Deadly Dallas hospital shooting draws attention to ankle monitors

When we started looking into how these ankle sensors work, we learned that the Texas Parole Board actually uses two types.

One is the RF monitor, also called the curfew monitor, which only shows when the parolee leaves the house and returns home. In other words, it’s not a tracker. The second type of monitors have GPS and can track the whereabouts of parolees.

Hernandez’s girlfriend told us he didn’t have a GPS tracker.

“It was a curfew,” she said. “He could only get out of about 7 and then he had to come back when they told him, but it didn’t show them where he was and all that.”

A report released by Gov. Greg Abbott’s office of the investigation confirms that “an electronic monitor notifies a parole officer if he is away from his home for a predetermined period of time. The monitor is not tracking motion.”

A report prepared by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and the Board of Pardons and Parole stated that Hernandez had six ankle monitor violations.

“When he broke the rules, they would call him and he would just tell them, ‘Oh, it was like I was outside smoking a cigarette,’” Hernandez’s girlfriend told WFAA. “Actually, they wouldn’t check. They called and said: “Why is the box beeping” and stuff like that.