LOCAL

Columbus deputy chief’s tweets subject of city investigation

Bill Bush
bbush@dispatch.com
Columbus Police Deputy Chief Ken Kuebler, center, speaks at a news conference in 2016 with Columbus City Council President Zach Klein, left, and Columbus Division of Fire Deputy Chief Jim Davis. [Adam Cairns/Dispatch)

The law firm hired by the city of Columbus to investigate police actions in response to rioters and protesters this year is now also under contract to review the online posts of one particularly outspoken Columbus deputy police chief.

Deputy Chief Ken Kuebler’s Twitter page is full of biting comments — lots of them mocking Columbus’ elected leaders for not strongly backing the police.

He’s attacked mayors and governors as acting like wanna-be kings by making up their own laws; he’s called on elected leaders who want to defund the police to “start with their (police) protection details”; he said that “no known living politician is capable of honesty”; and he once said of Gov. Mike DeWine that “Even a blind squirrel stumbles upon a nut during its travels.”

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In response to City Council President Shannon Hardin calling on protesters’ curfew charges to be immediately dropped, Kuebler tweeted a “step by step guide for politicians: 1. Make new laws; 2. Use the police to enforce the new laws; 3. Accuse the police for violating people’s rights by enforcing the new laws; 4. Repeat.”

And he’s repeatedly attacked Ginther and Hardin for the “$120 million was transferred from the residents of Columbus to a Cleveland billionaire” to keep the Crew SC in town.

While it’s unclear which of Kuebler’s many posts landed him in hot water, the one that is attached to the complaint that started the probe against him may have alluded to the objectivity of the law firm hired by the city to investigate officers.

And that same firm, BakerHostetler, is now investigating Kuebler’s social-media postings, ostensibly to provide more independence over an internal inquiry.

According to a yet-unsigned contract between the city Department of Public Safety and BakerHostetler, the law firm will be paid up to $50,000 to conduct investigations into potential violations of the Division of Police’s rules on social-media posts.

“While the investigation of Deputy Chief (Ken) Kuebler will not cost $50,000, I have nevertheless made the contract payable up to that amount on the chance that the Department may need additional investigations in the near future,” said an email from Deputy Public Safety Director George Speaks to BakerHostetler dated Tuesday under the subject heading “Contract for Social Media Investigation.”

Kuebler, who heads the Special Operations Subdivision in charge of homeland security, the helicopter unit, SWAT and several other operations, wouldn’t agree to be interviewed for this story, but issued a statement through a division spokeswoman “that his social media and his employment are not connected.”

The division’s rules on social media don’t expressly prohibit officers from making political statements, or even attacking the mayor and council president.

Instead, they say officers can’t post photos of crime scenes, say things that could undermine other officials’ statements in court, that they shouldn’t post photos that identify undercover officers, and make clear that no officer is obligated to interact with other department officials online.

“Division personnel are free to express themselves as private citizens on social media sites,” so long as it doesn’t “impair working relationships within the division or the city,” interfere with their own jobs or those of others, or break any rules of conduct, policy or directive.

Division policy states that “supervisors should not investigate or conduct targeted searches of their subordinates’ social media sites without provocation from a specific claim or complaint,” or permission from their chain of command.

The Public Safety Department won’t say who filed the complaint that started the investigation against Kuebler, or make a copy available, invoking “attorney-client privilege.” That privilege makes secret any communications only between a client and the client’s attorney.

Glenn McEntyre, a spokesman for the department, said the privilege protecting the complaint is between the department itself as the client and the city attorney’s office. He wouldn’t say if the department itself filed the complaint.

But the department did release an attachment to the complaint: a copy of one of Kuebler’s Twitter posts from July 1 that is still on his Twitter site. It reads only: “Let’s be very clear about something. If you pay someone to do something for you, they aren’t independent. They are your personal contractor.”

While Kuebler doesn’t elaborate in the Tweet on what he’s referring to, he posted the comment 12 minutes after Mayor Andrew J. Ginther had begun a news conference to announce that he had just hired “two independent entities to address the complaints against officers” stemming from the protests and rioting.

One of those was a retired FBI agent hired by the city to investigate any police conduct during the protests rising to potential criminal acts, and the other was BakerHostetler, which would investigate lesser rule violations.

Asked if BakerHostetler should be conducting an investigation prompted by a Tweet that could be interpreted to mean that firm itself wasn’t an objective investigator, McEntyre replied: “We’ve said all we are able to say on this at this time.”

BakerHostetler is also investigating potentially non-criminal rules violations of about 40 officers’ actions during the protests, which began in late May and continued for weeks. The city council on Monday increased that contract — which is separate from the social-media investigation — from $50,000 to $550,000, so the investigations could meet the 90-day completion date called for in the police union contract.

bbush@dispatch.com

@ReporterBush

bbruner@dispatch.com

@Bethany_Bruner