A2 THE BULLETIN • MONDAY, APRIL 5, 2021
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GENERAL
INFORMATION
LOCAL, STATE & REGION
DESCHUTES COUNTY
BULLETIN
GRAPHIC
129 new cases
COVID-19 data for Sunday, April 4:
Deschutes County cases: 6,456 (31 new cases)
Deschutes County deaths: 70 (zero new deaths)
Crook County cases: 821 (zero new cases)
Crook County deaths: 18 (zero new deaths)
Jefferson County cases: 2,022 (3 new cases)
Jefferson County deaths: 31 (zero new deaths)
Oregon cases: 166,882 (404 new cases)
Oregon deaths: 2,392 (1 new death)
130
(Dec. 4)
What is COVID-19? It’s an infection caused by a new coronavirus.
Symptoms (including fever, coughing and shortness of breath)
can be severe. While some cases are mild, the disease can be fatal.
108 new cases
(Jan. 1)
120
7-day
average
90
new
cases
7 ways to help limit its spread: 1. Wash hands often with soap
and water for at least 20 seconds. 2. Avoid touching your face.
3. Avoid close contact with sick people. 4. Stay home. 5. In public,
stay 6 feet from others and wear a cloth face covering or mask.
6. Cover a cough or sneeze with a tissue or cough into your elbow.
7. Clean and disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces.
(Nov. 27)
110
*No data
available on
Jan. 31
due to state
computer
maintenence
100
90
80
50
new
cases
70
60
(Feb. 17)
47 new cases
50
(Nov. 14)
541-382-1811
28 new cases
8 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri.
(July 16)
ONLINE
40
31 new cases
(Oct. 31)
30
16 new cases
(Sept. 19)
9 new cases
www.bendbulletin.com
SOURCES: OREGON HEALTH AUTHORITY,
DESCHUTES COUNTY HEALTH SERVICES
New COVID-19 cases per day
20
(May 20)
1st case
10
(March 11)
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As prison sees apparent virus skepticism,
judge tells officials they must do better
BY LILIANA FRANKEL
Malheur Enterprise
ONTARIO — A state judge recently
ordered officials at Snake River Correc-
tional Institution in Ontario to devise a
plan to enforce mask use at the prison
and to deploy mass testing after find-
ing that the state’s treatment of two in-
mates reflected indifference during the
COVID-19 pandemic.
Multnomah Circuit Judge Amy Bag-
gio issued her findings and orders after
two inmates sued prison officials in Mal-
heur County Circuit Court. Local state
judges recused themselves from the case.
“Certain SRCI staff view mask wear-
ing as an issue of politics rather than
one related to health and welfare during
a pandemic,” Baggio concluded. “Mask
failures by staff are particularly trou-
bling considering the very nature of
their jobs: to oversee a large, congregate
environment.”
Her findings came in civil cases filed
by inmates Mark Lawson and Don Skel-
ton, who claimed they received poor
medical care that put their lives at risk.
They claimed the care so was bad that it
violated their constitutional rights.
Baggio ordered the Oregon Depart-
ment of Corrections to provide her “doc-
umentation as to how SRCI is enforcing
the masking policy, including proof of
specific enforcement” and “consideration
of a plan to engage in mass COVID-19
testing at SRCI, particularly rapid testing
of staff prior to entry.”
While she set no deadline, Baggio
Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian file
Unannounced COVID-19 safety assess-
ments conducted in February found that
neither staff nor inmates at Snake River
Correctional Institution in Ontario were
wearing face masks correctly.
said she would conduct a status check
in 30 days.
Court filings and the judge’s orders
paint a picture of a prison where, de-
spite heightened precautions such as
locking down inmates and eliminat-
ing most programming, the danger of
COVID is taken lightly by some staff
and inmates.
Dr. Garth Gulick, chief medical of-
ficer for SRCI, “testified that he is at
war with COVID-19 misinformation
in SRCI,” the court order said. “He de-
scribed how staff are on the whole very
conservative and have doubts about the
virus and the vaccine.”
Referring to inmates as adults in cus-
tody, the order said that Gulick testified
that “misinformation is totally engrained
in staff and some of the AICs. He testi-
fied that many staff believe that masking
is stupid and that the virus is harmless.”
Jason Bell, assistant superintendent
at Snake River, said “that staff at SRCI
mostly live in Idaho where masks are not
required. He explained that it is difficult
for staff to understand why masks are re-
quired in one state and not the other. He
stated that very few people wear masks
in Idaho,” the judge’s order said.
Unannounced COVID-19 safety as-
sessments conducted in February and
documented in the ruling found that
neither staff nor inmates were reliably
wearing their face masks correctly, in-
cluding indoors, where the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention says
that the danger of airborne virus trans-
mission is greater.
“Some staff remark to AICs that they
already had COVID,” read one of the
reports. “Observed AICs and staff pull
down masks to talk.”
Bell testified that inmates can be dis-
ciplined for mask noncompliance, but
recognized that enforcement was in-
consistent. He said enforcing mask or-
ders also “raised a security issue because
SRCI did not want to risk the AICs or-
ganizing and resisting SRCI officials.”
He also said inmates feared reporting
employees who weren’t wearing masks.
“He further testified that there is po-
tential for retaliation by staff in positions
of power over AICs. Dr. Gulick repeated
this observation,” the judge’s ruling said.
Bell testified about a six-step process
to discipline employees, ranging from
a private conversation to a predismissal
hearing, the ruling said. Bell testified
that only one staff member had pro-
gressed in discipline to the sixth step for
mask violations.
While Gulick had asserted in tes-
timony that “he considered testing
‘harmful’ and stated that it ‘can be the
enemy,’” Baggio found that there was no
law preventing SRCI from conducting
mass testing of its inmates and employ-
ees. She pointed out that even without
mass testing, the institution had been
on Tier 4 status, the highest level of
COVID-19 alert within the Oregon
prison system, since July.
“The current plan has proven ineffec-
tive,” she wrote. “Doing the same thing
over and over and expecting a different
result is unreasonable, irrational and
unjustifiable.”
In separate cases, Baggio found that
SRCI officials had been “deliberately in-
different” to treating Lawson’s COPD,
as well as treating Skelton’s asthma and
hypertension, violating their Eighth
Amendment rights to protection
against cruel and unusual punishment.
Baggio also ruled that the prison’s
management of mask orders “creates an
unjustifiable risk.”
She said that “SRCI cannot throw up
its hands in the face of chronic mask
noncompliance and simultaneously fail
to explore other options such as rapid
testing of staff before entry.”
Fatal Corvallis police shooting: Video Amazon apologizes after
shows man with knife chasing officer its bogus ‘peeing’ tweet
BY KALE WILLIAMS
The Oregonian
A Philomath man armed
with a knife chased an officer
and screamed “do you want to
die?” before he was fatally shot
by police early Saturday, ac-
cording to video of the incident
released by prosecutors.
Corvallis police officers re-
sponded about 3:45 a.m. to re-
ports of an aggressive man, later
identified as 32-year-old Jeffrey
Appelt, trying to get into guest
rooms at a Days Inn hotel .
Body camera footage shows
the first officer on the scene
contacted Appelt near the front
doors of the hotel. There is no
audio for the first few seconds ,
but after a moment the officer
can be heard asking Appelt,
“What’s going on?”
“Leave me alone!” Appelt
can be heard saying before
chasing the officer and yelling,
“I’ll kill you!”
In a statement, the Benton
County District Attorney’s
Office said the officer saw Ap-
pelt pull something from his
pocket before pursuing the of-
ficer through the parking lot.
The officer pulled his stun
gun as he ran from Appelt, the
video shows, and Appelt can be
seen with an object in his hand.
The officer’s stun gun can be
heard going off in the video
footage, but it’s unclear if Ap-
pelt was actually hit.
Appelt then moved back to-
ward the entrance of the hotel,
the video shows, as the officer
yelled, “He’s got a knife in his
hand.” As Appelt attempted
to reenter the hotel, a second
officer tried to take him into
custody, but Appelt was able
to break free of his grip and
flee in the opposite direction
toward a third officer that was
approaching in a patrol vehicle.
That officer stopped his car,
got out and yelled, “Stop! Drop
the knife!” as Appelt advanced
toward him, the video shows.
Appelt is seen in the video with
an object in his hand and again
is heard verbally threatening to
kill the officer.
“When Appelt came in close
proximity to the officer, and his
open patrol vehicle in which
there was a loaded AR-15 rifle
and shotgun, the third officer
fired his pistol,” Benton County
prosecutors said in a statement.
The dashboard camera from
the patrol vehicle does not show
the actual shooting, but five
shots can be heard.
The officers attempted to aid
Appelt, officials said, but he
died at the scene.
All of the involved officers
were put on administrative
leave, as is state policy, while
the Benton County Major
Crimes Team and Albany Po-
lice investigate the incident.
Associated Press
Amazon is sorry for tweet-
ing about peeing.
The Seattle-based company
apologized in a late Friday
blog post for a tweet it sent
to a congressman more than
a week ago denying that its
employees work so hard they
must urinate in empty water
bottles. It also admitted that
some delivery drivers might
have had to urinate in bottles
and it vowed to improve their
working conditions.
The matter was first raised
March 24 by Wisconsin U.S.
Rep. Mark Pocan, who re-
sponded to a tweet by an
Amazon executive that said
the company was a pro-
gressive workplace. “Paying
workers $15/hr doesn’t make
you a ‘progressive workplace’
when you union-bust & make
workers urinate in water bot-
tles,” Pocan said in his tweet.
Amazon responded: “You
don’t really believe the peeing
in bottles thing, do you? If
that were true, nobody would
work for us.”
In the Friday night blog
post, Amazon apologized
to Pocan and acknowledged
that delivery drivers “can and
do have trouble finding re-
strooms because of traffic or
sometimes rural routes.” The
online shopping giant said
COVID-19 has made the is-
sue worse, since many public
restrooms are closed.
“Sigh,” Pocan responded
in a Saturday morning tweet.
“This is not about me, this is
about your workers — who
you don’t treat with enough
respect or dignity.”
Amazon wrote in its blog
post that urinating in bottles
is an industrywide problem.
Amazon didn’t respond to
a request for comment.
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Lottery results can now be found on
the second page of Sports.
STATE BRIEFING
Man, 72, faces attempted murder
charge in adult son’s shooting
A 72-year-old man faces charges in-
cluding attempted murder after being
suspected of shooting his 37-year-old
son. The shooting occurred in a ru-
ral area near Silverton, about 40 miles
south of Portland, according to the
Marion County Sheriff’s Office.
Hospital officials notified police Fri-
day night of a man with multiple gun-
shot wounds that were not considered
life-threatening.
Police went to a property near Sil-
verton where they met the man’s father,
Willie Madewell, who surrendered
peacefully. Madewell was booked on
multiple charges, including first-degree
assault and unlawful use of a weapon.
A court appearance was scheduled
for Monday.
Police: Man made threats with ax,
shot bystander with paintball gun
A man was arrested in downtown
Portland after he threatened park rang-
ers with a small ax and shot a random
passerby with a paintball gun Saturday
morning, according to police.
Park rangers were distributing fly-
ers about some restoration work near
Chapman Square Park around 9 a.m.
when they approached the suspect, later
identified as Randy Graves, 32.
Rangers told police Graves threat-
ened to kill them and followed them as
they tried to disengage.
About 45 minutes later, a different
group of park rangers were called about
a fire in the park. When they got to the
scene, police said Graves pulled out a
small ax and threatened the rangers.
Around 10 a.m., a man walked into
the downtown precinct and told offi-
cers he had just just been shot with a
paintball gun as he was riding a bicycle
through the park, which the park rang-
ers said they also witnessed.
Graves was located by police a short
time later and officers took him into
custody. He was found to be in posses-
sion of a paintball gun, an ax and a stun
gun, police said.
Graves is being held at the Mult-
nomah County jail on suspicion of
menacing, assault and disorderly con-
duct.
— Bulletin wire reports