Longtime local dentist Dr. Robert Benjamin “RB” Koch, who agreed to suspend his practice in late November, was arrested Jan. 4 on charges of felony strangulation, fourth-degree felony assault and interfering with making a police report.
It was his sixth arrest since 2014, according to local officials.
Koch, 58, signed an interim consent order with the Oregon Board of Dentistry on Nov. 30, and a board representative signed it on Dec. 14. In the order, Koch agrees not to practice dentistry or prescribe drugs in Oregon pending further orders of the board.
Dentistry Board investigator Harvey Wayson said staff does not anticipate the board will take any further action at this time. He could not say when the board’s investigation of Koch began or what prompted it.
The order is posted on the Oregon Board of Dentistry’s website, under the “licensee lookup” tab.
Wayson said such orders are signed by dentists perhaps once or twice a year. License revocations are even more rare, he said.
Oregon’s 3,046 practicing dentists are required to seek re-licensure every two years, according to the Board of Dentistry.
Koch, who was first licensed to practice dentistry in Oregon in 1985, was arrested twice in 2014 by The Dalles Police Detective Department on charges of telephonic harassment, said The Dalles Police Sgt. Eric Macnab.
The Dalles Police Officer Brent Larson said he’s arrested Koch twice at his dental practice at 12th and Dry Hollow. The second time there were no patients there, he said, “but the first time, it seems like there may have been a patient, but I cannot remember for certain.”
He said if there had been a patient there, officers would not have disturbed the appointment, but would have waited until it was over.
Koch was arrested in 2017 in The Dalles on a charge of fourth degree assault (domestic) and domestic harassment, Macnab said.
Also in 2017, he was arrested in Hood River on a charge of making a false police report. According to a Hood River Police Department report, Koch allowed a woman to keep his car, then minutes later reported it stolen.
Video surveillance footage and eyewitnesses supported the woman’s story that she and Koch had gone to a bar together and then hung out at the Wal-Mart parking lot before he drove away in another car and left her with his car, according to the police report.
Koch alleged to Hood River officers that the woman was “vengeful” and had “set him up” for a domestic violence charge, according to the report.
In October 2018 Koch was arrested in The Dalles on a misdemeanor warrant for failure to appear.
Wasco County Chief Deputy District Attorney Leslie Wolf said Koch remained jailed Monday on a no-bail hold for a misdemeanor probation violation (allegedly contacting the victim) on a fourth-degree domestic violence charge. He has $25,000 bail on the felony strangulation charge.
She said strangulation charges are usually a misdemeanor, but it is raised to a felony if there is an allegation a suspect had previously assaulted the same victim. That is also why the fourth-degree assault charge is a felony.
He was also arrested on a charge of interfering with making a police report. “He basically prevented or hindered a person from making a report to 911,” Wolf said.
Koch was recently arrested in Lewis County, Wash., on the latest misdemeanor and felony charges. Wolf said the judge there only had information about the misdemeanor warrant, so he dismissed the fugitive complaint, which had been filed in Washington, because misdemeanors are not normally extraditable between states.
Wolf had a local judge re-issue the warrants so Koch could be arrested again. Koch had tried to turn himself in at the regional jail earlier on Jan. 4, she said, but there were no active warrants for his arrest at that time.
He was arrested later that day at his office at 12th and Dry Hollow, where he also reportedly lives.
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