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A state law enforcement board on Monday took its next step toward deciding whether Dubois County Sheriff Tom Kleinhelter should lose his police certification.
After a brief procedural meeting at the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy in Plainfield the pending case against Kleinhelter is tentatively on track for lengthy evidentiary hearings in April.
The Indiana Law Enforcement Training Board’s decertification subcommittee will weigh the charges, and the full board will ultimately decide whether Kleinhelter should be stripped of his law enforcement credentials.
Kleinhelter appeared Monday alongside his lawyer, Jim Voyles; general counsel Raquel Ramirez represented the train board. Subcommittee chairman David Wantz led the four-minute meeting.
The parties agreed to exchange initial discovery by Dec. 30, with additional discovery due by the end of January and a two-day evidentiary hearing tentatively scheduled sometime between April 25–28.
Following the hearing, neither Kleinhelter nor Voyles responded to media questions.
The decertification request was initiated by the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy and its executive director, Tim Horty, following a monthslong Indiana State Police investigation into allegations of misconduct by Kleinhelter. Although a special prosecutor ultimately decided not to file criminal charges against Kleinhelter, the training board voted in August to move forward with administrative charges of fraud, perjury, false informing and criminal misconduct.
The board pointed to two separate allegations of fraud in the charging documents.
In one instance, Kleinhelter was accused of purchasing employee gifts and directing the jail matron to falsely list the expenses as “training” in commissary records. The sheriff is also alleged to have reimbursed the jail commissary with more than $16,000 following a state audit, but then sought to recoup the money by filing a reimbursement request with the county auditor that falsely listed a State Board of Accounts employee’s name to suggest its approval.
The board also accused Kleinhelter of perjury, alleging that the sheriff signed a nepotism compliance form months after he approved his wife as a special deputy. The training board claimed that could be a violation of the county’s policy around “hiring and supervising relatives.”
Kleinhelter is further accused of false informing for telling state police investigators he received an airline “e-credit” for a canceled work trip — although the airline confirmed he was actually issued a direct refund.
ILEA’s training board noted in the charging document that Kleinhelter’s alleged actions occurred while he was serving in his official capacity as sheriff and could qualify as official misconduct.
Although decertification would bar Kleinhelter from serving as a certified law-enforcement officer, it would not prevent him from holding the elected office of sheriff under the state constitution.
The Indiana Capital Chronicle is an independent, nonprofit news organization that covers state government, policy and elections.
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