Employees describe culture of retaliation under Deschutes County Sheriff Shane Nelson

In 2012, Joah Ash was on track for a stellar career at the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office. He had been with the agency for eight years and said his supervisors encouraged him to take on more responsibilities. He felt like he was being groomed for promotion.

Then his ex-wife sued the county, the sheriff’s office and a number of individual leaders there. At its core, the lawsuit was a child custody dispute and was ultimately thrown out, but according to Ash, it soured department leadership on him.

“I really felt the tides were changed,” Ash told OPB. “I was no longer someone looked at as being a future part of the command staff.”

As leaders started to scrutinize his every action, Ash became paranoid and depressed.

“They always used to say policy is a guideline,” Ash said. “But if you’re not well liked, they’re looking at every little line-by-line policy for violations.”

In May 2015, a year after the lawsuit was dismissed, the sheriff’s office disciplined Ash for alerting an emergency room doctor he was on his way to the hospital with an inmate. Ash said he gave the doctor a routine heads up, but his supervisors treated the incident as if it were a major security violation.

In July of that year, Capt. Shane Nelson, who had been one of the named defendants in the lawsuit, was appointed Deschutes County sheriff. Everything got worse for Ash after that.

Ash took a photo of himself inside a control room at work to privately share with his friends and family. He said he was “smiling, proudly showing who I was and representing the sheriff’s office.”

Working in law enforcement had defined Ash’s life up until that point. He fought back tears describing how proud he had been representing the community before his career came to an abrupt end.

After emailing the photo to a friend, Ash didn’t log out of his account. A coworker later saw the photo and word got back to department leadership. Sheriff’s office policy prohibits cellphones in the room where he took the photo, and Nelson fired Ash on Jan. 5, 2016 for the violation, among other alleged policy infractions.

Ash was one of the first people Nelson fired in what would soon become a long list of deputies, department leadership and civilian employees who were targeted or whose careers were torpedoed by a leader who some former county employees and colleagues say rules by fear, bullying and retaliation.

Since 2015, Deschutes County has paid almost $3.5 million to defend and settle claims against Nelson and the sheriff’s office. In that time, the sheriff’s own employees have filed at least 25 complaints against him and the office, portraying a law enforcement agency where women are sidelined and intimidation is routine.

By contrast, the Portland Police Bureau, an agency five times larger than DCSO, has paid out roughly $4.8 million in that time, including one settlement for $2.1 million. Nearly all of Portland’s payouts have been related to civil lawsuits brought by the community, not internal staff grievances like most of the DCSO payouts.

In some ways, Nelson’s approach to being sheriff is in line with how sheriff’s across the country view themselves: a top local authority who is accountable only to voters during election season.

But unlike sheriffs who wield their unchecked authority to disregard federal gun laws or challenge federal land rights, firsthand accounts, lawsuits and people who have worked closely with Nelson say he targets his own employees, turning the power of his office against anyone who questions his methods or won’t abet what they describe as discrimination.

Nelson and his supporters, meanwhile, say the sheriff holds a high standard of conduct at the office, and the bevy of grievances come from staff who could not meet his exacting standards.

‘Drunk on power’

Julie Lovrien isn’t surprised by the turmoil.

“There’s always some form of dysfunction in government,” said Lovrien, who spent nine of her 22 years working in government at the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office before leaving in 2018. “But what I experienced working at the sheriff’s office was not only the dysfunction but the corruption.”

Lovrien, who started at DCSO as an administrative assistant and was a legal assistant under Nelson, said after former Capt. Scott Beard was sentenced to prison for embezzlement in 2016, she started asking more questions about agency finances and employment practice complaints she was working on. In response, she said, Nelson moved quickly to control and sideline her.

“Suddenly, I wasn’t being invited to the confidential meetings regarding certain internal investigations or I wasn’t invited to meetings regarding the lawsuits that I was working on,” said Lovrien, who has known Nelson for 17 years and was one of his early supporters. “It seemed like the more questions I started asking, the more they pushed me out.”

Allegations from at least six women once employed by DCSO describe an entrenched culture of misogyny, and Nelson’s alleged attempts to stymy women’s careers at the agency. The 259-person agency currently employs 60 women, with only three of them in leadership positions. The three women in leadership are civilians, not sworn officers. By comparison, the neighboring and much smaller Bend Police Department has five women in supervisor positions.

Of the 18 female deputies at the DCSO, five work in patrol and 13 in corrections. Agency spokesperson Sgt. Jayson Janes said DCSO has been actively recruiting women for patrol deputy positions since Nelson took over in 2015. Prior to that, Janes told OPB, there were no female deputies working patrol.

OPB spoke to 23 current and former county employees, elected leaders and law enforcement officers in Deschutes County about Nelson’s leadership, complaints against him and his impact on the community. Only four defended Nelson.

“The culture of the organization I think is stellar,” County Commissioner Tony DeBone said in an interview with OPB. “The sheriff has made some bold and clear choices about not wanting to settle (lawsuits).”

OPB also sent an anonymous survey to every sheriff’s office employee’s work email. The 11 respondents revealed a sharply divided staff. Some spoke highly of Nelson and rated him as excellent across a number of areas. They described a leader with integrity who cares deeply about his subordinates. Others described an agency with “inept” leaders at the helm, and where the “good ole boys” club is firmly entrenched, making it difficult for women to advance.

Nelson declined to be interviewed for this story. In written responses to OPB’s questions, Nelson said personnel issues became a priority for him after Beard’s embezzlement was uncovered.

“I held an ‘all hands on deck’ meeting with everyone working in the Sheriff’s Office,” Nelson wrote. “I set out expectations, including the expectation that those who work at the Sheriff’s Office be in line with its mission and values.”

Nelson, and even some of his critics, say the sheriff’s office’s $565,000 annual contribution to the Deschutes County Stabilization Center — a short term mental health facility helping divert people away from the criminal justice system — is an example of the positive work Nelson has done to change the law enforcement culture in the county.

Most of the people who offered critical views of Nelson declined to speak on the record for fear of retaliation.

A tendency to retaliate against employees is a recurring theme in complaints and lawsuits against Nelson.

“There’s a culture of fear here,” a deputy with more than 15 years at the agency told OPB. The deputy spoke on condition of anonymity to protect his job. “People stay quiet around here. They know retaliation is a true thing or they’d be talking.”

At one point, multiple people told OPB, a mental health professional who was seeing a disproportionate number of Deschutes County Sheriff’s deputies, approached the sheriff’s office about starting a wellness program.

“They basically got ran off,” the deputy said. “That’s pretty telling to me when I’ve got a professional in the mental health industry saying that the Sheriff’s office has got an issue...it’s crippling.”

In written responses Nelson touted the agency’s approach to mental health, including a wellness app and free counseling.

Former deputy David Chambers, who started at DCSO in 1999, remembers Nelson fondly before he became sheriff. As jail captain, Nelson would always greet Chambers warmly with a handshake and “a bro hug,” Chambers said, frequently asking how he could improve the jail or life for the deputies.

“Once he became sheriff, he did not give a shit about you,” Chambers told OPB.

Nelson eventually fired Chambers, a disabled veteran. According to Chambers and a tort claim filed in 2017, he was fired because Nelson refused to accommodate his disability and he used minor policy violations as an excuse. Chambers has not filed a lawsuit, but told OPB he would still like to.

‘The leader matters’

In December 2016, a Central Oregon TV station produced a story about a state Bureau of Labor and Industries complaint against Nelson by one of his deputies, Crystal Jansen. Nelson provided the station with a video showing the sheriff shaking hands and touching some of his deputies. In the video, all the deputies’ faces are blurred, except one: Jansen.

Jansen had just filed a labor complaint against Nelson alleging gender discrimination and that he had caressed her shoulder in front of her colleagues the day after he dismissed an internal complaint she filed.

“He made a point of standing over me as I sat below him in a lowered chair. He winked at me and placed his hand on my shoulder, holding it there briefly,” Jansen’s October 2016 complaint to the state labor board reads. “This was entirely unwanted, it was humiliating, and it made me feel nauseated the remainder of my shift to the point I vomited repeatedly.”

In a federal lawsuit filed in 2018, Jansen contends the video was released to create the impression that Nelson only touched Jansen appropriately and to publicly smear her. Sharing the video without her permission also violated department policies about maintaining officers’ privacy.

In his deposition for an eventual lawsuit, Nelson offered a stunning defense of his decision to release the tape.

“The Sheriff’s Office policies do not apply to the sheriff,” Nelson told Jansen’s lawyers. “I’m not a Sheriff’s Office member or an employee. I’m the elected sheriff and therefore work for the 190,000 citizens that are in this county.”

While Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office legal counsel backs Nelson’s claim that he doesn’t have to follow agency policies, his supporters don’t necessarily agree. DeBone, the county commissioner, wouldn’t comment on Nelson’s interpretation but did speak for himself: He said that as an elected commissioner, county policies absolutely apply to him.

Jansen’s sprawling lawsuit was settled in September for $527,000. Neither the county, nor Nelson admitted culpability. The complaint detailed incidents as far back as 2013, when Jansen was one of the few women in leadership at the agency. Nelson was still a captain at the time.

The lawsuit alleged 11 instances of discrimination, harassment and retaliation. Nelson downgraded one of Jansen’s positive performance reviews written by her direct supervisor and used whiteout to replace “meets standards” and “exceeds standards” evaluations with “requires improvement,” according to a deposition Nelson gave to Jansen’s lawyer. Nelson contended that it was not unusual, but under questioning from Jansen’s attorney could not offer other examples of him changing employee performance reviews.

Jansen’s immediate supervisor at the time, Lt. Robert Trono, said it was unprecedented in his experience.

“In all of my years of law enforcement, never had a captain changed an evaluation on their own accord without discussing with me,” Trono wrote in a statement of support for Jansen’s lawsuit. “His actions further confirmed that Nelson did not want her to pass probation, regardless of her actual abilities.”

In other cases, the complaint stated, leadership at the sheriff’s office arbitrarily changed requirements for internal job openings to ensure Jansen couldn’t apply.

“The leader matters. But most of the time, the leader is at least trying to do the right thing,” said Whitney Stark, Jansen’s lawyer. “And here, he genuinely believes the law does not apply to him.”

Jansen declined to be interviewed for this story.

The misogyny she said she experienced began in 2013, just days after then-Capt. Nelson took over command of the corrections division and was inserted into her chain of command.

Trono said it was clear Nelson didn’t like her, and so Trono warned her she should “lay low.”

“Jansen made herself more visible within the agency because she was always going the extra mile and stepping up to take on extra projects,” he said.

Trono suggested Jansen drop the additional duties to stay off Nelson’s radar. Those duties included working as an instructor for the state agency that certifies law enforcement, teaching classes in the community, and serving as the Prison Rape Elimination Act coordinator for Deschutes County.

Nelson moved Jansen to a different team and a new supervisor in an attempt to “fix her,” according to Trono. Nelson also prevented Jansen from attending multiple training opportunities, some of them required, while still allowing her male counterparts to attend, the lawsuit claims.

In 2015, a retiring sergeant recommended Jansen to replace him. Instead of accepting internal applicants, her lawsuit said, Nelson forewent a transparent hiring process and appointed a less qualified male sergeant to the position. Fearing for her job, Jansen chose to step down as a sergeant and return to a deputy position where she had union protection.

In his written answers to OPB’s questions, Nelson said he did not retaliate against Jansen and that she self-demoted for family reasons.

Nelson’s statement contradicts both Jansen’s statements in the lawsuit and those from five of her former colleagues, including three former supervisors.

Over the course of the ensuing two and a half years after giving up her sergeant rank, Jansen would file two complaints against Nelson, which she said brought more retaliation.

Her lawsuit alleges a county-funded, outside investigation into her discrimination complaint was incomplete and sought to exonerate Nelson from the start.

A deposition with the lawyer hired to conduct the investigation was provided to OPB by Jansen’s lawyer. It reveals Nelson — as sheriff — knew in advance which of his employees would be interviewed, causing Jansen’s attorney to raise concerns he influenced the witnesses. The investigator conceded “that’s certainly not how I would have preferred it.” The investigator also failed to interview a number of people Jansen listed as relevant to her complaint, and didn’t consider comparable circumstances involving male employees when evaluating Jansen’s treatment, according to the deposition.

“From the questions that were asked, I believed that the agency desired to show that Nelson had not discriminated against Jansen,” Trono wrote in his support statement, adding he believes only three other people were interviewed for the investigation, making it “nowhere near complete” in his view.

Days after that investigation concluded, Trono was put on administrative leave and eventually fired for an alleged policy violation connected to a firearm he made for a fellow deputy. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives investigated the matter after receiving two tips, one anonymous and one from a fellow deputy. The ATF cleared Trono, but the Sheriff’s Office eventually fired him, saying Trono had retaliated against the deputy who had reported him.

Jansen wasn’t the only female employee to describe a culture of gender discrimination.

Deputy Christine Daugherty accepted a lawsuit settlement in November for $75,000 after alleging retaliation, gender and age discrimination. Her lawsuit claims female corrections deputies were forced to do the same work as their male counterparts plus all the work involving female inmates. Nelson fired her in May 2017, a decision that was overturned by an arbitrator in a 40-page rebuke of department leadership citing multiple inaccuracies and mischaracterizations in the department’s investigation, including selectively edited video evidence.

Deputy Jennifer Gaspard also filed a labor complaint for gender discrimination in 2017 alleging she had been passed over for promotion and more desirable assignments, which she said were given to less qualified men.

Lovrien said in a letter of support for Jansen’s lawsuit she believes Nelson “treats females differently and supports a culture of treating males as superiors.”

Lovrien claimed that Nelson modified documents in a compensation study to minimize her duties and keep Lovrien in a lower classification. In a sworn statement, she said the county human resources department reversed Nelson’s decision.

A ‘clear misuse of power’

Jansen’s case is a prime example of how far Nelson is willing to go to retaliate against some people who question him, according to Lovrien. Two of Jansen’s supervisors were fired soon after backing her. A third retired early on suspicion he might be next, Lovrien said.

“I could almost see it coming,” she said, adding that if someone failed to toe Nelson’s line during an investigation, they would soon find themselves targeted. “I could say six months from now, whoever was telling the truth in that investigation that didn’t favor Shane’s opinion is going to also be investigated.”

Even employees who backed Nelson at times have come into his crosshairs. One deputy who rewrote one of Jansen’s performance reviews for Nelson, Sgt. Michael Molan, was himself embroiled in drawn out internal affairs investigations at Nelson’s behest, according to an ongoing federal civil rights lawsuit he filed against the sheriff and DCSO.

Nelson denied retaliating against Jansen’s supervisors, and said their terminations were legitimately tied to policy violations.

Stark, Jansen’s lawyer, said there is plenty of evidence in all of the lawsuits and complaints that Nelson simply doesn’t like anyone who challenges him.

“If Nelson is treating his employees this way, what’s happening to the community?” Stark asked.

The answer to that question came Oct. 19, according to some community members.

Nelson was giving a presentation at Deschutes County College, a 10-week civics program that teaches attendees about various county offices and what they do. According to attendees, Nelson used his brief presentation, held almost a year after his 2020 reelection, to attack his political opponents. He specifically targeted County College attendee Morgan Schmidt, a pastor and current candidate for county commission who had publicly supported Jansen and other female deputies who spoke out against Nelson a year earlier.

The class that week was being held at the county’s 911 facility. Nelson, who was there to speak about the sheriff’s office, instead spent his time speaking to Schmidt, who he said had disrespected his department. He called the allegations against him baseless and politically motivated.

Nelson told OPB he simply expressed to Schmidt he wished she had reached out to him directly “to get the facts” before supporting his accusers a year prior.

County College attendees remember Nelson’s presentation that night differently.

“The class was confused and clearly tense as our county sheriff continued to — with a raised voice and insistent gesturing — harass a class participant because of her previous political actions,” attendee Tara Fuertado wrote in a letter to the Deschutes County commissioners after the incident. Fuertado declined to be interviewed for this story.

“It is dangerously inappropriate for a person in power — in uniform — in a Deschutes County college class to use this platform for a personal vendetta,” she wrote. “This clear misuse of power created an unsafe environment for attendees.”

Another attendee, who works with the county and is not authorized to speak on the record, said when Fuertado asked Nelson to return to the topic at hand, he responded: “If you don’t want to hear me speak, you don’t have to be here.”

A ‘systemic issue’

Nelson’s leadership style, which he describes as striving for excellence, reportedly has a substantial impact on his deputies and the community.

“I’ve witnessed [deputies] having anxiety attacks ... because their admin is putting them through so much stress,” Lovrien said. “These internal investigations affect their ability to do their job.”

In August, a federal jury awarded former deputy Eric Kozowski more than $1 million. The jury found that Nelson retaliated against Kozowski for running against him for sheriff in 2016.

“From the time I filed to run to the time I was fired, the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office opened up 19 internal investigations against me,” said Kozowski, who had been a Deschutes County Sheriff’s deputy with consistently positive performance reviews for 12 years before running against Nelson. “If I was such a truly horrible cop like they said, and I believe I wasn’t, they were negligent for leaving me working.”

In targeting an employee for minor violations, Nelson was drawing from the same playbook he had used against Joah Ash months earlier.

This time, Kozowski confronted Nelson, alleging he was using the power of his office to influence the election. Nelson forwarded the allegations to the Oregon Department of Justice to investigate. Marlene Olson, a financial fraud and civil enforcement investigator ultimately determined the allegations were unfounded, but did note that five of the people interviewed “voiced concern for the atmosphere of cliques and privilege within DSCO.”

“It appears to be a systemic issue, whether real or not is immaterial,” Olson wrote in her investigation summary. “It is perceived to exist and subsequently affects the performance and motivation of those on the job.”

Kozowski said he figured his career at the sheriff’s office would be at a dead end if he lost the election, but he was OK staying a patrol deputy for the remainder of his career, a job he loved.

“They took that and just turned it into something I hated,” Kozowski said in an interview with OPB. “I hated going to work because who knew what they were going to find to screw with me next over.”

In the year following his election loss, Kozowski was the subject of eight internal affairs investigations and finally placed on administrative leave in September 2017. The allegations against him ranged from being dishonest in an interview and violating uniform policies to failure to follow up on a public records request.

Kozowski was fired in January 2018. Despite winning his lawsuit in federal court, he said he has no plans to return to law enforcement.

“The treatment I received by Shane Nelson and other management and supervisors at the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office has really soured me on law enforcement,” Kozowski told OPB. “These are the leaders of a law enforcement agency that broke the law…It’s disheartening and it just left a bad taste in my mouth.”

Nelson maintains that Kozowski was fired for cause and cited the 11 outside investigations conducted as evidence of the fair process used to reach that decision.

“The case went to trial, and the jury disagreed with the Sheriff’s Office employment decision, an outcome that is possible any time an employer takes an employment claim to trial,” Nelson wrote to OPB.

To investigate the allegations against Kozowski and other deputies, Nelson hired investigators Tim Moore and Matt Ellington.

Moore is a retired Multnomah County Sheriff’s deputy turned private investigator. He was fined by the state in 2017 for doing unlicensed private investigative work for Clackamas and Deschutes counties. It was the second time Moore had skirted licensing requirements; the first was in 2009 and involved falsified training documents, according to the Oregonian/OregonLive.

Ellington is a former Clackamas County undersheriff who was himself named in a 2018 retaliation lawsuit. Clackamas County settled that lawsuit for $235,000. Ellington is not a licensed private investigator but, according to state law, is legally allowed to work as one so long as he only has one client and only works on internal investigations.

Nelson said he hired the men to eliminate potential bias in personnel investigations. Text messages between Moore and Nelson, sent in 2017 and provided to OPB by Kozowski’s lawyer, suggest bias may persist.

“Looks like you have the tide turning!” Moore wrote to Nelson. “Great headlines in (the Bend) Bulletin (newspaper). I know you knew the culture change was taking place but to have the media realize it is absolutely great. Have a good weekend.”

“Thank you my friend,” Nelson replied.

Randy Harvey, an attorney representing another longtime sheriff’s office employee who plans to sue the agency, said Nelson’s chosen investigators’ work looking into his client is “a piece of crap.”

“We provided them numerous examples of where the investigators either lied or were so incompetent that they got the facts wrong,” Harvey said. “They’re just not reliable.”

Moore has conducted 17 internal investigations for Nelson since 2015, according to the Bend Bulletin. In that time, DCSO has paid Moore at least $315,503.79, according to invoices reviewed by OPB. Since 2019, Ellington has received $115,722.25 for doing nearly identical work as Moore, according to the itemized invoices, despite not being a licensed investigator. In 2021 alone, the two have billed the county more than $163,000.

Moore declined to be interviewed. Ellington could not be reached.

According to Michael McGean, Kozowski’s lawyer, Moore’s primary client was the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office and until Kozowski was fired, Moore’s work for DCSO was overwhelmingly focused on investigating him.

“That was Tim Moore’s full time job when he got hired on as an independent contractor with Deschutes County,” McGean said. “This was a misuse of public resources.”

In September, Nelson potentially waded into more hot water around public funds. The jury in the Kozowski trial ordered Nelson to pay $10,000 of his own money for First Amendment violations and retaliation. Nelson ultimately paid the tab with department funds, a move county attorneys say is likely illegal, according to County Commissioner Phil Chang.

“The opinion from various legal experts, including county legal counsel, is that the sheriff is responsible to pay that penalty as an individual,” Chang told OPB. “The sheriff’s office retains outside legal counsel that had a different opinion.”

Nelson told OPB the decision to use county money was in line with a state law requiring a public employer to pay jury awards against a public employee.

Chang said he considers the county attorney’s legal opinion to be official, and noted the two sides are still in ongoing negotiations to determine a resolution.

But the run of large payouts will have a lasting impact on county coffers.

Erik Kropp, the Deschutes County administrator, said the high number of claims and settlements is likely to raise the county’s insurance bill going forward, though it’s too soon to know by how much.

An agency ‘imploding’

In 2018, multiple Deschutes County sheriff’s deputies approached Bend police officer Scott Schaier asking about a rumor that he intended to run for sheriff.

“I don’t know how this rumor began,” Schaier said. “But all of those conversations were met with ‘You should.’”

Schaier decided to run against Nelson in 2020, but lost. He said he ran, in part, because the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office’s problems go far deeper than Nelson, who grew up in Central Oregon and has been with the agency for almost 28 years.

“They’ve always had tumultuous leadership ranks over there,” Schaier said. “He’s just another leader within that organization who’s managing it in the same fashion that his predecessors have managed it. He’s never seen anything different. It’s the abuse victim who becomes an abuser.”

Nelson’s long track record of conflict with his staff extended this year to include a leader once in his innermost circle.

Capt. Deron McMaster, who had a 28-year career with the agency, was placed on administrative leave in April.

An investigation by Moore and Ellington found McMaster allegedly failed to report suspected domestic and sexual abuse by another deputy against their romantic partner, and then lied during the investigation.

A tort claim filed by McMaster in September alleges the investigation led to another instance of retaliation.

As long as the sheriff “is using the services of Tim Moore and Matt Ellington, no Deschutes County Sheriff’s Deputy is safe from their disreputable investigation practices and their willingness to conceal and distort evidence and testimony of witnesses,” McMaster wrote in his September resignation letter.

McMaster disputes the allegations against him. Nelson lives across the street from the deputy in question, and McMaster said Nelson’s wife — a former Bend police officer — was interviewed at some point during the three investigations into the abuse and McMaster. McMaster claims Nelson tried to cover up his and his wife’s own knowledge of the domestic abuse, prompting Nelson to target McMaster.

McMaster’s attorney, Randy Harvey, described McMaster as an ethical deputy and leader who went 28 years without a single disciplinary incident until the one that led to his resignation. Harvey speculates the cavalcade of recent lawsuits and complaints might have played a factor in Nelson deciding to preemptively target his client.

“There’s an ulterior motive,” Harvey said. “McMaster knows where Nelson has buried all the bodies.”

Over the course of the investigation into him, McMaster said he had been lied to, lied about, and had his reputation smeared. He called Nelson dishonest and unethical.

The mountain of offenses catalogued in the hundreds of pages of complaints against Nelson paint a picture of an organization that is withering from the accumulated effects of fear, intimidation and mistrust. Which is remarkable, Schaier said, because the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office and the Redmond and Bend police departments serve the same community members, draw from the same hiring pools, have the same training and very similar policies.

“Yet two agencies hardly ever have issues, hardly ever have scandals,” Schaier said, referring specifically to internal personnel scandals. “And then an agency that is literally five miles up the road, it’s imploding.”

He said the only differentiating factor is the leadership.