Wichita cop accused of battering prisoner, airport intimidation pleads not guilty
A Wichita police officer charged with battering a prisoner and with engaging in disorderly conduct at Eisenhower National Airport in unrelated incidents last year has pleaded not guilty.
Andrew Barnett made a first appearance in court in connection with the cases Tuesday morning. He immediately entered the not-guilty plea to the misdemeanor charges and was released on his own recognizance after being booked into the Sedgwick County Jail, records show. He has retained Wichita attorney Stephen Arigano to represent him in court.
His next hearing, a bench trial, is scheduled for March 3.
The Wichita Police Department publicly announced Barnett’s charges on Feb. 3. He is accused of battering a Kansas City, Missouri, man named Brandon Johnson on May 14, 2021, and of causing a ruckus at the airport while he was off-duty on Dec. 2.
Officials have yet to release specifics about what exactly occurred on either day to prompt the charges.
But a brief narrative included in an early December police blotter lists the airport incident as an intimidation case where the victim described a suspicious person “making intimidating threats” at the Avis Rental Car counter, 2280 S. Eisenhower Airport Pkwy., around 10:15 p.m. Dec. 2. The complaint filed by prosecutors accuses Barnett of using “fighting words” or otherwise engaging “in noisy conduct tending reasonably to arouse alarm, anger or resentment in others” but does not go into more detail.
The complaint in the prisoner battery case also gives only a vague description of the accusations. It says Barnett “unlawfully and knowingly” caused “physical contact with another person (Johnson) ... in a rude, insulting or angry manner.”
But an arrest affidavit filed in Johnson’s criminal case sheds light on at least some their interaction that day:
Barnett is among officers who reportedly struggled with Johnson as Johnson allegedly climbed into the driver’s seat of a police patrol car after his early morning May 14, 2021, arrest for drug and traffic-related offenses. The document says Johnson tried to escape in the patrol car and was eventually removed from it by officers after a skirmish.
Police earlier this month said Barnett had been moved to an unspecified “administrative assignment within the department” after the prisoner battery allegation surfaced, pending the outcome of a Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office investigation.
Barnett has since been placed on unpaid administrative leave, the WPD said on Feb. 3. He has been an employee of the Wichita Police Department for five years.
