EASTERN OREGON
Saturday, April 16, 2022
East Oregonian
A9
Conduct unbecoming of an offi cer
Newly released
documents
disclose discipline
against ex-Grant
County deputy
Mobley
By BENNETT HALL
Blue Mountain Eagle
JOHN DAY — Abigail
Mobley, the former Grant
County sheriff ’s deputy at the
heart of the “sex talk” scan-
dal, committed no fewer than
eight violations of the depart-
ment’s code of conduct rang-
ing from abuse of her position
to conduct unbecoming of an
offi cer and neglect of duty,
according to public records
recently unsealed by a judge
after the ex-deputy sued to
keep them secret.
For those transgressions,
Mobley was given a 30-day
unpaid suspension start-
ing on Nov. 26, 2020, the
records reveal. On Dec. 26,
the day after the suspension
ended, Mobley resigned from
the Grant County Sheriff ’s
Offi ce.
The disciplinary action
was the culmination of a
21-month investigation into
Mobley’s inappropriate rela-
tionship with an inmate at
the Grant County Jail, where
she worked as a corrections
deputy. During the probe,
Mobley was on paid adminis-
trative leave from her job at a
cost to Grant County taxpay-
ers of well over $100,000 in
salary and benefi ts.
The documents contain-
ing this information were
among a trove of public
records requested by the Blue
Mountain Eagle in October
2020 as part of a follow-up
to a story on the “sex talk”
scandal published the month
before. After some delay,
county offi cials were prepar-
ing to release the informa-
tion, but on March 9, 2021,
Mobley filed a motion in
Grant County Circuit Court
for an injunction to block the
release of the records.
The case concluded on
Feb. 3, 2022, when Judge
Thomas B. Powers issued
a judgment of dismissal in
which he ruled that most,
but not all, of the requested
records should be released.
The documents that were
released contain additional
revelations about allegations
of misconduct by Mobley and
other Grant County Sheriff ’s
Office employees during
the tenure of Sheriff Glenn
Palmer. Palmer left offi ce at
the end of 2020 after losing
the election to current Sheriff
Todd McKinley.
At the same ti me,
however, some questions still
remain unanswered.
Scope of the
investigation
In early 2019, after a
number of allegations had
been raised about possible
misconduct by members
of his staff , Palmer, follow-
ing standard procedure for
such situations, turned to
an outside law enforcement
agency to investigate the
claims.
In March 2019, investi-
gators from the Deschutes
County Sheriff ’s Offi ce met
Palmer
with Grant County District
Attorney Jim Carpenter,
acting in the role of county
counsel, in Carpenter’s
Canyon City offi ce.
In their report, which
was among the documents
ordered released by the judge,
the investigators summarize
the allegations they were
asked to look into.
Most of the complaints
revolved around Mobley
and her husband, Under-
sheriff Zach Mobley, who
remains second in command
of the Grant County Sher-
iff ’s Offi ce. The complaints
included allegations that:
• Abigail Mobley had been
having a relationship with
Grant County Jail inmate
Darren Mortimore, who was
serving four consecutive
six-month sentences after
pleading guilty to charges of
strangulation, fourth-degree
assault and menacing.
• Abigail Mobley had sexu-
ally harassed Deputy Bran-
don Hutchison by contacting
him via Facetime and
making inappropriate sexual
comments.
• Jail Sgt. Josh Wolf noti-
fi ed Zach Mobley that Abigail
Mobley was overheard
having a recorded phone
conversation with Morti-
more. Zach Mobley retaliated
against Wolf, ordering him
to take two days of vacation
time. Furthermore, it was
alleged Mortimore had been
transferred from the Grant
County Jail to a facility in
California, where he was
wanted for a parole viola-
tion, before he had served his
full sentence to get him away
from Abigail Mobley.
• After deputy Hutchison
informed Zach Mobley about
Abigail Mobley sexually
harassing him, he responded
by asking, “Did you get a
bang out of it?” and took no
action on the sexual harass-
ment complaint.
• Zach Mobley transferred
his wife out of her corrections
deputy assignment in the jail
and created a new position
for her elsewhere in the sher-
iff ’s offi ce.
On April 22, 2019, less
than a month after launch-
ing its investigation, the
Deschutes County Sher-
iff ’s Offi ce notifi ed Palmer it
was suspending the inquiry
because it had become a
criminal matter. Investiga-
tors believed it was “prob-
able” that Abigail Mobley
had committed the crime of
custodial sexual misconduct
with Mortimore.
Eight days later, Carpen-
ter referred possible crimi-
nal charges against Abigail
Mobley to the Oregon
Department of Justice for
investigation.
Under the Oregon Revised
Statutes, the crime of custo-
dial sexual misconduct
defi nes off enses against pris-
oners by those in author-
ity over them. First-degree
custodial sexual miscon-
Blue Mountain Eagle, File
The disciplinary action of Abigail Mobley was the culmination of a 21-month investigation
into her inappropriate relationship with an inmate at the Grant County Jail, where she worked
as a corrections deputy. During the probe, Mobley was on paid administrative leave from her
job at a cost to Grant County taxpayers of well more than $100,000 in salary and benefi ts.
duct is a Class C felony.
Second-degree custodial
misconduct, which seems
the more likely charge in the
circumstances, is a Class A
misdemeanor punishable by
up to a year in jail.
After an 11-month inves-
tigation, however, DOJ
declined to prosecute. The
state agency sent a letter
to Carpenter stating that
Abigail Mobley had engaged
in multiple sexual conversa-
tions with Mortimore while
he was in custody at the
Grant County Jail, but there
was “not a reasonable likeli-
hood” the state could prove
she had committed the crime
of custodial sexual miscon-
duct.
At that point, Palmer
decided to resume an inves-
tigation into possible policy
violations within his depart-
ment. But Deschutes County
no longer had personnel
available for the job, so the
probe was handed over to
the Umatilla County Sher-
iff ’s Offi ce.
For reasons that are not
explained in the documents
released by Judge Powers,
Umatilla County did not look
into any claims of miscon-
duct by Zach Mobley but
focused exclusively on the
actions of Abigail Mobley.
On Oct. 7, 2020, the
Umatilla County Sheriff’s
Offi ce concluded its investiga-
tion with a nine-page report.
The agency determined
that Abigail Mobley violated
the Grant County Sheriff ’s
Office policy in regard to
the Prison Rape Elimination
Act, or PREA, by sexually
harassing Mortimore while
he was an inmate in the Grant
County Jail.
Sgt. Abel Zamudio, who
led the investigation, wrote
in his report that “Deputy
Mobley made repeated
verbal comments of a sexual
nature to Inmate Mortimore”
in recorded phone calls that
Mortimore made to her from
the jail.
She also acknowledged
that the two had physical
contact on one occasion, in
the doorway to the dry stor-
age area of the jail kitchen,
according to the report.
“I asked what kind of
physical contact was that,”
Zamudio wrote in the report.
“Deputy Mobley said, ‘He
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grabbed the back of my head
and kissed me.’”
When asked if she made
sexual comments to Morti-
more during the phone calls,
“Deputy Mobley stated that
once she started talking to
Mortimore on the phone she
was drinking all the time and
does not remember anything
about the conversations, but
she heard that she did talk
sexually,” the report states.
Unanswered questions
For the most part, the
newly released public records
appear to bring the “sex talk”
scandal to a close. Abigail
Mobley’s improper relation-
ship with a jail inmate under
her authority has been thor-
oughly investigated, she was
disciplined by former Sheriff
Palmer for her policy viola-
tions and she is no longer
with the department.
But a number of unre-
solved allegations about
possible misconduct by
employees of the Grant
County Sheriff’s Office
during Palmer’s tenure
continue to hang over the
department.
For instance, it has never
been publicly disclosed
whether the claims that Zach
Mobley retaliated against
a jail employee for report-
ing his wife’s phone calls
with Mortimore and failed
to act on Hutchison’s claim
of sexual harassment were
investigated and, if so, if he
was ever disciplined.
Nor has there ever been a
public explanation for Morti-
more’s transfer out of the
Grant County Jail before his
sentence was complete or the
creation of a new position in
the sheriff ’s offi ce for Abigail
Mobley.
In addition, when Palmer
asked the Deschutes County
Sheriff’s Office in March
2019 to investigate allega-
tions of possible misconduct
by the Mobleys, he also asked
them to look into a situation
involving Tyler Smith, who
was then a patrol deputy with
the sheriff ’s offi ce. Smith’s
girlfriend, Haley Olson, had
been arrested on marijua-
na-related charges in Idaho
(which were later dismissed).
The Idaho State Police had
extracted data from Olson’s
phone and had reportedly
found “interesting informa-
tion” about Smith and Olson.
The report does not specify
what sort of information that
may have been.
The Deschutes County
Sheriff ’s Offi ce did not inves-
tigate Tyler Smith because
the Grant County Sheriff ’s
Offi ce had not yet evaluated
the data dump from Olson’s
phone to determine if Smith
had committed any serious
policy violations.
On Aug. 9, 2019, however,
Smith was placed on admin-
istrative leave “for issues
related to the performance
of his duties as a sheriff’s
deputy.”
A month later he was
arrested on charges of
attempted rape and other
alleged crimes involving
his estranged wife; he has
pleaded not guilty to the
charges against him and is
awaiting trial.
On Dec. 17, 2019, Smith
was fi red from the sheriff ’s
offi ce for reasons that county
officials have refused to
divulge.
Since then, a flurry of
lawsuits have been fi led that
make a multitude of claims
and counterclaims about
possible wrongdoing within
the Grant County Sheriff ’s
Offi ce.
In August 2020, Haley
Olson fi led a federal lawsuit
against Grant County, Palmer
and Carpenter for civil rights
violations related to the data
dump from her phone follow-
ing her Idaho arrest. The suit
claims that Carpenter, at
Palmer’s request, accessed
her phone records without a
warrant and without suspi-
cion of criminal activity
and that the two then shared
those phone records, which
included nude and sexually
explicit images of Olson,
with others. Some of the
nude photos, the suit claims,
were taken when Olson was
a minor.
Palmer countersued in
Grant County Court on
Oct. 8, 2020, claiming that
Olson had made false and
defamatory statements that
damaged his reputation.
Palmer’s suit, which seeks
$100,000 in damages, claims
that Olson’s allegations were
“made with actual malice
and timed to have maximum
eff ect on the November 2020
election in which (Palmer) is
a candidate.”
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