By Andy Sevilla

A Louisiana doctor, who filed a civil rights lawsuit against the city of Kyle and its police chief last year, is now calling for the top cop to step down.

Dr. Glen Hurlston, who alleges Kyle Police Chief Jeff Barnett carried out a campaign of harassment against him while having an affair with Hurlston’s wife, is continuing his legal battle against Barnett and the city, demanding the chief’s resignation.

“You will never have a good police force with this fellow,” Hurlston told the Hays Free Press in a telephone interview. “He will bring in the worst of the worst and destroy your department and get rid of the good police officers.”

“He needs to step down and resign. He isn’t fit to wear the uniform,” he said.

Hurlston’s call to oust Barnett comes on the heels of a U.S. District Court Judge’s decision to deny the city’s request to throw out the case.

District Court Judge Amos L. Mazzant denied on Dec. 4 Kyle’s third motion to dismiss the suit, according to court documents. 

Kyle, along with Barnett and the city of Princeton, a Dallas suburb, is a named defendant in the case.

In his civil suit, Hurlston alleges Kyle “clothed Jeffery Barnett with sufficient state authority to allow him to use his public office for private purposes, namely harassing and threatening to arrest plaintiff without cause.”

Hurlston was arrested Jan. 1, 2012, in Princeton, a town where Barnett once served as police chief, on a felony domestic battery charge for allegedly assaulting his wife. That arrest came eight months after Barnett became Kyle’s police chief. 

Hurlston alleges in his suit that Princeton police arrested him for the private benefit of his wife, based on her extra-marital relationship with Barnett. Hurlston ultimately pleaded no-contest to a lesser charge and received two years probation.

Kyle continues to stand behind its chief and has called the lawsuit “frivolous” and “without merit, substance or viability.”

Barnett would not comment on the matter, but his attorney, Bob Gorsky said in a January 2014 statement “Barnett had nothing to do with Dr. Hurlston’s arrest or any contacts the doctor had with the police.”

“This lawsuit presents a case study in what frivolous litigation is all about,” Gorsky added.

But Hurlston disagrees.

Hurlston alleges that Barnett was very much involved in his 2012 arrest, and he has been further affected by subsequent action.

Hurlston said he lost a son, was betrayed by his wife, and her lover (Barnett) humiliated him and had him imprisoned.

Court documents and a paternity test result appear to indicate Barnett fathered a child with Hurlston’s now-ex wife, while she was still married to the doctor. The father on the child’s birth certificate was listed as Hurlston, who said he later found out the child was not his, and Barnett is allegedly the father.

“I’m not interested in destroying lives, it’s against my nature to do so, but your chief shouldn’t be leading this department, he is a pathological liar and deadbeat father,” Hurlston said of Barnett.

The matter could have easily been resolved, Hurlston said, but the city decided to cover its chief and the chief wouldn’t come clean, Hurlston alleges.

He said he would not have filed suit against Kyle if it had properly policed Barnett and conducted a correct and thorough investigation of its employee. 

In a 2012 investigation by Assistant City Manager James Earp, the city found “as a result of prior allegations by (Hurlston), the city conducted a review into these allegations and concluded that Chief Barnett is not in violation of any city rules or standards of conduct that would directly or indirectly influence his status with the City of Kyle,” officials said in a January statement.

Hurlston also said he would have not taken action against Barnett, but the chief decided to lie to him. 

Hurlston said he had a conversation with Barnett in January 2012, after continuous calls and a threat to “called him over and over again at the police station and said I was going to keep calling (until) he answered.”

It was during that conversation that Hurlston alleges Barnett lied to him about having knowledge of a child he allegedly fathered with his wife. Hurlston said he just wanted to know if his wife was lying to him and if the child was really his.

Later, Hurlston would find out the child was not his, according to court documents.

Even still, Barnett’s attorney maintains that the lawsuit is frivolous, and “it strains the imagination that many months after (Barnett) left Princeton, Jeff Barnett would be a ‘puppet master’ controlling the actions of a city police department.” 

“Furthermore,” Gorsky said, “by Dr. Hurlston’s own admission he did not contest the criminal charge, which is telling.”