Online, Kevin Dahlgren made a name for himself as a truth-teller willing to push back against liberal Oregon policies that have decriminalized drug use and sought to provide housing before treatment to people struggling with addiction.

The criminal case filed Monday .bendbulletin.com/tncms/asset/editorial/59ad3aca-781d-11ee-b220-a36723292d3a” target=”_blank”>against him has nothing to do with that.

Instead, according to a law enforcement source, Dahlgren’s bosses at Gresham City Hall became concerned that he was buying groceries with his city procurement card — but keeping the purchases for himself.

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Kevin Dahlgren, homelessness consultant for Deschutes County Sheriff, indicted

A woman who said she received some fresh produce from Dahlgren while she was on dialysis gave details to that claim in an interview with KATU. Sandra Sanders, a named victim in the criminal indictment, told the news channel that investigators asked her whether Dahlgren had also given her supplies from World Market, a high-dollar chain that sells imported food and drinks.

“They were asking me about World Market, and had he ever brought me a whole bunch of weird stuff,” Sanders told KATU in a video report. “I said no. I got vegetables twice.”

After Gresham officials discovered what they deemed “suspicious” behavior, Dahlgren, 53, resigned from his $80,000-a-year gig as a senior homeless services specialist in March, according to a city spokesperson. He later procured a consultant’s contract from the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office.

The hammer-drop indictment became public Tuesday morning, charging Dahlgren with 14 felony counts and five misdemeanors — with the allegations ranging from first-degree theft and aggravated identity theft to official misconduct.

Multnomah County Sheriff’s deputies, who had conducted the investigation once alarm bells went off at Gresham’s office of Governance & Management, arrested Dahlgren at his southwest Portland home. He was released hours later.

During a Wednesday arraignment, prosecutor Morgan Ashton said Dahlgren had been “talking about leaving the country” and asked that he be ordered to surrender his passport.

Circuit Judge Katharine von Ter Stegge shot down the request, saying there was no evidence he posed a flight risk. She ordered Dahlgren to stay in Oregon and appointed a public defense attorney to the case.

Dahlgren pleaded not guilty to all the charges and declined to speak with reporters as he walked out of the courtroom. He hasn’t responded to additional inquiries.

Long career in homeless services

Long before he started slamming the supposed left-wing bent of the area’s largest nonprofit homeless service providers, Dahlgren spent years working for them.

Thomas Becker remembers meeting Dahlgren when Dahlgren was a resident advocate at Transition Projects’ Clark Shelter in southeast Portland 17 years ago.

“I found him to be very kind, thoughtful and always took great care of the men in the shelter during his shifts,” Becker said.

A Transition Projects spokesperson said Dahlgren left the organization more than seven years ago.

In a story he’s recounted in several interviews, Dahlgren said he was living in Gresham when he wrote a letter to then-Mayor Shane Bemis, outlining his plan to clean up the camps dotting the Springwater Corridor trail. Bemis wasn’t immediately available for comment.

The city of Gresham hired Dahlgren in 2018, and he had been on the job only a year when he began showing up in media stories that noted his compassion and dedication. Bemis and current Mayor Travis Stovall both praised Dahlgren in speeches, according to the local newspaper, and Councilor Sue Piazza prominently listed his endorsement on her campaign website.

“He has done a lot of good for a lot of people,” she said. “Unfortunately, this puts a dark cloud on that.”

Reinvents self as consultant

By 2020, Dahlgren was allegedly charging his own expenses to the city of Gresham’s card, according to the indictment. Dahlgren disguised his purchases in the city’s ledgers by recording them as supplies given to real people, according to the law enforcement source.

While still working for the city, Willamette Week reported in May 2022 that he would lead a Portland offshoot of the nonprofit trash clean-up service We Heart Seattle, which has drawn criticism from advocates who believe sweeps are ineffective and inhumane.

The nonprofit’s executive director, Andrea Suarez, said We Heart Portland was a “proof in concept” but fizzled out due to a lack of local support last July.

“I actually haven’t been on the phone with him in over a year, so we just don’t have any idea what’s going on,” she said. “It sounds like a mess.”

By 2023, Dahlgren had reinvented himself as an independent homelessness consultant.

He landed an $18,000 lump-sum contract with the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office in July, who hired him to write reports documenting several remote encampments in the Deschutes National Forest and other rural areas.

But the relationship was abruptly cut off on Aug. 23, after deputies learned Dahlgren was the subject of an active criminal investigation, according to records provided by Deschutes County Sheriff’s Sgt. Jason Wall.

When Dahlgren’s report was submitted to local officials a month later, members of the area’s social services network noticed how short it was — and that his report directly contradicted figures from recent federally mandated Point In Time counts.

In an open letter, certified mental health and addiction counselor Chuck Hemingway argued Dahlgren overstated the levels of drug addiction and transience among the homeless, and improperly extrapolated from a small sample size.

“He didn’t do a Point In Time count,” said Hemingway, who is helping organize a church-based tiny house village. “He just did a cursory survey, completely anecdotal — and tries to draw conclusions from that.”

Viral videos of Portland homeless

Dahlgren’s social media accounts read like a litany of horrors. By and large, the social ills spotlighted in his videos are all too real.

Huddled on sidewalks or beneath bridges, the people in Dahlgren’s videos describe surviving sexual assaults, run-ins with brutal street justice or fentanyl overdoses that have left many of their brethren dead.

Dahlgren has said he builds trust with those living on the streets, often by simply talking to them.

“Yes, I have the good educational background, but I almost never really apply that to my very first meeting,” he said in an interview with a local podcaster last year.

“Before you come out with these studies and policies, why don’t you talk to the homeless and ask them what they want?”

His critics wonder if the demands of staying viral on social media led Dahlgren to less savory methods.

In one video by a more famous YouTuber who specializes in shock stories, Dahlgren leads a camera crew down an Old Town overpass — ostensibly to meet the camp’s “mayor” — only to be chased out by angry people who say they don’t know Dahlgren.

Later in the video, Dahlgren approaches a man apparently reeling from the effects of drug use, asking if the man will talk in exchange for $5.

Morgan Godvin, an activist and researcher, wonders if the vulnerable people featured in Dahlgren’s videos can meaningfully consent to interviews, sometimes seen by millions, that live forever online.

“I think it’s wildly unethical to take videos of people who do not have internet access and post a recording of them,” she said.

On Thursday, Dahlgren resumed posting to his 25,000 followers on the social media site X, which was formerly known as Twitter. He made no mention of the charges.