Mother of neglected autistic inmate Shawn Fraraccio at Tarrant County Corrections courageously speaks out at Commissioners meeting. Judge Tim O’Hare threatened to “clear out the room” when audience clapped in support.

Today at the Tarrant County Commissioner’s meeting, family and friends of Shawn, an autistic inmate, demanded his immediate release to a proper facility that could care for his needs.

Shawn is an autistic man who has been in jail without a charge for about 400 days. Guards are starving him and inadequately administering his prescribed medication. Christy, his mother, reports Shawn is being held in solitary confinement and is in extreme distress, banging his head against the concrete wall and retreating to his own world. Christy suspects her son has been “drugged up” and kept in isolation to manage his behavior. These cruel actions are doing immeasurable harm and could become life threatening if something isn’t done right away. Thus far, Jail Officials have ignored Christy’s pleas for help.

After Christy finished her public comment, the audience clapped, and Judge Tim O’Hare said “If there is anymore applause, we’ll clear this room… don’t want to do that but that’s what we’ll do.” For the last couple of months, Tim O’Hare and the commissioners have been limiting how the public can interact with them, by having only one meeting a month instead of the usual four, limiting public comment time, and now, threatening to dissolve the meeting if the audience claps.

The commissioners and police are trying to silence the demands and voices of families and loved ones of those brutalized or killed by cops at Tarrant County jail, and they have no shame doing it. It shows that they fear the public backlash against the deaths and neglect in the jail and would prefer to deflect accountability and continue sweeping everything under the rug. They are complicit in the crimes and cruelty of TTC and the cruelty Shawn is currently experiencing.

We need to keep shining a light onto these conditions and support people like Christy who are brave enough to speak out, for Shawn, and for all others who have been brutalized or killed in Tarrant County jail. In the fight for justice and to end the abuse in TCC we must refuse to be silenced by bureaucrats like Judge O’Hare and come together in visible, loud and defiant resistance.

Come to the protest on Wednesday at 4pm at Burnet Park in Fort Worth to demand freedom for Shawn, the Prairieland Defendants, and an end to the abuse in Tarrant County Jail!