Your guess is as good as mine as to what is going on here, but there are clues. The first sentence of the news release announcing this action says "Kyle City Manager Scott Sellers has appointed an acting police chief to head the Kyle Police Department for the purposes of adjudicating an ongoing civil service matter."
The key words in that sentence are "an ongoing civil service matter." I say that because Chief Barnett has been involved in civil litigation filed by a doctor in Louisiana who has also accused the city of not doing its due diligence in its hiring of Barnett. That lawsuit, however, would not, on the face of it, be an "ongoing civil service matter." Neither would be the hiring of Barnett since the police chief is an at-will employee hired by the city manager. Plus, city officials revealed after the council meeting concluded Barnett "is not the subject of the investigation."
Tangential to that lawsuit, however, have been allegations that someone from the Kyle Police Association accepted gifts from the same doctor.
Therefore, it’s conceivable that some conspiracy theorist trying to add two plus two could quite possibly leap to the conclusion that Chief Barnett demoted or took some other kind of disciplinary action against a certain someone who has subsequently appealed that disciplinary action under civil service rules that allows him to file such an appeal. And you, dear reader, are free to guess who that "certain someone" might be. I’m not going to speculate on that, but in such a situation, Chief Barnett would not be the subject of a civil service investigation but would play a significant role in the investigation.
I’m not in any way saying that’s what’s going on here, but I am saying someone could possibly catapult to that conclusion from the skimpy information that’s been made public.
For the record, I have asked the Kyle Police Employee Association to comment on all this. So far, I have not heard back and, frankly, I'm not holding my breath.
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| Acting Kyle Police Chief Charles Edge |
Edge started his career in law enforcement in 1982 with the Baytown Police Department. He served in Baytown for 21 years with his last assignment as a field commander with the Harris County Organized Crime and Narcotics Task Force. From Baytown, he served as the chief of police of the Palestine Police Department for four years before coming to Waxahachie in April of 2007. During his career, Edge took a civil service leave of absence serving honorably in the military with the Army’s 101st Airborne Division and the First Armored Division. Edge is also a graduate of the 222nd session of the FBI National Academy and a graduate of the Leadership and Command College of the Law Enforcement Management Institute of Texas.
In another significant development, the City Council rejected the recommendation of the Planning & Zoning Commission to rezone slightly more than six acres behind the 7-Eleven at I-35 and RR 150 for an apartment complex. The council agreed unanimously with Mayor Todd Webster who said he felt "apartments were not the best use of the property." Instead, it appears the council favors a more urban-style development on that land, including restaurants, entertainment venues, possibly even a hotel and office spaces. In other words, an extension of downtown Kyle across the interstate.
On its consent agenda, the council passed an ordinance allowing Centerpoint Energy to raise its gas rates, but not before council member David Wilson levied some stern criticism against the utility, charging it was harassing some of its customers and misleading (actually outright lying to) officials about the reasons for its requested hike.
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