Ordering a dog to attack an inmate is just one example of Deputy Marti Kyles abusing inmates with the Columbia County Sheriff's Office (CCSO) in St. Helens, Oregon. Kyles, also known as Marti Anne Kyles, grew up in the St. Helens area and has been a CCSO corrections deputy for many years. During that time she has earned a reputation for excessively punishing inmates with responses to their behavior far in excess of that behavior. In some cases that is in the form of write ups or sentences for those write ups that are excessive, but sometimes her response leads to unnecessary physical attacks on inmates that are completely unnecessary. Her motives usually have more to do with her personal feelings than what the inmate did especially if the inmate did something to humiliate her or question her authority in front of other inmates in any way. At those points she finds excuses to justify using force, putting someone in the hole, or keeping someone in the hole longer than they deserve to be there.
The most notable case took place on August 1, 2017 involving a mentally ill inmate that had known Kyles since high school. That inmate called her some name that day that had been used to bully her when they were growing up. She sent him to the hole and then called for backup because he would not stick his hands through the food port for cuffing. The K-9 unit responded and when he still did not stick his hands through the food port the cell door was opened and the dog attacked the inmate. Kyles can be seen in the surveillance footage going in after the attack and shoving the inmate's head into the concrete floor while he was face down on the floor and not resisting. That incident cost Columbia County over $250,000 after the inmate sued for unnecessary force. The surveillance footage clearly shows an inmate cowering toward the back of his cell when the door was opened, so it was not necessary to use a dog on him. He suffered injuries from the bite that were significant. All this because Kyles felt insulted and wanted an excuse to hurt the inmate. She would justify this as necessary to force compliance with the rules, but fails to realize or at least respect the fact that force used to force compliance with jail rules is excessive when the rule violation does not create a safety risk.
In anther case involving this author. An inmate refused to place his hand through the food port in 2018 so that a cell search could be conducted. The inmate knew that they only wanted to confiscate commissary items that the rules did not permit him to have on lockdown status. The inmate knew that even though refusal to let them take the items would result in an incident report, that taking commissary was not enough to justify force, so by making it clear that force would be the only way to take the items, the inmate would have been able to keep them. Kyles does not tolerate this type of insubordination. She had Tim Trask, who is a bid dude, go into the cell, body slam the inmate, and then as a group they carried him to booking so that they could search the cell. Nobody was hurt, but Kyles crossed the line by risking injury to the inmate and her coworkers just to carry out a task that was not necessary to keep people safe.
In another incident this author was sentenced to seven days of solitary confinement just for trying to take coffee to court. At just about any other facility the guard that discovered the coffee, Mason Dawson, would have just taken the coffee and that would have been it. No write-up, no solitary confinement, etc. because it was just coffee in a sock. Kyles decided to make this issue even worse by adding a sentence of seven days in solitary. This was quite petty of her but she knew that the person with the coffee owned a website used to question the authority of the CCSO including several deputies at that jail.
In another incident, Kyles wrote up this author for "other" conduct causing her a serious safety risk. That conduct was propping a bucket full of water up against a door for the purpose of soaking a child molester when he was due to open that door from the other side. She thought that a deputy might slip, fall, and be seriously injured. Even though the pavement that would be soaked was made with a surface designed to help shoes grip it to prevent falls. Any deputy that may have been there when the surface was soaked would have known the pavement was wet and probably would not slip on it. Kyles seemed to like that child molester (Gerald Ryan Davis) and just wanted to keep him from being harassed by making up a rule violation.
Marti Kyles is a danger to the safety of herself and others. She should not be allowed to continue to work in her current capacity.