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An explosive lawsuit filed in Marion County Circuit Court on behalf of a fired state trooper alleges that the Oregon State Police colluded with its troopers’ union to cover up widespread misconduct.
The lawsuit says OSP was investigating allegations that a high-ranking supervisor was in a relationship with a subordinate.
After the Oregon State Police Officers Association requested a copy of that investigation, the lawsuit alleges, the union and state officials came to an unorthodox agreement: The union would stop fighting for a copy of the investigation’s findings if OSP supervisors dropped their investigations into six other union members. “OSPOA and the administration of the Oregon State Police made an agreement that OSPOA would drop its fight for the [supervisor’s] investigation, in exchange for the Deputy Superintendent of the Oregon State Police...resolving six serious misconduct allegations against [OSP’s] employees,” the lawsuit says.
The misconduct included “sustained findings of insubordination, dishonesty, and sex on duty,” the lawsuit says. “[OSP] did not notify either the Department of Public Safety Standards and Training or the appropriate District Attorney’s Offices of these allegations.”
The agency has since destroyed records of the investigation, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit refers to the supervisor by his rank and initials: Major A.H. There are only five troopers with the rank of major in OSP, and one is Maj. Andy Heider, who currently leads OSP’s Workforce Development & Support Bureau. WW has previously obtained a copy of the OSPOA’s request for a copy of the investigation, dated Oct. 26, 2022, which refers to the major by name.
The outcome of the investigation is not clear, but Heider does not appear to have been disciplined. When WW previously made its own request for a copy of the investigation, OSP denied it, citing a state law that seals investigatory records if they don’t result in disciplinary action.
These grievances are being aired by a disgruntled former trooper who says he was fired for much less.
A spokesman for the Oregon State Police, Capt. Kyle Kennedy, said the agency typically does not comment on pending litigation, but he still cast doubt on the allegations. The legal complaint, he said, “makes false statements that are misleading and untrue, and it paints an incomplete picture of agency actions by a former employee, who was appropriately fired for dishonesty.”
That former employee is Michael Kendoll, who was fired in October 2022 after an investigation found he’d engaged “in inappropriate consensual physical contact while on duty, in uniform, in his patrol car” and then lied to investigators about it, according to a memo questioning his integrity as a witness drafted by a Clackamas County prosecutor and obtained separately by WW.
According to the lawsuit, Kendoll had been in a relationship with a dispatcher who’d then harassed him, falsely accused him of having sex on duty, and then provided his superiors with “Facebook messages between herself and [Kendoll] in which they playfully discuss kissing and making out in [his] car.” Kendoll has said he didn’t remember “a prolonged kissing session” or the messages.
Kendoll says in his lawsuit that the investigation was “so flawed that it deprived him of due process” and that he “was terminated without just cause.” He’s demanding $8 million.