A Clackamas County sheriff’s sergeant accused of strangling a girlfriend unconscious during sexual roleplay had his police certification revoked Thursday after Oregon law enforcement officials and a state arbitrator spent two years struggling with the issues the unusual situation raised.
The Clackamas County district attorney’s office declined to prosecute Sgt. Nicholas A. Adler, but the sheriff’s office fired him anyway in July 2024. The sheriff’s office determined he engaged in repeated acts of “felony strangulation” during sex with his girlfriend at the time – as well as “highly sexualized and disturbing” communication about minors with the girlfriend.
An arbitrator later overturned the firing, finding the county failed to prove Adler violated any department policies. Last December, he ordered the sheriff’s office to reinstate Adler, and the sergeant returned to his job.
The state police certification agency then did its own separate review.
The agency’s police policy committee last month unanimously recommended to the Board of Public Safety Standards and Training that the sergeant’s police certification be revoked for 10 years after significant debate.
On Thursday, the board voted to accept the recommendation as part of its consent agenda with no comment, stripping Adler’s certification for a decade.
The board adopted the police policy committee’s recommendation that found Adler violated the state’s standards for moral fitness required of police officers. He engaged in misconduct that “threatens or harms” another by strangling his then-girlfriend unconscious during sex and slapping her to revive her, the committee found.
Board member Scott Nowning, a Salem police sex crimes detective who chairs the police policy committee, said last month that he struggled with whether the agency should be delving into Adler’s private life involving two consenting adults.
“We’re in these folks’ bedroom now, and they’re engaged in things we may or may not agree with or participate in,” he said at the committee meeting, referencing domination, bondage or sexual role playing.
He noted the district attorney’s decision not to prosecute Adler for any crime and questioned if it was fair for the committee to take action without having reviewed all the evidence and testimony that the state arbitrator had before him.
But others on the committee, including the board’s chair, were adamant that Adler went too far.
Oregon State Police Supt. Casey Codding, who chairs the board and is vice chair of the police policy committee, drew a line at last month’s meeting: “You can’t engage in role play that ends in harm,” he said.
Adler’s lawyer Anthony J. Li, who attended the committee meeting with Adler in June and spoke on his behalf, argued that the police certification agency doesn’t have the authority to “relitigate” issues following “a comprehensive arbitration” that threw out “every single policy violation alleged” against Adler by the sheriff’s office.
Li also warned that the state board’s action sets a dangerous precedent in violation of Adler’s constitutional rights.
“Every public safety professional in Oregon should be concerned about DPSST regulating what they choose to do within the confines of their homes and bedrooms,” he said.
The county returned Adler, now 38, to work on Dec. 15 at an annual salary of $119,928 with no loss of pay or benefits after the arbitrator’s ruling. But the sheriff’s office put him on paid leave last month after the state police policy committee recommended stripping him of his police certification.
His lawyer vowed to continue to challenge the decertification.
Li described Adler as a 17-year member of the sheriff’s office who has had a distinguished career. Adler has already moved to seek a review hearing before a state administrative law judge. If the decertification is upheld, Adler could appeal the board’s action directly to the Oregon Court of Appeals, Li said.
During the administrative appeal, before the revocation becomes final, Adler can’t return to work and would remain on paid leave.
The state board has revoked an officer’s certification following a contrary arbitration ruling at least three other times, and each time the revocation was upheld by the state Court of Appeals, according to Marie Atwood, director of the state public safety department’s Professional Standards Division.
Atwood advised board members that the department’s moral fitness guidelines are “separate and distinct standards” from employment, arbitration or criminal law.
Former girlfriend’s complaint sparks investigation
A criminal investigation into Adler began after a former girlfriend made a complaint to the Monmouth Police Department on Feb. 13, 2023. She accused him of showing her child sexual abuse material during their relationship and also said he engaged in sexual aggression and strangulation. She said she was afraid of Adler and was concerned because he held a position of power as law enforcement. Their relationship had lasted about three months in late 2022.
The report was sent to the Oregon City Police Department to investigate as Adler lived there. The ex-partner told investigators she met Adler through an online dating app. Both expressed an interest in sexual activity and fantasies that included BDSM, an acronym for Bondage & Discipline, Dominance & Submission. They consented to sexual roleplay scenarios, in which she’d act like an 8-year-old girl, according to state records.
But one time Adler strangled her to unconsciousness and then he slapped her across her face “to bring her back,” and then laughed about it, saying that his “little girl” had “pissed the bed,” according to the state Professional Standards’ summary report. She said she sustained bruises and pain from the encounter.
The criminal inquiry initially focused on the alleged child sex abuse material. Adler admitted he had watched pornography with the former girlfriend and acknowledged he watched “teen themed” pornography. He told investigators he did not save pornography on his devices, and investigators found no evidence of any pornography on his phone or iPad, according to the public safety department’s summary.
Adler told investigators that he engaged in consensual strangulation, slapping and hitting of sexual partners. He initially denied strangling partners to unconsciousness but later admitted he did so if a partner was willing by wrapping his hand around his partner’s neck and squeezing. He said if a partner’s eyes “begin to roll back” while being strangled, that’s his “limit,” and a sign to let go, the summary said.
It takes approximately 6.8 seconds to render a person unconscious from strangulation, and approximately 15 seconds for a person to lose bladder control – facts that Adler said he was familiar with, according to the state records.
The former girlfriend also had complained that Adler used derogatory language to refer to women he encountered on the job.
On May 24, 2023, the Clackamas County District Attorney’s office declined to prosecute Adler, finding no evidence that he possessed any child sex abuse images. The office also declined to prosecute Adler on the strangulation allegation.
While the district attorney’s office noted that a person’s consent “may” not be a legal barrier to prosecute someone for strangulation, “it is a consideration in determining whether criminal charges are otherwise appropriate,” its decline-to-prosecute memo said.
“We do not believe that the State would be able to establish that the suspect engaged in any activity that was outside of the parties’ mutual consent or encouragement,” the memo said.
The district attorney’s office also considered messages shared between Adler and his ex-partner before and after their sexual encounters that included “vivid descriptions of the extent, effect and appeal of their own (and each other’s) sexual activities.” Further, the woman indicated she wanted to have no part in any criminal prosecution and has moved out of state, the memo said.
While the office declined to pursue criminal charges, the county’s chief deputy district attorney, Chris Owen, and Deputy District Attorney Eriks R. Berzins wrote that the case raised concerns considering Adler’s position as a law enforcement supervisor. The prosecutors specified the nature of his messages with his ex-partner – and “potential contradictions” between what he shared in those messages and what he told investigators – as problematic.
After a separate internal investigation, the sheriff’s office found that Adler did not have isolated lapses in judgment, but engaged in “egregious conduct” that represented a “sustained disregard for the core values of integrity, impartiality, professionalism and lawful behavior” essential to the effective operation of the sheriff’s office. It also found he shared “hundreds of explicit messages” with his ex-partner while he was on duty supervising others and responding to emergency calls.
The county fired him on July 31, 2024, for unprofessional conduct, bringing discredit to the sheriff’s office and profession, neglect of duty, hindering investigation and untruthfulness.
Adler’s union, the Clackamas County Peace Officers Association, challenged the firing, arguing that Adler was terminated “over his legal, consensual, private sexual conduct,” in “broad overreach” by the sheriff’s office in violation of Adler’s constitutional rights.
The union also pointed to changes in sheriff’s personnel that it argued influenced the internal inquiry, and blamed what it called Sheriff Angela Brandenburg’s “single-minded crusade” to fire Adler “by any means possible, simply because she didn’t like the content of his protected speech and private sex life,” according to the arbitrator’s opinion. Brandenburg announced this week that she’s retiring on Monday.
More than a year after Adler’s termination, arbitrator David M. Blair ordered the sheriff’s office to take Adler back, ruling the county could not support its findings. Blair also cited the district attorney’s refusal to prosecute Adler, lack of evidence that Adler intended to commit the crime of strangulation and testimony from at two undersheriffs who said they did not consider the consenting sexual activity a crime.
Committee debates whether a police officer ‘should be doing this’
Last month, the police policy committee of the state certification agency recommended suspending Adler’s police certification for 10 years after significant debate.
Nowning, the committee chair, asked, “Where is the line where we get involved? … I don’t want to be misconstrued and say, ‘Hey this is great and police officers should be doing this.’ That’s not my point at all. My point is, I think we’re in this really razor-thin area between consenting adults and what’s okay.”
He agreed that strangling anyone until unconsciousness is high-risk behavior.
Linn County Sheriff Michelle Duncan said Adler’s own text messages substantiated the claims made by his ex-girlfriend. “There was obviously harm caused to her, whether consensual or not,” Duncan said, citing a text message the woman wrote to Adler talking about her collarbone, her eye hemorrhaging and that she urinated during the strangulation.
Duncan continued: “With his training and experience, I think that there is far more of a responsibility to keep people safe than there is for even the standard public person … As a police officer, you well know the dangers of strangulation and how close you are to serious harm and even death.”
Duncan also cited a 2023 Oregon Court of Appeals ruling that clarified that a partner’s consent is not a valid defense to the crime of strangulation. (The arbitrator had noted that the strangulation in this case occurred before that Court of Appeals ruling.)
Just because the district attorney’s office declined to prosecute doesn’t mean a crime did not occur, Duncan argued.
Li, Adler’s lawyer, said he and Adler were disappointed by how quickly the state certification department reviewed his case. Li said that the committee downplayed concerns about the “credibility” of the woman accuser as well as the district attorney’s decision not to prosecute his client.
On Tuesday, the board approved the committee’s recommendation without discussion. Unless Adler succeeds on appeal, he cannot serve as a sworn officer in Oregon during the 10-year decertification period.
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