In my professional career I have had many opportunities to interact with a number of police chiefs, assistant chiefs, station commanders and rank-and-file police officers and one thing I’ve learned to be true and you can take this to the bank: As a general rule, police officers don’t like their police chiefs and the head of any police association/union feels it’s his or her mission in life to get rid of his/her chief.
This is true here and the proof of that fact is in a story that appeared today on the front page of the Austin-American Statesman involving Kyle Police Chief Jeff Barnett. I can vouch for the fact that this story is part of a campaign within the Kyle Police Department to get Chief Barnett fired and the reasons certain people want him fired has nothing to do, whatsoever, with any of the information contained in that story.
Rank-and-file police officers generally mistrust those in higher authority because, they feel with some justification, that those higher-ups put obstacles in the way of their being able to fight the bad guys. I don’t know if it started with Miranda — probably not — but that 1966 Supreme Court decision certainly exasperated the feelings. Then authorities began instituting such law-enforcement barriers as deadly force polices, rules against high-speed pursuits, outlawing choke-holds and police became convinced they were the ones being handcuffed.
Here in Kyle the contention is why is the city, with the chief’s endorsement and encouragement, spending all this money on buying SUVs and handguns for the police when they should be spending it on hiring more police officers. By gum, what we need is a new police chief.
I was approached by an individual within the Kyle Police Department (I don’t want to divulge just who right now) with the same information contained in today’s American-Statesman story. This individual also gave my e-mail address to one of the principals in the story, Dr. Glen Hurlston. I know this because Dr. Hurlston e-mailed me saying he desperately wanted to talk with me at any time and in any place. I poked around and because, apparently like the American-Statesman, I could not obtain privately held legal documents that told the other side of the story, I chose not to pursue it at the time because it would be, like the American-Statesman’s account, completely one-sided. (As an aside, I formally was a partner in a media consulting firm that was called on by governments, companies, sports teams, individuals, etc., facing a crisis and my job was to tell them how to respond to media inquiries. In that capacity, I will say Kyle city officials were correct in saying they could not respond to issues that currently are in litigation, but they could have said a lot more that would have made the newspaper’s account somewhat less one-sided.)
In a nutshell, here’s the issue as outlined by at least one member of the Kyle Police Department and Austin-American reporter Tom Plohetski. Prior to being hired as Kyle’s police chief in April 2011, Barnett was the chief of police in the Collin County town of Princeton, a relatively small, but growing, burg located on the eastern edge of McKinney. Apparently while there he met and twice engaged in a romantic relationship with Suzanne Hurlston, the second time after she became the wife of Dr. Hurlston. No one is able to say, precisely, when the affair ended, but it seems to have run its course when Barnett accepted the police chief’s job here.
On Jan. 1, 2012, Dr. Hurlston was arrested by Princeton police on charges he assaulted his wife. According to legal documents filed by Dr. Hurlston, he was arrested because Barnett used his influence as the former Princeton police chief to coerce Princeton police to make the arrest. Plohetski writes that in an interview with Mrs. Hurlston, she maintained "under no circumstances did the chief orchestrate anything."
Unfortunately, that has become the hub of the story: that Kyle has, as its police chief, someone who engaged in an affair with a married woman and then abused his position to unduly, if not illegally, influence a governmental institution outside the chief’s jurisdiction. To put it simply, he asked his old buds from his former hometown to protect his girlfriend. Ipso facto, Barnett should be fired, if not on legal, than at least on moral grounds.
Hogwash. First on the moral issue, I am firmly in the "Glass House" camp here. Now let’s address the issue of influence. If using a position of authority to influence former employers was illegal, I’d be serving a life sentence. I used my position as the president of a chamber of commerce to influence several Dallas city council members to hire my former boss at the city as the city’s new city manager when there was a great hue and cry to hire someone from outside the city. (My former boss was hired and she proved to be a superb city manager.). I used that same influence on an area police commander, who is now the city’s police chief, to arrest a panhandler that was using excessive force to extract money from shoppers in a certain area of the city. I used that same influence on that police commanders successor to bust up a section of an apartment complex I learned was being used as a meth lab. As a writer, I used my friendships I developed with other city employees to learn about issues happening within city government. Get over it. It’s a way of life.
But now let’s get to the real issue here and it’s illustrated by what I said about the panhandler and the meth lab. Both of these activities are illegal. And so is domestic violence. That’s the issue. Not whether Barnett used his influence to get someone arrested or whether he committed some heinous moral activity by having an affair. It’s whether, as someone sworn to uphold the law, he reported someone breaking the law. I don’t know whether Dr. Hurlston beat his wife. I do know he pleaded no contest to the resulting assault charges filed against him. I have my opinion based on that, but I’ll leave the facts of the case for others to decide.
I also know, largely due to all the publicity surrounding the Ray Rice incident from earlier this year, domestic violence is much more in the public’s eye than it ever has. Just look at the campaign that my former employer, the City of Dallas, has undertaken.
Domestic violence, and especially whether those who really do have the power to stop it, is one of the real issues here. But the other, and most important thing to realize is that, no matter what, those within the department are going to look for some way, any way, to get rid of their chief, especially when if that chief endorses SUVs and handguns over additional officers.
The subject of this argument needs to be changed to reflect that.
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