Kyle PD can now hire felons

(Updated Wednesday at 10:48 p.m.)
A comment was made in response to this article by someone who identified himself as "TWebster," a name strikingly close to that of Mayor Todd Webster. However, I knew by the tone of the comment it was not written by the mayor and although I had grave misgivings about adding it to the comments section, I ultimately decided to do so under the Freedom of Speech principle. However, more than one person has expressed concern that this comment was posted by someone deliberately intending to discredit the mayor, as well as the police chief, and I a reserve the exclusive right on this blog to take that kind of an attitude. Therefore, I have made the decision to delete the comment. If the author of the comment wishes to more completely identify himself or herself, I will be more than happy to repost the comment.

(Original Post)
Being an admitted felon is no longer an automatic disqualification from serving as a member of the Kyle Police Department. At the request of Chief Jeff Barnett, the city’s Civil Service Commission voted unanimously last night to make a slight change to its rules and regulations, substituting the word "may" for the word "shall," so that the rules now state "Conviction of or admission to conduct that constitutes a felony may result in permanent disqualification from being considered for employment."

Now don’t go thinking the Kyle PD is going to be setting up a recruiting booth at the Big House in Huntsville. We’re talking more along the lines of "childish pranks" and "youthful indiscretions," not persons convicted of violent crimes. Pete Krug, the chair of the Civil Service Commission, said the board made the change solely to allow "an investigator more leeway in the police officer hiring process." Chief of Staff Jerry Hendrix told me Barnett requested the change and Barnett said in a written statement:

"The police department strives to hire well-qualified employees to serve in the police department. Inasmuch, we conduct the TCOLE (Texas Commission on Law Enforcement) and/or TCIC (Texas Crime Information Center)/NCIC (National Crime Information Center) access required background investigations on all applicable employees. Regarding police officer applicants in this process, we are bound to follow TCOLE rules, Civil Service laws, as well as any locally adopted rules and meet and confer agreements.

"We regularly review our rules and M&C agreement, and on occasion, we ask for clarifications or changes to be considered. One such recent example is the locally adopted Civil Service Rule regarding the conduct of an applicant. Particularly in section 143.023, Section 3(f), the police department, the rule states that an applicant ‘shall’ be permanently disqualified if they have a conviction or ‘admission’ of a felony offense. There has been discussion about what constitutes ‘admission’ of a felony offense. Does that mean admission in a formal legal proceeding, or simply admission to anyone at any time? Discussion then expanded to conduct committed as a juvenile, conduct committed 10 and 20 years, ago, conducted potentially felonious committed while acting in an authorized government operation (i.e. military, law enforcement, directed to do so under duress, and so forth). With these and other examples in mind, it became apparent that the ‘admission’ of conduct should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis based upon the totality of the circumstances.

"It is with this in mind that we asked the Civil Service Commission to consider a change from the word ‘shall’ to the new word of ‘may’ so that actions may be judged upon a totality of the circumstances. The conviction portion is already regulated by TCOLE; therefore, we are not allowed, nor are we trying to change a rule to allow the hiring of a police officer that has been convicted of a felony. Convicted felons are not allowed to obtain a license as a police officer from TCOLE and are prohibited from access to law enforcement restricted computerized files. Again, we are not trying to make allowances to hire convicted felons, only to allow for the actions of a person that ‘admits’ to previous felonious conduct to be considered for employment based upon the totality of the circumstances surrounding that conduct."

Chief Barnett cited two examples of admitted felons he might consider hiring:

"A 17-year-old sneaks out of the house and takes the parents' car to joy ride or go visit a friend without permission. The parents call the police when they notice their son and car missing. He is located by police hours later while driving home. The parents choose not to file any charges and the matter is handled by the parents. Technically, this action constitutes Unauthorized Use of a Vehicle — a felony. Twenty two years later, this person is now 39 years old, has completed a full career and is an honorably (discharged) veteran of U.S. military. He applies with us and admits the action when he was 17. The ‘shall’ rule would have disqualified this applicant because of his youthful indiscretion.

"A 16-year-old pulls a fire alarm at school on a dare," Barnett said in his second example. "She is now a 15-year veteran of another police department and is relocating to the area because her husband was transferred to the local office of a federal law enforcement agency. Everything else is impeccable in her background and she is now the mother of two children, 35 years old, and the recipient of several police departmental awards at her current agency. The ‘shall’ rule would have disqualified this applicant because of her youthful indiscretion."

Barnett said he wanted to be absolutely clear about one point.

"We do not condone the actions mentioned in these examples, and nothing is intended to imply that these actions would, when taken into consideration for employment purposes, be permissible," the chief said. "These examples are intended to highlight the types of possible backgrounds that would have been automatically disqualified from consideration prior to the change in the rule. There are many more examples that could be mentioned, but I believe this will relay the intent of the requested change."