Deschutes County Sheriff Kent van der Kamp confirmed Tuesday he plans to step down Aug. 31, just eight months into his first term in office. The planned move comes as a state board is poised to take his badge over allegations of misconduct and dishonesty.
The sheriff first signaled he could step down in April, after an investigation by the Deschutes County District Attorney came to light. Prosecutors determined that van der Kamp had misrepresented his education under oath in past criminal cases. Van der Kamp was elected sheriff in 2024 during a separate controversy over his honesty about a stint with another law enforcement agency in California.
Now, he could be banned from being a police officer in Oregon by the Department of Public Safety Standards and Training. His case is expected to go before DPSST’s full 26-member board on July 27. Last month, a committee advising that board unanimously recommended revoking van der Kamp’s police certifications for life.
State law requires a sheriff to have certifications, and it would be unusual for the DPSST board to discuss, let alone go against its own committee’s recommendation, according to agency spokesperson Sam Tenney.
“Policy committee recommendations are placed on the Board’s consent agenda, and there is usually little to no discussion of individual cases at the Board level,” Tenney said in an email. “That’s not to say it doesn’t ever happen, but it’s rare.”
In a statement written by his attorney, van der Kamp has denied many of the allegations in the agency’s investigation.
“We’re in an appeals process,” the sheriff told OPB.
It is very rare for a sheriff to face this kind of discipline in Oregon. DPSST has records of just two sitting Oregon sheriffs whose certifications were revoked — former Multnomah County Sheriff Bernard Guisto in 2008 and former Marion County Sheriff Russell Isham in 2009. Both men resigned within days of the agency’s decision, according to Tenney. More recently, in 2021, former Union County Sheriff Boyd Rasmussen surrendered his certifications while under DPSST investigation.
Van der Kamp said he does not plan to continue his law enforcement career after August, regardless of the outcome of his appeal. He said he plans to appeal “to set the record straight” and is staying in the office through the summer “because I have several things in the works.”
“We finished budgets, but we have more budget. We have several hiring processes that are in place. We have a new business manager that we’re onboarding as well as several other internal projects that I’m not willing to discuss,” van der Kamp said.
He declined to provide more details. He also declined to discuss his plans after stepping down, except to say he intends to continue living in the U.S. while “working on several opportunities outside the US.”
In a written response to DPSST last month, van der Kamp attorney Andrew Mittendorf called the inquiries into his client’s past “severely flawed and skewed by political purpose to create hardship, disgrace, embarrassment, and extract revenge against van der Kamp.”
Mittendorf’s response states van der Kamp did not intentionally conceal his experience as a reserve officer at a police department in La Mesa, California, in the 1990s.
Records obtained by OPB last year show La Mesa officials wanted to fire van der Kamp for what they called “serious incidents of misconduct.”
The attorney’s statement does not address why, while testifying as an expert witness in 2013, van der Kamp gave oral testimony claiming to have earned degrees from universities that have no records of him attending, which the Deschutes County District Attorney’s Office said it had found upon review of van der Kamp’s past.
In other instances where van der Kamp submitted written documents with false educational claims, Mittendorf said the sheriff hired a company to prepare his resume and the errors were that company’s fault.
Van der Kamp is filing for retirement benefits through the Oregon Public Employees Retirement System, he said.
If a law enforcement officer’s certifications are revoked, it doesn’t affect their state pension eligibility, according to PERS spokesperson Jonathan Yost.
Van der Kamp has been a full-time employee with DCSO for 17 years. Details of his PERS membership are not public records, and numerous factors can affect the formula used for a member’s payouts, Yost said. Based on the base formula and OPB’s review of van der Kamp’s pay stubs since 2023, he will likely qualify for more than $50,000 a year in retirement benefits.
If DPSST votes to strip van der Kamp of his certifications in July, he will have 20 days to contest the decision. If that happens, the case would eventually go before an administrative law judge, according to Tenney.
“Officers’ certifications remain active during the contested case process, which can take several months,” he said.
Deschutes County commissioners plan to publicly discuss appointing an interim sheriff, “hopefully before June 30,” according to County Administrator Nick LeLack in internal emails OPB obtained through a public records request.
The next opportunity for voters to permanently select a replacement would be the 2026 election cycle.
Jennifer Baires contributed to this reporting.
This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.
