The Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office announced Monday that Shannon Herklotz, who has overseen the Dallas County jail system for just under two years, was hired to oversee its own jail operations.

The role Herklotz stepped into has been vacant since May, following a retirement. The former chief deputy’s retirement came as the jail is facing rising scrutiny over in-custody deaths, including one that led to a criminal investigation and the arrest of two jailers.

Herklotz, 54, joined Dallas County in February 2023 after leaving Harris County, where he managed operations at the Harris County Jail in Houston — the largest county jail system in Texas.

Before then, he worked at the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, the state regulator responsible for overseeing county jails and privately operated jails in the state.

“Shannon brings more than three decades of detention experience to TCSO and we are lucky to have him,” Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn said in a news release announcing the hire. Waybourn has pushed back on criticism over the in-custody deaths, saying many were the result of natural causes.

A spokesperson for the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond Monday afternoon to a request for comment about Herklotz’s departure.

A Tarrant County spokesperson said Herklotz would not be made available for interviews Monday.

Herklotz left Dallas County in December and joined Tarrant County earlier this month, according to Texas Commission on Law Enforcement records.

Herklotz began his career in 1990 as a correctional officer with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which oversees the state’s prison system.

Herklotz joined the Texas Commission on Jail Standards in 1998 as a field inspector for South Texas and was promoted to assistant director of inspections and jail management in 2007, according to a bio on the Dallas County sheriff’s website.

The Sam Houston State University graduate was inducted into the Texas Jail Association Hall of Fame in 2009 and received the association’s President’s Award in 2019, according to the release and the bio.

Herklotz, after more than 20 years with the commission, joined the Harris County Sheriff’s Office in 2021. He remained there until January 2023, when he told the sheriff he would resign.

In a letter obtained and published by the Houston Chronicle, Herklotz told Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez that he pushed himself to “new limits” in the role, but the results were “not always what I/we expected.”

Herklotz had recently been demoted and forced to take a salary cut, the Chronicle reported. The downtown jail, among other issues, was facing overcrowding and was shipping some inmates to facilities in West Texas and Louisiana.

“I have no regrets and there is very little that I would change,” Herklotz wrote in the 2023 resignation letter to Gonzalez. “However, I feel that you and [Chief Deputy Mike Lee] want to move in a new direction and I do not feel as I have a place in that vision. I respect your decision[s].”

Herklotz’s rationale for leaving Dallas County was not immediately clear Monday, but reporting by KERA suggests compensation was a factor.

Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price told the station that the county could not match the compensation package Tarrant County had offered Herklotz.

As of November 2023, Herklotz was making an annual salary of more than $158,600, according to personnel records obtained by The Dallas Morning News in a records request.

The Tarrant County spokesperson did not provide Herklotz’s new annual salary and advised The News to submit a records request seeking that information.

Herklotz has assumed the role previously held by Charles Eckert, the former chief deputy overseeing Tarrant County’s jail operations. His departure came shortly after the death of Anthony Johnson Jr.

In April, Johnson, 31, died after a struggle in which a jailer kneeled on his back and used pepper spray on him. Two jailers are facing murder charges in connection to the death, which the Tarrant County medical examiner’s office ruled as homicide caused by chemical and mechanical asphyxiation.

Johnson’s death sparked criticism and spotlighted an increase in in-custody deaths at the Tarrant County jail.

Eckert said his decision to retire was not a result of the mounting criticism over in-custody jail deaths — the majority of which he and Waybourn, the sheriff, have attributed to natural causes.

“We had the one where we had the two officers who acted unprofessionally and, in my opinion, violated the law, but, the others, it’s just a sad fact of life,” Eckert told The News at the time.

Some deaths have resulted in civil lawsuits against the county that were settled out of court. Last year, the county moved to pay out more than $2 million in settlements, including a $1.2 million settlement in a lawsuit filed by the family of a woman whose baby died 10 days after she gave birth in the jail.