In a legal complaint filed Wednesday, Deschutes County sheriff candidate Kent Vander Kamp asked a judge to stop OPB from getting records about his law enforcement career.
But before a judge could hear the case, Vander Kamp’s own attorneys with the firm Employment Law Professionals Northwest inadvertently released the records through links available in public court filings.
“It appears to be accidental,” said Vander Kamp, who is currently a sergeant with the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office.
The records detail why police officials in La Mesa, California, wanted to dismiss him as a volunteer reserve officer nearly 30 years ago.
Kent Vander Kamp poses for a portrait in Bend, Ore., on Sep. 26, 2024.
Emily Cureton Cook / OPB
“Vander Kamp’s actions represent serious incidents of misconduct which bear directly on his credibility,” a La Mesa police captain wrote in a Jan. 6, 1997, internal affairs memo as he recommended dismissing Vander Kamp.
Vander Kamp’s employment with the city ended three weeks later, according to La Mesa Human Resources Director Gretchen Spaniol.
His prior work in law enforcement has become a flashpoint in the contentious political race between him and his Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office colleague Capt. William Bailey. Both men are seeking to replace outgoing Sheriff Shane Nelson.
The sheriff led the charge to unearth details about Vander Kamp’s past after Nelson said he received a complaint this year alleging the sergeant did not list his earlier stint in California when he applied to work in Oregon in 2004.
La Mesa’s yearlong investigation into a younger Vander Kamp shows city police probed five incidents, spanning from late 1995 to early 1996, when fellow officers made various allegations against Vander Kamp.
The police department’s investigators sustained one of those claims, and found Vander Kamp violated standards of conduct around honesty.
What began as admonishment for using a radar gun without proper training became an investigation into Vander Kamp’s truthfulness. Investigators wrote that when confronted, Vander Kamp claimed he was certified to use radar and said he would write to the Los Angeles Police Department to obtain proof.
LAPD later told La Mesa it had no record of Vander Kamp’s training in radar, and La Mesa police officials found no certification under his name with the state of California.
“Res. Off. Vander Kamp’s assertion that he has received this training, in the face of the information to the contrary, demonstrates an attempt to mislead the Department and violates standards of conduct,” the investigator found in 1997.
Other allegations probed by La Mesa included Vander Kamp reportedly failing to log his activities correctly; and another incident where a sergeant felt he used too much force to detain suspects after a vehicle pursuit, and “may have falsely arrested the driver,” according to the sergeant’s report. The sergeant also raised concerns about whether Vander Kamp’s report on the incident was inaccurate. La Mesa handled these complaints by giving Vander Kamp more training. Vander Kamp was exonerated for other allegations stemming from an incident in which he was accused of not responding to a dispatcher call for a prisoner transport, and then giving possibly false information about when his shift ended.
“Their records were incomplete,” Vander Kamp told OPB on Wednesday. “The whole thing is a farce.”
He said he’s been targeted by Nelson, who has a track record of alleged bullying and retaliation against political rivals. The sheriff launched an investigation into Vander Kamp’s past after endorsing Bailey.
A fellow officer who ran against Nelson directly in 2016 was later the subject of internal investigations and fired. Eric Kozowski sued the sheriff’s office, and a jury awarded him more than $1 million in damages in 2021.
Vander Kamp accused the sheriff’s office top brass, including Nelson, Bailey and Undersheriff Paul Garrison, of repeating history.
“That’s all this is,” he said. “It is not about transparency. This is about confusing voters and making something more than it is.”
Vander Kamp told OPB in a previous interview he did not remember whether he left La Mesa voluntarily or the city police told him not to come back for any more shifts. On Wednesday, he was more certain.
“I voluntarily left,” he said.
While the city’s internal investigation indicates La Mesa police officials recommended firing him, Vander Kamp contends he was never given notice.
“The documents show that they never actually terminated me,” he said.
Deschutes County informed Vander Kamp this week that it planned to turn the documents over to OPB through a public records request. Vander Kamp said he “really had no concerns about the records being released,” but that he decided to fight their disclosure in court to stop “the BS games and the shenanigans” that he accuses the current sheriff administration of perpetrating.
“That’s all that was about, was holding them accountable,” Vander Kamp said of the legal complaint against the county and OPB.
Vander Kamp issued a public apology alluding to some of the 28-year-old incidents last week before the records were released. In it, he wrote he “was apparently dismissed from the volunteer position for using speed radar equipment without proper certification.” His statement does not mention the investigators’ conclusion that he attempted to mislead the department about his training.
When asked what he had to say to voters who might be questioning his trustworthiness now, Vander Kamp said: “Look at the last 22 years of my career and what’s been done and how it’s been done. Look at the people I work with and work for.”
After OPB reported on the contents of Vander Kamp’s accidentally-released records, his attorneys sought to dismiss Vander Kamp’s legal complaint against Deschutes County, OPB and this reporter.
At a court hearing Friday, Deschutes Circuit Court Pro Tem Judge Dan Bunch ordered Vander Kamp to post the records on his campaign website, and the county released its copies of the documents to OPB Monday morning.
One page may be missing from the packet La Mesa provided to Deschutes County. It’s unclear if page 84 out of 110 pages ever existed, or if its absence is simply a page numbering error.
