Interim chief's short-lived dream sets stage for city force that finds satisfaction in its work
If the Mt. Pleasant Police Department were a John Wayne war movie, this would be the part where the mortally-wounded hero, played by interim Chief Jeff Barnett, delivers the lines that rally his men to overcome all in their fight for truth, justice and the American Way.
In real life, the acting police chief, says the president of the department's officer's association, won the hearts of his troops, but lost his bid to be their leader.
As Jeff Barnett backs out of the post he's held for five months, the question on the table is a test of heart. Can he transfer the department's new sense of comradery and its loyalty to leadership to the man taking the job he's dreamed of having for more than 20 years?
Not a doubt, says Sgt. Kent Basinger, president of the department's Police Association.
"Jeff's a team player," Sgt. Basinger said.
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In November the association Sgt. Basinger heads voted to send city hall a letter expressing support for selection of Lt. Barnett as chief.
With a resume citing law enforcement experience from small-town cop to federal investigator, three degrees earned mostly at night, plus completion of the nation's top law enforcement school, the acting chief brought unity to the department, Sgt. Basinger said.
A crime fighter since he was old enough to turn on the siren on his grandfather's patrol car, when he made the short list of a half dozen from the 42 applicants for the police chief's job, Lt. Barnett was in the crowd believing he had an inside track.
So did the men in his department, and his appointment as interim chief with the resignation of Chief Richard Parker indicated some level of confidence at city hall.
"You could feel it in the air," said Sgt. Basinger, who's been through three administrations during his 15 years in the department. "The first time Jeff met with the officers, there was a sense of pulling everybody together. He had an idea and a plan."
That first meeting was about dope, the cultural core of criminal activity, says Lt. Barnett, adding that drug trafficking issues go beyond fueling thefts, burglaries, robberies and assaults.
There's the impact on property values in high crime neighborhoods. Locally, such neighborhoods were easy enough for officers to spot, but there was a sense of futility about police work there.
"We all know him, so nobody was surprised when Jeff started laying out plans to use every resource available in those neighborhoods," Sgt. Basinger said.
The officers went straight to the residents in the tough parts of town.
"My heart really goes out to the good people who are the truly innocent victims simply because of where they live," Lt. Barnett said. "I want them to know our officers care and that we can make a difference."
Officers were just as straight up with dealers. At the same time they were doing that sneaky cop stuff, uniformed officers confronted suspected dealers and buyers with a simple message - "we're coming."
Within days of that first meeting, the department made Daily Tribune headlines with 13 drug-related arrests on West 11th Street. A second raid followed on the same street, busting remnants of the same group.
The department linked up with code enforcement, taking its campaign to another level, identifying owners of property used as crack houses that might fall beneath city structural requirements.
More raids followed - Gibson Street, Cash Street and Red Springs.
The cops made it a point to be high profile in neighborhoods they knew needed them.
The impact of the raids went beyond the streets. They underpinned department morale, Sgt. Basinger said.
Born in Mt. Pleasant, Lt. Barnett grew up in a working class neighborhood on the city's south side.
Maybe he always wanted to be a cop because his grandfather was a Camp County constable.
"When we were kids playing cops and robbers, I was always the cop," he said. Before he hit his teens, he was riding weekend patrols with his grandfather.
"I grew up in police work," he said.
The day he turned 18, he signed up as a volunteer fire fighter. Within a month, he was studying to be an emergency medical technician.
During the brief period he allowed himself to be a child, his passion was baseball.
"Until I got to high school, I was always a pitcher," he said. He thrived on tough game situations.
"I liked it when the actions and the emotions were at their peak," he said. "I loved being on the mound one run up with the bases loaded and a full count. That pressure either melts you or inspires you to give it everything you've got."
As a high school freshman he broke into the varsity line up as the lead off hitter. His sophomore year, the team went to the state semi finals.
It was fun, but it was a game compared to his real-world weekends. By the time he graduated high school, he'd been riding weekend patrol for years.
"I understood what police work was about," he said. "It's not just good guys and bad guys. It's not just a job. It's a chance to make the place we live better."
A high school assignment once required him to interview the person whose job he wanted when he grew up.
"I interviewed Chief Conrad Mars," he said. "I've still got the tape."
In spite of his certainty about what he wanted in life, his father asked him to step back, to take another look.
"I listened to him," he said. Father and son struck a deal - Jeff agreed to go to SMU.
But campus life had little appeal. With his EMT certification and experience under his belt, he immediately found an ambulance service willing to mold his work schedule around his class schedule.
Friday nights he worked at the Mesquite rodeo. Saturday nights he was at the Devil's Bowl Speedway. But Sundays were best, on the sideline at Dallas Cowboy home games.
And he held up his end of the deal with his dad.
That done, at semester's end, he came back to Mt. Pleasant, already feeling time was slipping away.
Wanting his peace officer's certification as quickly as possible, he persuaded officials at Northeast Texas Community College to let him sign up for 21 hours in criminal justice. Again, he went to work as an EMT, this time for the Camp County Ambulance Service. He took classes between the spring and summer semesters, took nine hours in the first summer session and graduated at mid term pushing a perfect 4.0 grade point average.
He was 20 that July of 1992 when he went to work part time as a deputy constable in Camp County.
"Legally, I wasn't old enough to buy ammunition, but I was a licensed officer," he said. "I was on top of the world."
A year later, he got a full time job with the Camp County Sheriff's office.
Meanwhile, in Mt. Pleasant, there was an undercurrent of conflict between Police Chief Conrad Mars and City Manager Clay Collins. Effectively pushed out of his job by city hall, Chief Mars was replaced by Ted Gibson, a by-the-book cop from Lamar County.
Sgt. Basinger, a 1977 Mt. Pleasant graduate, was one of the few who survived the transition.
Whether Chief Mars could have made the transition to "modern" law enforcement that was the vision at city hall, nobody ever knew.
It wasn't until the arrival of Chief Gibson that funds were unleashed for equipment and training.
"Basically, the only requirement for getting on with the department had been certification as a peace officer," Sgt. Basinger said. "Chief Gibson brought new policies about education, training and both academic and physical testing."
Jeff Barnett and Mississippi native Tommy Myrick were among Chief Gibson's first recruits.
A quiet detective, Myrick was made an investigator. Barnett grabbed hold of the department's bottom rung, coming in as a beat cop. Promoted to investigator, he counts as good fortune the fact that Tommy Myrick was his mentor.
Likewise, he latched on to Clevie Johnson, now a constable, but then an officer within the department.
"Tommy knew police work and Clevie knew the community," Lt. Barnett said. "I spent a lot of time with those guys."
In 1996, Lt. Barnett was promoted to head of the department's Criminal Investigation Division.
It was a year in which the face of small-town crime changed with a gang-style killing over turf.
A week earlier, rumors of Hispanic gang activity here were dismissed as "always bogus," by school officials quoted in the Dallas Morning News.
That viewpoint evaporated in a spray of Sunday morning gunfire. As many as 40 witnesses saw 18-year-old Michael Martin gunned down as he attempted fleeing a Chevy pickup from which as many as five passengers were firing.
Inside the police department, the gang problem had been officially recognized two years earlier with Chief Gibson's submission of a grant application to address gang issues.
Previously, there had been a fear at some levels that recognizing gangs would glorify gangs.
Michael Martin's killing deflated that argument. Within 24 hours, police had five youths in custody in connection with the murder.
Some parents of gang members left town, taking their children with them, Lt. Barnett said. The "wanna be" tough kids melted away and "the hard cases found themselves in jail.
"The irony of that tragedy was that it made it impossible for anybody to logically deny a real threat that children here lived with," Lt. Barnett said. "When it turned into a generally recognized community issue, we got all the backing we needed to do what was needed."
While working in Mt. Pleasant, Lt. Barnett enrolled at LeTourneau University, earning a bachelors in business management in 1997.
Meanwhile, Chief Gibson left Mt. Pleasant for the chief's position in Nacogdoches and was replaced by Richard Parker, a retired Fort Worth police Captain.
Chief Parker put Lt. Barnett over patrol. Completing his bachelor's degree in 1997, he began writing grant applications for the department, getting federal funds for bilingual education for officers, and additional equipment for the department. Not letting up on university studies, he began working on his masters degree.
"I like setting goals," he said. "I like throwing the anchor as far out in front of the boat as I can heave it, then swimming to it."
On the job, he got his first brush with federal law enforcement working with undercover agents in town. Twice, they brought him job applications.
"It was nice being asked, but Mt. Pleasant's home," he said. "This is where I wanted to be."
Even so, he asked his undercover buddies what branch of federal enforcement they thought was best.
FBI, they said.
As far as law enforcement careers go, in 1999 Lt. Barnett got a break when he was invited to the FBI's 11-week training academy in Quantico, Virginia.
"It's the best training on the planet," he said. "They get the best officers from around the world."
Completing that, he asked permission to attend the Texas Leadership Command College.
"It looks great on a resume," he said, and by that time, he had clear career ambitions.
Completing that school, his next request for on-going education was turned down by his chief.
"It was a let down," he said. "I felt like I was in a rut."
It was 9-11 that spurred his career change. He applied for a slot with the FBI.
"Guys spend years trying to get in," he said, so he was surprised when he got a call within months, inviting him to test in the FBI's Dallas office.
"It was the toughest test I've ever taken," he said. "I wasn't sure I'd made the grade."
He got the answer with a call to his cell phone, a number he'd not given the federal agents. Within weeks, he'd aced the physical agility tests, emerged unscathed from an intense polygraph exam, and was offered a job.
In 2002 he left for Virginia again, this time for 16 weeks in special agent training before being assigned to the FBI's office in Little Rock. It was a different style of police work.
The advice of two agents who'd likewise been in local law enforcement came back to haunt him.
"The difference is interacting with people," he said. "Local officers have a chance to make a difference every day. It's not the big stuff - it's getting a kid's bicycle back. It's not about the thrill of solving a crime - it's about the satisfaction of helping, of being there when I'm needed. I missed my home town."
He gutted it out for better than a year, then came home Labor Day, 2003, for a family reunion.
"It was a landmark day," he said. "Even as I started getting close to home, I knew I didn't want to leave again. I knew I wanted to be the police chief and I knew Chief Parker wouldn't be here forever. I knew that sooner or later I'd get the chance."
He called his old boss. He called the city manager. Both welcomed him.
Chief Parker, who resigned in early summer, put Lt. Barnett back over patrol. City Manager Courtney Sharp appointed him interim chief.
EPILOGUE
On November 17, the city manager's office announced the hiring of Jay Burch as the town's new police chief.
Currently heading the Gatesville municipal department, Chief Burch "stood out because of his leadership skills and municipal law enforcement experience, which I believe will lead the police department into the future," said the city manager's press release.
His qualifications include a Master of Science in Criminal Justice Administration from Sam Houston State, Master Peace Officer certification, and graduation from the Bill Blackwood Law Enforcement Management Institute.
In their letter recommending Lt. Barnett, members of the department's officers' organization pledged their support of any selection made at city hall.