By CHRIS AADLAND, The CUJ
PORTLAND – A former Umatilla Tribal Police Department (UTPD) officer has been sentenced to more than 7 years in prison after admitting to possessing child pornography and repeatedly sexually abusing a child beginning in the 1990s.
Cameron Jacob Sheoships, 57, was sentenced to 87 months in federal prison and five years of supervised release on Nov. 8 by U.S. District Judge Michael H. Simon after Sheoships pleaded guilty in April to one count of possessing child sexual abuse images.
Sheoships had previously worked as a tribal police officer until he was convicted for an unrelated crime involving a firearm in 2015.
Federal prosecutors asked for an enhanced sentence due to repeated sexual abuse of a minor, according to a September sentencing memo from Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon Cassady A. Adams. He was also ordered to register as a sex offender for 15 years after he is released from prison.
“The government believes that this sentence will keep the community safe, hold Sheoships accountable for his conduct, and allow him to receive the treatment he needs,” Adams wrote in her sentencing memo.
The case dates to 2022, when the FBI received online tips that suspected child pornography had been downloaded on the Umatilla Indian Reservation. Additional tips tied Sheoships’ social media and online accounts to the illegal material.
Authorities then searched Sheoships’ home and found photos and videos of child sexual abuse on his cellphone in May 2023. Sheoships, according to prosecutors, admitted to purchasing the images in 2022 in an interview after the search warrant was executed.
A federal grand jury indicted Sheoships for posting the images of child sexual abuse the following month.
After learning that Sheoships had been charged with a child pornography offense, a person reported to the FBI that Sheoships had repeatedly sexually abused her as a child starting around 1996 and that Sheoships had threatened her if she ever told anyone about the abuse. According to court documents, she also said FBI agents during a 2001 interview didn’t believe her and told her “she should not lie about police officers.”
Prosecutors said they didn’t charge Sheoships for the “hands-on sexual abuse” of a minor due to the challenge of prosecuting a decades-old crime and would instead prove the allegation through sentencing pattern enhancement and Sheoships’ admission to the abuse. Sentencing enhancements are based on the offender’s prior convictions and increase the possible penalty the judge can impose for a crime.
Sheoships had worked as an UTPD officer for 15 years prior to being fired and banned for life from being a police officer in Oregon after pleading guilty in 2015 to one count of pointing a firearm at another person. He was sentenced to three-year probation for a Class B misdemeanor.
In that case, which was investigated by the FBI, Sheoships was charged with 16 counts of simple assault and 16 counts of pointing a firearm at another person for a pattern of incidents that occurred between 2013 and 2014.
