Why Chief Barnett was placed on leave

Kyle Police Chief Jeff Barnett

In making all the changes at the Police Department, the city announced last week "Kyle City Manager Scott Sellers has appointed an acting police chief to lead the Kyle Police Department for the purposes of adjudicating an ongoing civil service matter. Police Chief Jeff Barnett has been placed on paid administrative leave pending the conclusion of the matter. As additional clarification, under the Texas civil service statute, all personnel decisions must be completed by the department head. In order to ensure full and complete impartiality, the city manager has placed Chief Barnett on leave due to an ongoing civil service matter for which Chief Barnett is not the subject." This was a revision of an earlier statement in which the word "matter" at the end of the second sentence replaced the word "investigation" in the original statement.

If you look at that carefully, it seems plain to see what’s happening here. The key is that word "investigation," which the city tried to eliminate in its revised statement.

On Feb. 26, the Austin American-Statesman posted a news story that began "The president of the Kyle police association has been stripped of his duties and is the subject of an internal investigation into whether he improperly received $5,000 from a man embroiled in a lawsuit against the city and police chief in exchange for potentially sensitive insider information."

There’s that word "investigation" again and it appears in the same paragraph as the words "police chief." By the way, the president of the Kyle police association is later identified by the Statesman as Sgt. Jesse Espinoza.

The second paragraph of that same story says "In a continuing saga that began with Kyle Police Chief Jeff Barnett’s romantic relationship with a married woman in 2011, officials have hired a Fort Worth law firm to conduct the inquiry."

So there you have it. Obviously, "Chief Barnett is not the subject" of the Fort Worth law firm’s investigation, Espinoza is. It’s not a stretch to believe that Fort Worth law firm has given the city, if not all the results of its inquiry, at least enough evidence for it to take some form of punitive action against Espinoza. But, as the city’s revised statement of last week said "all personnel decisions must be completed by the department head." That would be Barnett, but if the chief acted against Espinoza it could be viewed as a conflict of interest at least and retribution at worst. Either way, it could be grounds for another lawsuit against the city.

To solve the dilemma, the city decided to give Chief Barnett some time off and bring in a ringer to handle the dirty work, or, as the city put it, "for the purposes of adjudicating an ongoing civil service matter."

Sounds logical, right? And until someone from the city is willing to go on the record and swear under oath I’m way off-base here, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.