The BulleTin • SaTurday, april 17, 2021 A7
Center
Continued from A1
She does that by looking
up from the paperwork and
connecting with the residents
coming in for their vaccines.
At various checkpoints, peo-
ple made their way past or-
ange-vested volunteers who
waved them through. People
arrived on time or early. On
Wednesday, 3,100 vaccines
were expected to be adminis-
tered.
The clinic could get bus-
ier depending on how many
vaccines are sent out by the
Oregon Health Authority,
but starting Monday, anyone
age 16 and older will be able
to sign up for a vaccination.
To register, go to centralore-
goncovidvaccine.com. Those
without internet access can call
541-699-5109.
On any given day, there are
about 180 volunteers plus 30
U.S. Army National Guard
members and 30 staffers
from St. Charles, Volunteers
in Medicine and the county,
said Hayley Rich, Deschutes
County Sheriff’s Office Emer-
gency Services coordinator.
There are two shifts per day,
about 5½ hours each, Rich
said.
Volunteers are crucial to
running the mass vaccination
Dean Guernsey/The Bulletin
Patrick Punch administers a COVID-19 vaccine to Teague Dupras during a vaccination clinic at the Deschutes
County Fair & Expo Center.
program. From the parking
lot to the respite area, the en-
tire process is organized each
morning and volunteers are
assigned different areas. Some
volunteers come back repeat-
edly, like Galyon.
It’s the volunteers who
make the process of admin-
istering thousands of doses
of COVID-19 vaccines to
people in a 10-hour day run
smoothly, said John Allen, a
Deschutes County Health Ser-
vices contact tracer assigned to
organize the volunteers.
For most, it takes 45 min-
utes from parking their car to
sitting in the respite area for
15 minutes after getting their
vaccines.
On a recent day, Allen ad-
dressed a large group of or-
ange-vested volunteers whose
job it was to maintain flow
through lines and operations.
“Most of you have been
here before,” Allen said. “We
Disparity
Volunteer Helena
Conway wheels
Karen Harrington,
left, and volunteer
Madeline Taussig
wheels Dotty Parker
out of the waiting
area during a vacci-
nation clinic at the
Deschutes County
Fair & Expo Center
in Redmond.
Continued from A1
About 75% of Oregonians are
white, but white people account for
50% of COVID-19 cases and 71% of
vaccinations. About 13% of Orego-
nians are Hispanic or Latino, but they
make up 25% of COVID-19 cases ac-
count for 6% of vaccinations.
A driver in the vaccine disparity
is that Latinos in Oregon tend to be
younger and often don’t work in the
kind of jobs that had early access to
vaccines.
The state has sent additional vac-
cines to federally qualified health
centers, targeted migrant workers
and worked with 170 community
partners, and still access hasn’t been
balanced, said Patrick Allen, Oregon
Health Authority director, at a press
conference Friday. Because it’s not
COCC
Continued from A1
“I want to be very clear that
I never want anyone, internally
or externally, to believe that
our campus safety staff have
any law enforcement function,”
she said. “I leave the role of the
police to the police.”
Moving forward, the college
will contract with Bend Patrol
Services to perform four ran-
dom patrols per day, each last-
ing up to an hour.
Chesley also announced she
had installed Andrew Davis,
longtime COCC director of
student life, as interim campus
safety director. He will report
directly to her, Chesley said.
Safety has been the subject
of scrutiny at COCC since July
2016, when 23-year-old stu-
dent Kaylee Sawyer was raped
and murdered by an on-duty
campus security officer, Edwin
Lara.
The judge at Lara’s sen-
tencing said the case was ag-
gravated by the fact Lara used
the tools of his profession to
commit his crimes. He used
his police-like uniform to lure
Sawyer into the back seat of his
police vehicle, which had no
interior door handles and was
separated from the front seat
by a divider.
In July 2018, the school
hired as its head of campus se-
curity Peter Ostrovsky, a vet-
eran law enforcement leader
with heavy experience in drug
interdiction at the U.S-Canada
border.
In 2019, a law was passed
in Oregon in Sawyer’s honor
intended to “de-police” cam-
pus security forces, specifically,
COCC’s. Later that year, the
school and former Bend Police
Chief Jim Porter announced
COCC’s campus department
was “fully compliant” with
the new law. This included re-
painting the department’s ve-
hicles with the school’s bobcat
mascot and new “highlighter
yellow” vests for officers.
But on March 9 of this year,
the school announced it had
placed its four-person cam-
pus police staff on administra-
tive leave while it conducted a
third-party review of campus
have a full complement of
volunteers for the morning
shift. Volunteers need to wear
a mask and wear it in the
proper fashion around the pa-
tients.
“It’s an example we’re setting
for the patients.”
Inside the cavernous expo
building, 30 vaccination ta-
bles were equally spaced apart
and manned by green-vested
volunteers where the vaccines
were delivered. First, every-
Dean Guernsey/
The Bulletin
enough, vans will be sent out to rural
communities to vaccinate those inter-
ested, Allen said.
“As a state we can and need to do
better,” Allen said. “Vaccinations in
Oregon have not been administered
as equitably as they need to be. The
numbers are stark and clear. For too
many people, race and income are
predictors of whether you can access a
COVID-19 vaccine or not.”
In Central Oregon, on March 17,
Mosaic Medical’s 15 clinics began vac-
cinating anyone in this underserved
population 45 and older through a
federal pilot program.
Safety has been the subject of scrutiny at COCC since July
2016, when 23-year-old student Kaylee Sawyer was raped
and murdered by an on-duty campus security officer, Edwin
Lara. The judge at Lara’s sentencing said the case was
aggravated by the fact Lara used the tools of his profession
to commit his crimes. He used his police-like uniform to lure
Sawyer into the back seat of his police vehicle, which had no
interior door handles and was separated from the front seat
by a divider.
police activities.
Chesley said Friday the
school’s human resources de-
partment had received com-
plaints of “cop-like” behavior
and also about the climate of
the department and how staff
communicated.
She declined to provide
more details about the com-
plaints.
“It was attitudinal,” she said.
“And some of the trainings that
were being done, in my view,
were more appropriate for law
enforcement rather than cam-
pus safety officers.”
She said the review turned
up training materials for offi-
cers inconsistent with her vi-
sion of campus safety.
Chesley, who took over as
president in July 2019, said she
was heartened that the com-
pleted review turned up no
violations of Kaylee’s Law, nor
evidence of a hostile work en-
vironment. But she said it did
reveal areas where the school
needs to improve, specifically,
in crafting clear policy for se-
curity staff and providing more
and better training.
As to the fate of the four cur-
rent campus police officers,
Chesley said she cannot com-
ment on specific staffing deci-
sions.
The school is now working
with another external consul-
tant to help address concerns
raised in the review, including
developing new policies and
training materials for security
personnel.
“I believe we have some
work to do to continue our
culture shift to make campus
safety even more student-fo-
cused, even more custom-
er-service focused and rooted
in education,” she said.
Under its new contract with
COCC, Bend Patrol Services
will provide four patrols by a
uniformed security officer in
a vehicle. At least one of those
patrols must be performed be-
tween 8 p.m. and 3 a.m. The
patrol will cost $489.65 per day.
The contract also stipulates
Bend Patrol Services must
comply with Kaylee’s Law.
For the company, this has
meant removing front push
bumpers from its vehicle fleet
and applying a “campus safety”
patch to uniforms, according
to CEO Nick Thompson, who
added his 15-year-old com-
pany already complied with
most provisions of the law,
including record-keeping re-
quirements and dashboard
cameras mounted in all vehi-
cles.
Bend Patrol Services is not
a stranger to COCC. It held
the contract for campus safety
at the college for seven years.
Then the school contracted
with a low-bidder, Security
Pros, though that arrangement
was short-lived.
After Security Pros canceled
its contract in 2015, the school
opted to start its own campus
police force, a rare expenditure
for a community college in Ore-
gon. The new force hired on Ed-
win Lara, a Security Pros officer
already working on campus.
Thompson said the key dif-
ference between his officers
and certified police officers is
his staff is focused on crime
prevention, not investigation
or enforcement.
“When we had the contract,
things ran smoothly,” he said.
e e
Reporter: 541-383-0325,
gandrews@bendbulletin.com
one goes to a registration table
where blue-vested volunteers
like Galyon and McCarthy
work.
Galyon, a retired chemical
engineer, is among many vol-
unteers who come repeatedly.
She’s been there before the
10 a.m. opening 16 times. Vol-
unteers arrive early, grab a bot-
tle of water or a cup of coffee
and wait inside a tent to get an
assignment. Each volunteers
for a job and some offer to stay
the entire day.
Each day the vaccination
clinic finds something new
to tweak: Post a volunteer at
a bottleneck here, have an-
other keep the line moving and
maintain 6-foot spacing in the
queue inside, or designate a
volunteer to greet people, said
Allen. In a separate room at the
Expo Center, people who’ve
had their shots sit in rows of
green chairs that are evenly
spaced apart where they are
monitored by blue-vested vol-
unteers.
Wednesday was Shannon
Bergstedt’s first time volun-
teering at the clinic. A retired
registered nurse, Bergstedt was
manning a post that directed
people to the area where they
could sit for the required 15
minutes while they are ob-
served for any reactions to the
vaccination.
Latinos make up 9% of the Central
Oregon population, according to a
study by the Latino Community As-
sociation.
The same study states that the me-
dian age of Latinos in Central Oregon
ranged from 22 to 28 years, compared
to 43 to 51 years for the white popu-
lation.
Vaccine disparity is a national issue
that cannot rely upon just a speedy
rollout of vaccine delivery systems
such as through the Oregon Conven-
tion Center, the Salem fairgrounds or
the Deschutes County Fair & Expo
Center, although they play an import-
ant role, Allen said. The vans will en-
able the vaccines to get to communi-
ties directly.
As of Thursday, 1.5 million Ore-
gonians received at least one dose of
the vaccine. But because of concerns
about rare blot clots, the state has
Volunteers needed
We are currently accepting
applications for volunteers
at the mass vaccine clinic at
the Deschutes County Fair
& Expo Center. Non-medi-
cal and medical volunteers
are encouraged to apply.
Apply online at https://bit.
ly/2O3MnmC.
“I volunteer a lot,” Bergstedt
said. “I try to give back, and I
have skills they can use.”
Samantha Freson, a 26-year-
old Bend resident was in the
respite area after getting her
first vaccination. She, like
many others, was on her phone
waiting for the time to pass be-
fore she could leave.
She knew what to expect
of the vaccination clinic, but
was still impressed by how
smoothly everything went.
“It went pretty swiftly,”
Freson said. “It feels good to
get the vaccine. There are lots
of people here offering to help
or answer questions.
“I had been anxious about
getting my vaccine. I had
put my name on every list. I
wanted to get the vaccine. To
me, it’s like any other vaccina-
tion. It’s an extra safeguard.”
e e
Reporter: 541-633-2117,
sroig@bendbulletin.com
halted the use of the one-dose John-
son & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine.
Earlier in the week, the U.S. Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention
urged states to temporarily stop us-
ing the vaccine given to 6.8 million
people after six women who received
the vaccine became seriously ill and
one died.
That halt means Oregon will have
70,000 fewer vaccines available each
week, Allen said.
“We’ll continue to see tight appoint-
ment availability in many parts of the
state for the coming weeks at least un-
til we know more about the availabil-
ity of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine,”
Allen said. “However, we have enough
doses to vaccinate anyone 16 and
older before summer.”
e e
e e
Gary A. Warner contributed to this report.
Reporter: 541-633-2117,
sroig@bendbulletin.com