On Wednesday, Kent Vander Kamp, a sergeant with the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office and one of two candidates running for Sheriff this year, filed a motion for a temporary restraining order against Deschutes County, DCSO, Sheriff Shane Nelson, Undersheriff Paul Garrison, Oregon Public Broadcasting and OPB reporter Emily Cureton Cook to stop the public release of his personnel records from his time as a reserve officer at La Mesa Police Department in Southern California from 1995 to 1997.
However, within the complaint filed Wednesday morning, an email submitted from Undersheriff Paul Garrison to Vander Kamp and his attorney, Andrew Mittendorf, on October 2 contained live links to seven documents — the entirety of the La Mesa personnel records release, according to the email. This brings to an end a months-long wait for records.
The Source Weekly reviewed the records, which detail findings from a nearly-year-long internal investigation into Vander Kamp during his brief tenure as a part-time reserve officer at the Southern California department. The memos contained in the file detailed concerning events from late December 1995 through January 1996. Among the allegations against Vander Kamp was a propensity toward excessive use of force, failing to complete daily logs correctly and engaging in field actions without cover officers present.
“It appears more and more that Vander Kamp is not willing to do the work of a reserve and is spending all of his time writing tickets, making arrests and conducting himself like an aggressive police officer. The officers on the 1st watch are very leery of him and do not trust him. I do not as well,” wrote Sgt. Cantor in the memo.
These memos precipitated the internal investigation into Vander Kamp. A January 7, 1996 memo described several incidents with Vander Kamp where he allegedly acted aggressively towards suspects.
“It appears more and more that Vander Kamp is not willing to do the work of a reserve and is spending all of his time writing tickets, making arrests and conducting himself like an aggressive police officer. The officers on the 1st watch are very leery of him and do not trust him. I do not as well,” wrote Sgt. Cantor in the memo.
Cantor then detailed two times when he witnessed Vander Kamp using unnecessary force. Once, Cantor said, he and another officer had a man in handcuffs who they’d already subdued with pepper spray and were walking him out the door when Vander Kamp “violently grabbed” the man by the shirt and “began to jerk him.”
In another incident, from a January 18 memo, Cantor wrote that Vander Kamp initiated a high-risk stop when someone was slow to yield during a traffic stop. Cantor wrote that Vander Kamp took the people out of the car at gunpoint, searched them, handcuffed and held them in the back of a police car — a type of stop that Cantor said was unnecessarily aggressive. The internal investigator wrote in a separate interoffice memo that this incident was addressed with the additional month of training Vander Kamp received from February through March of 1996.
What did rise to the top among the complaints from several field officers and supervisors was an allegation that Vander Kamp used a radar gun without certification. According to the memos, Vander Kamp was told by a field officer who saw a radar gun in Vander Kamp’s car that he wasn’t allowed to use the radar without proper certification. Vander Kamp acknowledged that he knew the rule, the memo read, but the next day he made a stop and issued a citation while using the radar gun.
When questioned later about whether he had proper certification for the radar, records report that Vander Kamp told his superiors that he was trained on it during his time as a reserve officer at the Los Angeles Police Department. For months, an internal investigator looked into this claim. They could not find any records that Vander Kamp attended a training with the LAPD, the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training or a radar gun maker that frequently conducts trainings.
Yet, in an interview later that year, Vander Kamp maintained that he had attended a class.
“…Vander Kamp still maintained that he had received training in the use of radar but could not recall when he received the training, where the course was held, what agency sponsored the training, who the instructor was or other officers who attended the course,” the memo read.
“They’ve basically turned it into a political spectacle.” —Kent Vander Kamp
This adamant claim without proof was the sticking point for investigators, according to a memo sent to the then-Chief of Police at La Mesa, Walter Mitchell. “In addition to this violation, Res. Off. Vander Kamp’s assertion that he received this training, in the face of information to the contrary, demonstrates an attempt to mislead the Department and violates standards of conduct set forth in Department Rule 5.08 regarding performance,” the memo read, adding that the formal recommendation was to dismiss Vander Kamp from his position as a reserve police officer.
The memo detailing the findings from the internal investigation and recommending dismissal is dated January 6, 1997. According to the City of La Mesa, Vander Kamp was at La Mesa PD until January 28, 1997.
Despite the mere weeks between the formal recommendation for dismissal and his last date of employment, Vander Kamp maintained in an interview with the Source Weekly on Wednesday evening that there is not enough evidence in the La Mesa documents to show that he was in fact terminated.
“I left to move with my new wife to a new city as a 22-year-old,” Vander Kamp said when asked why he left La Mesa PD. “That’s what happened. I finished my college class and moved on and that’s where this story ends.”
When asked why he sought to block the release of the records when he previously said he would release them himself, Vander Kamp said it was because he saw the move by DCSO to make the records public as purely political. Vander Kamp said he only received the documents last week and was planning to make them public after he confirmed with La Mesa how exactly his time there ended. He said he showed the documents in full to two journalists in the area but that it was strictly off the record. The Source Weekly did not see the records before this accidental court disclosure on Wednesday.
“Those documents were released [to DCSO] with a very strict protective order, which my office has completely ignored.” Vander Kamp said. The release of the documents to DCSO came after a lawsuit the office filed against La Mesa alleging that the city violated California’s Public Records Act request in denying earlier requests for the personnel file.
In response, DCSO’s attorney in the case, Cory Briggs, wrote in an email to the Source Weekly, “There is no protective order.”
“They’ve basically turned it into a political spectacle,” Vander Kamp said, adding that the timing of this in relation to when ballots go out to voters was highly suspect. “They were basically trying to spit in negative news stories for my opponent,” he said.
Retiring Sheriff Shane Nelson, who initiated the investigation against Vander Kamp in March, is on the record as supporting William Bailey as his successor. Claims against Nelson, and lawsuits filed during his time in the top position, have alleged that Nelson retaliates against those who oppose him. A lawsuit against Deschutes County and Nelson settled last month for $265,000 detailed retaliation against a long-time officer, Deron McMaster, for reporting Nelson’s knowledge about abuse by one of his officers to his superior and an outside agency, according to reporting by The Bulletin.
For his part, Nelson told the Source Weekly that his motives were not political.
“This is not election interference. Our office is fulfilling its legal obligations and duty to investigate complaints. In the Spring of 2024, our office received a citizen complaint about Mr. VanderKamp’s [sic] prior employment at La Mesa Police Department. Because, as it has been reported in local media stories Mr. Vanderkamp [sic] has denied any prior law enforcement experience, we have an obligation to determine if he was untruthful,” Nelson wrote in an email, citing state law that requires a law enforcement agency to investigate such allegations.
On October 4, in a post on his campaign website, Vander Kamp acknowledged he received his La Mesa personnel file and offered “a sincere apology” for any “concern or confusion” that waiting for records caused. He wrote that he was “apparently dismissed” from his volunteer position for using radar speed equipment without proper certification, for failing to report a visit to a gas station and for assisting a police officer on his activity logbook. He did not mention the report’s findings concerning his credibility.
The following Friday, October 11, after the publication of this article and other media stories online depicting the contents of the personnel file, Vander Kamp made good on his promise and posted the memo in full on his campaign website. (As of Thursday, October 17 that page was down.)
This story was updated to reflect the changes and to include a link to the records Source Weekly obtained.
This article appears in Source Weekly October 10, 2024.
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While this is concerning, Vander Kamp was just 22 at that time. One could hope that he has matured into a more responsible police officer in the intervening 27 years. Or, there would be evidence of ongoing aggressive behavior and rule flaunting from his time here in Deschutes County. Is there such evidenced?