Knox challenges Gonzalez over direction, focus of Harris County Sheriff’s Office

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The race for Harris County sheriff in November pits veteran lawman against veteran lawman, politician against politician, white hat against white hat.

The winner will oversee the largest sheriff's office in Texas, with more than 5,000 deputies, detention officers and civilian staff.

Edward "Ed" Gonzalez, the current sheriff, was the runaway victor in a four-way Democratic primary in March.

He has run the agency since 2017, and in 2022 was nominated by the Biden Administration to lead U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He ended up withdrawing from consideration after his confirmation vote stalled in Congress. Previously, he was a three-term city councilman and served more than 18 years as a Houston Police Department officer.

His challenger is William "Mike" Knox, an officer in the Houston Police Department between 1980 and 1995, who more recently served as an at-large member on Houston's City Council. There he was best known for being a vocal check on Democratic Mayor Silvester Turner's policies and fighting for his right to don a hat in his official city portrait. He won the Republican primary in March with 56.4 percent of the vote.

A former director of the Houston Police Officers Union, Knox said he wants to improve morale as officers from the deputies' union turn to voters to earn the power to bargain over their wages.

In an interview with the Houston Landing, Knox said he plans to restructure the agency and divide the department between detention and law enforcement, and advocate for employees who "don't feel safe, supported, appreciated."

Asked what gives him the chops to lead the largest office in the state, Knox said his time on City Council managing resources and budgets, and his time as a businessman running his own consulting firm, gives him the experience to lead.

"Whether you've supervised one person or a million people, the only difference is the number of people between you and that person, and you've got to get that same mindset going from your command staff to your assistant chiefs to your majors, captains, lieutenants, sergeants, deputies on down the line," he said.

Tough on crime approach

As sheriff, Knox said he would focus on human trafficking issues, citing his time as a gang investigator in the 1990's tracking down organized crime.

He also said he would re-implement 287(g), a controversial federal program that allows law enforcement officers to screen jail inmates for immigration status and detain undocumented immigrants. Gonzalez ended the program in 2017, calling it an issue of resources and assigning those deputies elsewhere. Gonzalez told the Houston Chronicle that despite canceling the agreement, he has maintained the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the jail.

While the sheriff's office under Gonzalez has leaned into public-health-led efforts to end violence and programming inside the jail for all inmates, Knox knocked offering programming to those awaiting trial and said he would concentrate on the primary task of the sheriff's office – law enforcement.

"Our job is to catch people who are risking the lives of others, who are violating other people's civil rights, to hold them to account, to bring them before the bar of justice, to allow the courts to decide what to do with them," he said. "And when we start focusing on things outside of that, we start to dilute our ability to do what our main focus is. And I think that's what's happened in Harris County over the past eight years, or even more."

In addition to patrolling the unincorporated areas of Harris County and investigating crimes, the sheriff's office operates and oversees the perpetually bursting-at-the-seams county jail.

The overcrowded jail, often dubbed the largest mental health facility in Texas, has proven the most challenging and costly responsibility during Gonzalez' tenure.

The jail, which currently houses more than 9,300 inmates and outsources another 1,100 to lockups across Texas and out of state, repeatedly failed state inspections and was deemed out of compliance by the state Commission on Jail Standards for two years.

The jail was certified as compliant in August, but advocates balked at the announcement and accused the sheriff's office of sweeping deadly jail conditions under the rug.

The jail and Harris County have been the target of 52 lawsuits by current and former inmates and their families over conditions and treatment in the lockup since 2012, the Houston Landing reported last year.

Ongoing jail problems

Nineteen inmates died in the jail in 2023, several of whom were identified as mentally ill. Additionally, a Houston Landing investigation found six deaths since 2018 that were not properly reported.

Ongoing problems in the jail involving overcrowding, understaffing and violence came on came on the heels of multiple catastrophes, including Hurricane Harvey and the COVID-19 pandemic, which impacted prosecutors and courts in ways that even state authorities admit left the sheriff's office shouldering the impact downstream.

In 2024, improvements occurred under Gonzalez's watch, from a lower death count at the jail – seven so far this year – to achieving compliance with state minimum standards just months before the November election.

Gonzalez said the proudest moments of his current term were his agency's efforts to bring up the percentage of women in his workforce; equipping jail guards with body-worn cameras; his role in storm-recovery efforts and training; and preparing his workers for active-shooter situations. Still, he said, "the north star is keeping the community safe."

Gonzalez described himself as a "workhorse" and encouraged voters not to just look at what he will do next term, but his record in every elected office he has held.

During his time on city council, Gonzalez noted he led the effort to pass legislation to regulate the conditions of group homes , build the Cafe College Houston resource center, and supported the creation of the Houston Recovery Center .

"I just don't talk the talk, but I walk the walk," he said. "And I think that if you look at the totality of the work that I've done again, I think, you know, I've been effective in any place that I've been at."

Gonzalez said he looks forward to continuing his efforts to impact the agency's culture and making sure the office is "a leading 21st century police agency."

"I'm super excited about the possibility of another term as sheriff. I think that these first two terms have met with so much crisis and have required crisis leadership," he said. "I don't know of any other previous sheriff that's kind of had to tackle the heaviness of everything we've had to deal with (in) the first term."