “Even though employment in Houston is down by a fourth, domestic production is at an all-time high,” Jankowski said. “The industry’s just gotten more efficient at producing crude.” Shell declined to comment Thursday beyond the statement it provided earlier in the week, in which it said the company is working to reduce its operating costs by as much as $3 billion by the end of 2025. The initiative launched by the company’s new CEO, Wael Sawan, earlier this year aims to make Shell “a leaner overall organization,” the company said.

HUNTSVILLE (AP) – The day before Patrick Womack was found face-down and unresponsive in a hot prison cell in August 2023, he asked a correctional officer to let him take a cold shower so he could cool down.

The officer said no, according to court documents. The reason: There weren’t enough guards at the H.H. Coffield Unit to watch him.

Attorneys for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice who are trying to dissuade a federal judge from forcing the state to cool its un-air conditioned prisons argue in an ongoing lawsuit that the state already provides incarcerated people with unlimited access to cold showers, ice water and air-conditioned respite areas.

But current and former prisoners, advocates and a former guard claim the prison system isn’t following through on those promises. In hearing testimony, documents and interviews with The Texas Tribune, they say a persistent staffing shortage leaves lock-ups without enough guards needed to mitigate against the heat inside un-air conditioned prisons, which reach well over 100 degrees during the summer. The prison system’s critics say that leaves incarcerated individuals without access to respite, ice water or cool showers.

“The excuse is always we are understaffed,” one of Womack’s cellmates told investigators, according to court documents. The cellmate noted there was “nothing unusual” about prison guards denying an inmate a cold shower.

“This place ain’t for humans,” the cellmate said. “Of course people are going to die.”

Texas inmates and nonprofit groups are suing the state over the blistering heat inside its prisons, asking an Austin judge to declare the conditions unconstitutional and require Texas to keep temperatures under 85 degrees Fahrenheit. Complying with such a ruling — which could come at any time following a hearing last month — could cost the state more than $1 billion, officials have said.

Bryan Collier, the executive director of TDCJ, admitted during a hearing last month that inmates are “not necessarily consistently” getting access to water. There are “instances probably where we don’t meet everything we are supposed to meet,” Collier said.

And state officials say understaffing is not a valid excuse for failing to follow protocols meant to protect prisoners. Teams of auditors, called strike teams, visit the prisons unannounced to ensure mitigation tactics are carried out. If they aren’t, the problem is immediately rectified, TDCJ spokesperson Amanda Hernandez said in an email.

Judge Robert Pitman is expected to imminently decide whether the state must embark on the costly and time intensive project of installing air conditioning in all of its prisons. Currently, 66% of Texas prison beds are not in air-conditioned areas. The lawsuit comes after the Texas House last year committed to spending $545 million to install air conditioning, only to have the proposal shot down in the more conservative Senate.

From 2001 to 2019, as many as 271 inmates may have died because of extreme heat, according to a 2022 study. The state has not reported a heat-related death in 12 years, but Collier acknowledged in court that high temperatures “contributed” to the deaths of three inmates last summer, even though heat was not listed as the primary cause of death in those inmates’ death reports. The department differentiates between deaths where heat was the primary cause of death and those where heat was a contributing factor.

“There’s no amount of respite rooms, ice water and cold showers that can keep people safe from triple digit temperatures,” said Erica Grossman, an attorney who is representing prison advocacy groups. “Even if they could implement them — which they don’t — it’s not sufficient. It’s not a complicated solution. Install air-conditioning.”

As a judge considers whether Texas’ efforts to mitigate the indoor heat is enough, the people working and living inside scorching prison cells say they feel the impacts of understaffing compounding the physical conditions. About 24% of the 24,112 correctional officer positions in Texas prisons are vacant, Hernandez said.

The agency is amping up its recruitment and retention efforts, holding job fairs across the state — including in high schools — and dramatically increasing correctional officers’ starting salaries and career development.

But even more guards, some critics say, doesn’t solve all of the problems the lack of air conditioning creates.

“Staff are being held to give inmates respite, but the staff aren’t getting respite themselves,” said Jeff Ormsby, a former correctional officer who now serves as executive director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Texas Corrections unit, a union that advocates for Texas correctional officers. “Working in pods or wings with several hundred inmates, they don’t get a break.”
Scouring for water

During the summer months, Marci Marie Simmons says she receives dozens of letters and phone calls from Texas inmates who describe miserable days in sweltering heat without cold water or respite.

Simmons was incarcerated in Texas prisons from 2011 until 2021 and now leads the Lioness Justice Impacted Women’s Alliance, a nonprofit organization that advocates for inmates. The group is one of the plaintiffs in the ongoing legal battle against the state, arguing the lack of air conditioning amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

Simmons said that when she was incarcerated, she would often scour for water, wait days for a cold shower and be denied respite because there weren’t enough guards to take inmates there.

Simmons recalled officers quitting during the summer months, or saving all of their paid time off for the hottest days of the year.

“They would joke about it and say, ‘You know I don’t work in August,’” Simmons said.

And she didn’t blame them for it.

“Nobody wants to work in an un-air conditioned metal and concrete building in full uniform,” she said.

Hernandez, the TDCJ spokesperson, declined to comment on the department’s vacation policies. But she said staff shortages are not a valid excuse for not carrying out mitigation efforts.
Strike teams

The department investigates allegations that mitigation measures are not taking place by using information collected from “strike teams” who visit prisons unannounced every week and evaluate whether officers are compliant with heat protocols. If a problem is identified, it is rectified, Hernandez said.

This year, strike teams have conducted 28 reviews and identified one issue, Hernandez said, though she did not specify the issue they uncovered. Inmates, meanwhile, have filed thousands of grievances, many of them about the failure to follow mitigation protocols.

Rectifying those problems with insufficient staff is a tough problem to solve.

Altee Johnson, who worked as a correctional officer from 2018 until 2020, said it was common for her fellow staff members to quit after working a few weeks on the job and that the shortages made it more difficult for her and her coworkers to do their required tasks, perpetuating the cycle of high staff turnover.

Without enough staff around, Johnson said she was forced to stay overtime, sometimes working 16-hour shifts in hot temperatures.

“It was miserable,” Johnson said. “It was definitely inhumane.”

In 2022 and 2023, TDCJ staff filed close to 80 workers’ compensation claims related to the heat, according to court documents.

Adding to the challenges, Johnson said, were that areas designated for “respite” were not large enough to accommodate everyone who wanted to cool down.

“Sometimes they’d have 30 to 40 women in the vestibule, where it’s only big enough for 10,” she said. “That created tension and fights. They would just get aggravated.”

Eventually, Johnson resigned.
“On the brink of failure”

During the pandemic, TDCJ created mobile correction officer teams who travel to units that are understaffed, which are typically located in remote parts of the state.

The department also began overstaffing prisons in urban areas and sending the extra staff to understaffed prisons. Prison staff in Houston, for example, travel to Beaumont, and Dallas staff might travel to Texarkana facilities. Sometimes staff are transported each day. Other times they are stationed in nearby hotels for four-day cycles.

“We’ve adjusted our entire strategy on the operations of TDCJ,” said Jeremy Bryant, the agency’s director of recruitment.

Bryant said he sees this as a temporary solution and hopes that doubling down on recruitment and retention will help solve the staffing crisis.

Ormsby, the union executive, said officers don’t like working in the facilities without air conditioning and that having to travel to those facilities adds an extra burden on staff who are already spread thin.

“They are putting people in vans and shipping them to work in these units,” Ormsby said. “They might make you travel two hours to Palestine to work a 12-hour shift in an un-air conditioned unit.”

At the same time, TDCJ staff said they are looking for ways to become more efficient. For example, the department has experimented with new perimeter security systems that use microwave technology and would not require an officer to man the fence.

“We are doing our best to fill these positions, but we are going to get to a point where there’s no one to fill them with,” Hernandez said. “How can we do more with less staff? That has to be one of our focuses.”

The staffing shortage mirrors a nationwide pattern that was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, when fears of contracting the virus in communal settings coupled with strict isolation policies pushed thousands of corrections staff to quit their jobs.

The number of people employed by state prisons fell to its lowest point in more than two decades in 2022, according to U.S. census data. As a result, the remaining correctional officers are often forced to work overtime, creating dangerous and sometimes violent conditions.

“We have a system on the brink of failure,” John Wetzel, former Pennsylvania Secretary of Corrections, testified during a U.S. Senate hearing earlier this year focused on the nation’s correctional staffing challenges. “And it’s a system we all need.”
Heat sensitivity scores

Womack was 50 years old when he died last year inside of Coffield, a men’s prison in unincorporated Anderson County. According to the official custodial death report, Womack died of hyperthermia due to serotonin syndrome. That syndrome, the report says, was caused by sertraline, a common antidepressant medication Womack was prescribed. Environmental heat was noted as a possible contributing factor, but not the primary cause of death.

During last month’s court hearing, Susi Vassallo, an emergency medicine doctor who specializes in heat sensitivity, testified that the amount of sertraline in Womack’s system would not have caused him to have a core body temperature of 107 degrees, as was reported in his autopsy report. Vassallo said she believes Womack died from a heat stroke.

“The heat index was 113, that’s the cause of death here,” Vassallo said, adding that had Womack been housed in air conditioning, he wouldn’t have died.

As part of a court settlement in 2018, TDCJ worked with medical professionals to create a “heat sensitivity score” to determine which inmates are placed in cool beds. That score is created and constantly updated using an algorithm designed by physicians at the University of Texas Medical Branch and Texas Tech University, using inputs from an inmate’s electronic health record. The algorithm is supposed to figure out who is at greater risk of heat sensitivity.

But advocates and some medical experts say the algorithm is ineffective, leaving plenty of people sensitive to the heat in un-air conditioned cells.

Despite being prescribed sertraline and having a history of mental health disorders, Womack did not have a heat sensitivity score.

“Heat sensitivity scores are calculated based on a multitude of factors, such as age, medical condition and prescriptions,” Hernandez, the spokesperson, said. She added that having a prescription of sertraline would not in itself qualify someone for a heat score.

Neither would having hypertension as a 90-year-old, or having diabetes, according to court testimony.