Barnett, Arthur Papers

Officer, Kansas City, Missouri Police Department (KCMO PD), 1960-1990.

The papers of Arthur Barnett include the Kansas City Police Department’s OPLAN Missouri manual, which described in detail the Department’s plans for the state funeral of former President Harry S. Truman. The collection also includes two pages of biographical information about Officer Barnett.

Size: About 600 pages.
Access: Open.
Copyright: The donor gave his copyright interest in these materials to the U.S. Government. Records created by employees of the U.S. Government during the course of their duties are also in the public domain. The copyright interest in other records in the collection presumably belongs to the creators of the records, or to their heirs.
Processed by: SonJanita Jordan (2026).

Arthur Barnett was born on September 17, 1935, in Odessa, MO and died at age 69 on July 12, 2005. He served in the 8th U.S. Army Honor Guard from 1955 to 1959. Following his service in the Army, Barnett received an appointment to the Kansas City Police Department on May 1, 1960, and retired thirty years later on May 1, 1990. His final rank was that of Major.

The papers of Arthur Barnett include the OPLAN Missouri KCMO PD manual, which described in detail the Kansas City Police Department’s plans for the state funeral of former President Harry S. Truman. The manual was issued on October 1, 1972, at a time when Mr. Truman’s health was failing. He passed away on December 26, 1972. The manual contains information about personnel deployments, equipment requirements, travel routes, traffic control, and the responsibilities of other agencies involved in the funeral arrangements, such as the 5th U.S. Army, the Independence (Missouri) Police Department, and the U.S. Secret Service. ("OPLAN Missouri" was the 5th Army’s code name for the funeral preparations.)

The collection also includes two pages of biographical data about Officer Barnett. Two photographs from the papers have been transferred to the Truman Library’s audiovisual collection: one a portrait photograph of Officer Barnett, and the other a photograph of the 71st graduating class of the KCMO Police Department.

Related collections at the Truman Library include the Records of the Harry S. Truman Library: Harry S. Truman Funeral Files (Record Group 64), and the papers of Robert Campbell and Gil Shaw.