In 2012, Joah Ash was on track for a stellar career at the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office. He had been with the agency for eight years and said his supervisors encouraged him to take on more responsibilities. He felt like he was being groomed for promotion.
Then his ex-wife sued the county, the sheriff’s office and a number of individual leaders there. At its core, the lawsuit was a child custody dispute and was ultimately thrown out, but according to Ash, it soured department leadership on him.
“I really felt the tides were changed,” Ash told OPB. “I was no longer someone looked at as being a future part of the command staff.”
As leaders started to scrutinize his every action, Ash became paranoid and depressed.
“They always used to say policy is a guideline,” Ash said. “But if you’re not well liked, they’re looking at every little line-by-line policy for violations.”
In May 2015, a year after the lawsuit was dismissed, the sheriff’s office disciplined Ash for alerting an emergency room doctor he was on his way to the hospital with an inmate. Ash said he gave the doctor a routine heads up, but his supervisors treated the incident as if it were a major security violation.
In July of that year, Capt. Shane Nelson, who had been one of the named defendants in the lawsuit, was appointed Deschutes County sheriff. Everything got worse for Ash after that.
Ash took a photo of himself inside a control room at work to privately share with his friends and family. He said he was “...
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