---

---

A former Del Norte County Sheriff's deputy hired during Erik Apperson's tenure is being investigated by an outside source after a San Francisco Chronicle article uncovered his history of alleged misconduct, current sheriff Garrett Scott told the Wild Rivers Outpost on Tuesday.

Hossep “Joe” Ourjanian’s history is outlined in a San Francisco Chronicle article Tuesday focusing on a decades-long practice among law enforcement agencies to “whitewash” alleged misconduct from an officer’s employment record.

According to Katey Rusch and Casey Smith, reporters with UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program, despite accusing Ourjanian of pretending to attend military training to skip work, the Los Angeles County Office of Public Safety agreed to remove records of his misconduct from his record if he left without a fight.

In the 25 years since then, Ourjanian worked for various police agencies, leaving one amid allegations of child abuse, perjury and witness tampering. In 2019, the Sierra County Sheriff’s Office accused him of embezzling money, Rusch and Smith write, but promised to conceal those allegations from any future employers.
When Ourjanian came to the Del Norte County Sheriff’s Office in 2020, then-sheriff Erik Apperson hired him. The two reporters say Apperson was unaware of Ourjanian’s history until they contacted them for their article.

Apperson resigned from the Del Norte County Sheriff’s Office in 2021.

On Tuesday, Scott said Ourjanian resigned from the Del Norte County Sheriff’s Office about a year ago. Though it’s been a year, Scott said his investigation on Ourjanian is still ongoing and will be provided to the California Peace Officer Standards and Training commission as well as Del Norte County District Attorney Katherine Micks.

“My investigation is whether he lied during his background investigation,” Scott told the Outpost, adding that he spoke with Rusch “quite a bit” about Ourjanian’s background. “That would include failing to [include] the past allegations of misconduct from all these other agencies. That’ll go to the State of California POST and the local DA for potential criminal charges.”

Scott said Rusch and Smith’s article was important because it contained information about Ourjanian that wasn’t disclosed in his background check.

“As I discovered these things, it was just pretty clear to me that I needed to do an extremely thorough investigation for possible license revocation through POST and, potentially, criminal charges,” Scott said. “I was not the sheriff at the time [Ourjanian was hired] so I’m unaware of what the sheriff at the time was aware of and that would be something that individual would have to answer to, but I fully intend to provide a thorough investigation to the DA and the state.”

In November 2022, the Crescent City Police Department requested the district attorney file vandalism and vehicle tampering charges against Ourjanian, who was an acting lieutenant in the sheriff’s office at the time.

On Oct. 28, Ourjanian had allegedly crammed a letter into the truck of another deputy, allegedly damaging the door panel. The deputy, who had transferred to another agency about a week later, reported the damage to law enforcement as a crime, Scott told the Outpost on Nov. 28, 2022.

According to Rusch and Smith, who requested clean records agreements and other records from 501 agencies statewide for their article, the Del Norte County Sheriff’s Office sent them all of their records. Meanwhile, the Crescent City Police Department claimed they had no records to send Rusch and Smith, according to their article.

At least 163 California police agencies have executed separation agreements that hide alleged misconduct against at least 297 officers and deputies, they write.

“The actual numbers are likely much higher, because one-third of police agencies asked to release the agreements refused, citing privacy laws,” Rusch and Smith write.

Scott told the Outpost that Ourjanian is the only deputy that has worked for his agency that he’s aware of who seems to have benefitted from this system. He said most of his current staff have only worked in law enforcement for about two years.

“All of my employees now are new — everybody else is gone,” he said. “I think I have one employee that has maybe 10 years on, a sergeant. And then a few others with some years, [but] they have never worked for anywhere else.”

Following a Del Norte County Board of Supervisors meeting last week, Scott told the Outpost that he’s down roughly seven patrol deputies, six correctional deputies, three corrections technicians and four court bailiffs. There are also two vacant captain positions within the sheriff’s office, Scott said.

---

SHARE →