A Deschutes sheriff candidate sent the SWAT Team over a $700 theft. Now he’s under investigation for misconduct

Kelli Hayes wasn’t home when heavily-armed officers of the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office SWAT team swarmed her Bend property on Feb. 25.

They were there, armed to the teeth, to arrest her friend, Paul Akehurst, who’d been staying with Hayes on and off while police were looking for him on suspicion of identity theft and driving with a suspended license.

Security cameras around Hayes’ property recorded as more than a dozen officers in body armor descended upon the dead-end street, backed up by a five-vehicle convoy, including a military-grade tactical armored vehicle.

The arrest took minutes — Akehurst surrendered immediately — and a multi-hour property search ensued.

Watching the cameras’ livestream from her phone, Hayes recognized the lieutenant in charge.

She recalled first meeting Lt. James “Mac” McLaughlin at church events.

“What I remember about him was that he was a Christian and he was a decent guy,” Hayes said.

That was part of why she was “floored” by what she heard him and another officer say about her during the SWAT response, and how invasive their search was, she said. So much so that she called the sheriff’s office the next day to speak with McLaughlin, hoping she could trust him “to do the right thing.”

But McLaughlin, a nearly 20-year veteran of the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office, allegedly tried to cover up her complaint and work with another officer to bury the video, internal sheriff’s office records OPB obtained through a public records request this month show.

He was the leader of the department’s SWAT team, a special unit for high-risk situations. Now, McLaughlin has been on paid leave since June 5, while he’s the subject of an internal investigation into allegations of misconduct and dishonesty.

Records of the ongoing investigation would normally be sealed from public view, but the county released them because the accusations they contain hang over McLaughlin’s campaign to become sheriff of Central Oregon’s largest law enforcement agency.

McLaughlin is running against his current boss, Deschutes Interim Sheriff Ty Rupert, in the November election. Both have promised to change the culture at an agency where scandals and claims of retaliation at the top have become commonplace in recent years, while residents have increasingly opted out of voting in the drama-filled elections.

Rupert made the call to investigate McLaughlin knowing his “decision would likely be criticized and could have political consequences,” the sheriff said in an email to OPB.

McLaughlin said that he “categorically” denies the allegations outlined in the internal investigation notice.

“They are inaccurate and do not reflect my actions or conduct,” he wrote in an email to OPB.

The arrest and the video

For over half a year, deputies in the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office pursued Akehurst for using stolen credentials from a construction company to charge around $700.

An OPB review of public records and associated court documents shows that Akehurst and his friends and family were pursued and questioned multiple times during a six-month period, before the SWAT team descended on Hayes’ house.

The wanted man, according to the sheriff’s office review of the incident, walked outside that day and surrendered. But after he was handcuffed, a deputy held a gun to his back and allegedly said, “Do you feel tough now?”

The show of force by SWAT was something the department’s professional standards unit later questioned.

“Justification and reasoning” for a full SWAT team action to take in Akehurst is going to fall on McLaughlin, the “decision maker” that day, Lt. Blair Barkhurst, an investigator who reviewed the incident, wrote in a memo to the sheriff on May 27.

Last month, Deschutes County released the footage from Hayes’ front porch. It shows an armored rig roll through the driveway as McLaughlin talks with an unidentified deputy after the arrest. He’s laughing as the deputy describes wanting to trump up a burglary charge against Akehurst in order to accuse Hayes of falsely reporting the crime.

“That’s not bad dude, that’s creative. Your vindictivism [sic] knows no bounds,” McLaughlin is heard saying. “I love it.”

Hayes said she was shocked when she watched the video back and heard someone she knew through church talking that way on her porch.

The complaint and the alleged cover up

Hayes said she called McLaughlin the next day, and later shared the video with him directly. She said the lieutenant apologized, and he had the deputy from the porch call and apologize to her, too.

But, according to the sheriff’s office investigator, McLaughlin did not report Hayes’ initial complaint to other command staff, or mention his part in it when he was later questioned about the deputy’s conduct and asked to discipline him.

In a meeting about Hayes’ initial complaint, McLaughlin told a fellow supervisor it was about a specific deputy Hayes overheard on her surveillance camera, and that McLaughlin was handling it.

“During this conversation, Lieutenant McLaughlin did not disclose the complaint was also on him,” the supervisor, whose name was withheld by the county, wrote in a memo. Repeated requests for proof that McLaughlin did discipline the deputy were never produced, according to the report.

McLaughlin is also being investigated for allegedly working with another officer to “coerce” Akehurst into not releasing the video publicly, the formal internal investigation notice states. In exchange, the officer allegedly offered to help Akehurst get custody of his children back and have his criminal charges lessened or potentially dropped.

Appeals and an ongoing investigation

Akehurst is currently serving time at Oregon State Correctional Institution for aggravated identity theft, driving with a suspended or revoked license, fleeing or attempting to elude an officer and reckless driving. He admitted to identity theft, but is appealing a guilty verdict in a separate jury trial for the other charges, according to court records.

Hayes said that she and Akehurst’s mother, Lorena Akehurst, decided to file a formal complaint against the sheriff’s office in April after learning from Paul Akehurst about how much time he’d spent in “the hole,” at the county jail, isolated from others.

Hayes said she worried that he wasn’t being treated fairly.

“Paul is not completely innocent in all of this,” Hayes said, “but I do believe that he was pursued in a way that made everything worse. And it damaged the lives of his two kids and himself.”

McLaughlin and two officers, whose names have not been publicly released, remain under investigation by outside investigator Jim Band. Rupert said he decided to hire an outside investigator to “ensure full transparency and accountability.”

“I was fully aware when these complaints were received that opening an investigation involving a lieutenant who is also a candidate for Sheriff would inevitably invite questions about political motivation, particularly given this agency’s history,” Rupert told OPB. “That did not change my obligation.”

The ongoing investigation is part of a process, Rupert said, and “no conclusions should be drawn until the review is complete.”

McLaughlin is expected to sit down for an interview with the investigator on July 28, records show.

This sheriff’s office has a history of leadership controversies. The last elected sheriff, Kent van der Kamp, resigned just seven months into his term amid accusations of serial lying about his education and work experience, which led Oregon police watchdogs to strip him of his badge in 2025. The last person to lose an election for sheriff, William Bailey, was fired by the county in March over public criticism of the department, a move Bailey’s supporters have decried as political retaliation under Rupert’s watch.