On October 23, 2012, deputies in Deschutes County, Oregon, arrested 31-year-old Riley Billings and charged him with first-degree burglary and first-degree criminal mischief.
Part of the investigation included a search-warrant application filed by Deputy Kent Vander Kamp to look for evidence in Billings’s vehicle and home.
Billings pled guilty to second-degree burglary and first-degree criminal mischief on June 9, 2014. He was sentenced to 10 days in jail and given three years on probation.
Vander Kamp ran for sheriff of Deschutes County in 2024, taking office in early 2025. During the campaign, which began in 2023, his political opponents raised questions about whether he had misstated his past employment and education.
On December 6, 2023, Oregon’s Department of Public Safety Standards and Training (DPSST) received a complaint about Vander Kamp and opened a formal investigation in 2024.
The complaint said that Vander Kamp had been dishonest in describing his work history in forms he submitted to Deschutes County between 2008 and 2017. Specifically, according to a later DPSST report on the investigation, Vander Kamp had omitted that he had been a reserve officer for the Los Angeles Police Department and had been terminated for cause from his position as a reserve police officer in La Mesa, a suburb of Los Angeles. One of the issues in La Mesa related to Vander Kamp lying to La Mesa officials about having the proper certification to operate a radar gun.
Separately, Deschutes County District Attorney Steve Gunnels had received a complaint in late 2024 that information about Vander Kamp’s educational background found in the county’s official voter’s pamphlet conflicted with Vander Kamp’s testimony at earlier criminal trials. Gunnells opened an investigation, which included reviewing resumes Vander Kamp provided to various law-enforcement agencies and confirming his academic credentials with the listed institutions.
On April 7, 2025, Gunnels released a report on his findings and said that he had placed Vander Kamp on a so-called “Brady list” and would not call him as a witness in a criminal case. These lists, maintained by prosecutors, typically include officials whose credibility has come under review. Its name comes from the United States Supreme Court ruling in Brady v. Maryland, which requires the state to disclose exculpatory evidence to the defense.
The report said that Vander Kamp had misrepresented his educational background in his resumes provided to the Oregon State Police (OSP), and that he had testified falsely at criminal trials or hearings about his educational background.
According to Gunnels’s investigation, Vander Kamp received an undergraduate degree from the University of Phoenix and a master’s degree in business administration from Trident University International.
In the search-warrant application in Billings’s case, Vander Kamp had said he received an undergraduate degree from the University of Southern California.
Beginning in April 2025 and into the end of June 2025, Gunnels moved to vacate the convictions and dismiss charges against Billings and four other men whose cases were tainted by Vander Kamp’s false statements.
Billings’s convictions were vacated and his charges dismissed on May 23, 2025.
Vander Kamp resigned from office on June 23, 2025, just as his opponents launched a recall effort. The Deschutes County Board of Commissioners appointed Ty Rupert as interim sheriff through 2026.
On July 24, 2025, the board of Public Safety and Standings Training barred Vander Kamp from holding a law-enforcement certification in the state of Oregon for life.
– Ken Otterbourg
Posting Date: 11-08-2025
