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About The Bulletin. (Bend, OR) 1963-current | View Entire Issue (June 15, 2021)
A2 THE BULLETIN • TUESDAY, JUNE 15, 2021 The Bulletin How to reach us CIRCULATION Didn’t receive your paper? Start or stop subscription? 541-385-5800 PHONE HOURS 6 a.m.-noon Tuesday-Friday 7 a.m.-noon Saturday-Sunday and holidays GENERAL INFORMATION LOCAL, STATE & REGION DESCHUTES COUNTY COVID-19 data for Monday, June 14: Deschutes County cases: 9,940 (9 new cases) Deschutes County deaths: 80 (zero new deaths) Crook County cases: 1,276 (2 new cases) Crook County deaths: 23 (zero new deaths) Jefferson County cases: 2,357 (zero new cases) Jefferson County deaths: 38 (zero new deaths) Oregon cases: 205,154 (127 new cases) Oregon deaths: 2,730 (zero new deaths) COVID-19 patients hospitalized at St. Charles Bend on Monday: 29 (7 in ICU) 129 new cases 110 103 new cases 7-day average (April 23) (July 16) 90 (June 10) 74 new cases 80 (April 10) 50 new cases 70 60 50 40 *State data unavailable for Jan. 31 31 new cases (Oct. 31) 16 new cases 30 (Sept. 19) 20 (May 20) 1st case 10 (March 11) March 2020 100 85 new cases (Nov. 14) 9 new cases EMAIL 120 (May 8) (Feb. 17) 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri. bulletin@bendbulletin.com (Jan. 1) (Nov. 27) 130 115 new cases 47 new cases 28 new cases ONLINE (April 29) 108 new cases 90 new cases BULLETIN GRAPHIC 125 new cases (Dec. 4) Vaccines are available. Find a list of vaccination sites and other information about the COVID-19 vaccines online: centraloregoncovidvaccine.com If you have questions, call 541-382-4321. 541-382-1811 www.bendbulletin.com SOURCES: OREGON HEALTH AUTHORITY, DESCHUTES COUNTY HEALTH SERVICES New COVID-19 cases per day April May June July August September October November December January 2021 Febru- March April May June AFTER HOURS Newsroom ................................541-383-0348 Circulation ................................541-385-5800 NEWSROOM EMAIL Business ........business@bendbulletin.com City Desk .............news@bendbulletin.com Features.................................................................. communitylife@bendbulletin.com Sports ................. sports@bendbulletin.com NEWSROOM FAX 541-385-5804 2nd lawsuit alleges Gresham Police arrest racist workplace at suspect in 1980 homicide Oregon labor agency OUR ADDRESS Street .............. 320 SW Upper Terrace Drive Suite 200 Bend, OR 97702 Mailing ........... 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They may not be reproduced without explicit prior approval. Lottery results can now be found on the second page of Sports. Physical evidence from the scene was maintained, and a No one would stop to help. recent DNA profile match led That’s what haunted family investigators to Plympton. members years after a beloved Plympton was a 16-year- daughter was bludgeoned to old student at Reynolds High death. School when the crime oc- On the night she was killed curred, but the district at- in 1980, 19-year-old Barbara torney’s office said he will be Mae Tucker frantically tried charged and tried as an adult. to flag down passing cars. He pleaded not guilty during The sophomore his arraignment had been walking to Wednesday . an evening class at Court records Mt. Hood Commu- show Plympton was nity College when arrested in 1997 and she ran onto NE accused of attempted Kane Drive. Wit- sodomy and assault nesses told police that in an attack on a Tucker many drivers had to woman. Investigators swerve and brake to believed Plympton keep from hitting her, drove her to a se- and one car almost cluded place and at- hit Tucker. One wit- tacked her. The case ness remembered was dismissed due to seeing blood and insufficient evidence. mud on her face. “These ‘cold cases’ But no one pulled are not lost or forgot- Plympton over to check on ten for our depart- her, even as a man ment,” said interim grabbed her arm and pulled Chief Claudio Grandjean. her off the road and back into “Each one represents a per- the woods near the campus. son to our officers, and their Some witnesses even tragic stories are passed down thought it was a college prank through the generations in or a youthful game of dodging hopes of one day bringing traffic. honor to their names and a That next morning, Barba- sense of justice and closure to ra’s body was found by a fel- their cases.” low student in the shrubs. She The Outlook ran a story had been sexually assaulted Feb. 27, 2003, recounting the and beaten to death. murder that had occurred “It’s unreal that people care more than 22 years earlier. so little about another human In that article, Tucker was re- being,” Louise Tucker, Barba- membered by loved ones as ra’s mother, told The Outlook “a free spirit; strong-willed; a year after her daughter’s spiritual but not religious; death. It took four decades, and assistance from a break in DNA technology not avail- able at the time, for an arrest to be made. Robert Plymp- ton, 58, of Troutdale, was taken into custody by the Gresham Police Department on June 8 for the alleged rape and murder of Tucker. He was booked into the Multnomah County Jail. very hardworking; and very dedicated. She was the youngest of seven siblings, and often was thought of as the ‘baby’ of the family despite growing up to be a 5-foot-11, inde- pendent young woman. She played basketball at Cleveland High School, and was very in- volved with the Distributive Education Clubs of America (DECA) that prepped students for careers in businesses. On the day she died, Tucker called her mother. She was planning to stop by a friend’s apartment for ice cream if her evening class got out early. Tucker never made it. Neither of Barbara’s parents saw justice for their daugh- ter. Her father, Albert Tucker, died in 1989. He could never bring himself to talk about his daughter’s death. “He always leaves the room when I talk about her,” Louise said in 1981. Louise died in 1995, but she never stopped seeking justice despite many signs pointing to the case never being solved. Through the years she stayed in contact with the Gresham Police Department and the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office, refusing to let the case slip through the cracks. She kept an informal, hand- written record of her attempts to find answers. “If it takes 10 years, I don’t care,” she wrote several months after the murder. “I just can’t let it rest.” BY CHRISTOPHER KEIZUR Pamplin Media Group BY ZANE SPARLING Pamplin Media Group Allegations of race-based bias and hostility are piling up at the state agency charged with investigating unlawful employment practices. The Portland Tribune first revealed that Oregon’s Bureau of Labor & Industries hired an outside law firm to scrutinize its own workplace — and the independent audit has grown after a second ex-employee filed a lawsuit claiming she was forced out. Former Civil Rights Division investigator Shaina Pomerantz says she experienced “a culture of disparate treatment and racial hostility” that included a higher workload than white employees and a six-month extension of her probation that was not ap- plied to other new hires. “When Black employees, in- cluding Ms. Pomerantz spoke up, made suggestions, or asked questions, non-Black (Civil Rights Division) employees shut down these investigators and told them their questions were not relevant, wrong, and/or in- consistent with CRD practices,” according to the litigation. Pomerantz, who serves as vice chair for Portland’s police review committee, resigned from BOLI Dec. 31 and now seeks $750,000 in damages. Her suit bolsters the ac- count of her former boss, Carol Johnson, who left a $10,300 a month job as division head last July, citing intolerable condi- tions in a separate lawsuit. Pomerantz, 45, says the Civil Rights investigators, who are mostly white, turned their cameras off during virtual meetings with Johnson, who is Black, and stayed silent when Johnson acknowledged the death of George Floyd. The Civil Rights Division “of- ten dismissed race discrimina- tion complaints at a dispropor- tionately high rate,” the suit says. BOLI’s elected leader, Com- missioner Val Hoyle, appears to have corroborated some of the claims raised by John- son, according to snippets of her emails included in the first lawsuit. But a bureau rep pushed back more forcefully on Pomerantz’s claims, saying BOLI extended employees’ probationary periods during the unusual circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic. Before taking the state job, Pomerantz was offered a $27,000 settlement after she filed a workplace complaint against her former employer, Concordia University but re- jected the cash because it was contingent on signing a non-disparagement agreement, according to her lawyer. BOLI dismissed the complaint in 2019, and the school declared bankruptcy the next year. “BOLI has dismissed many cases that have gone on to get a verdict from a jury,” said the at- torney, J. Ashlee Albies, noting as examples the bogus arrest of Michael Fesser, as well as the $1 million awarded to two Portland Public Schools main- tenance workers who faced ra- cial harassment on the job. A former chief of staff for ousted state Rep. Diego Her- nandez, Pomerantz raised concerns during a sexual ha- rassment investigation that the lawmaker had promoted a staff member due to their romantic relationship, but that particular complaint wasn’t substantiated after both parties denied being intimate. Albies says her client dis- agreed with the finding, and later was offered an apology by a co-chair after testifying be- fore the state committee inves- tigating Hernandez. “The fact that she has made protected complaints of dis- crimination,” said Albies, “I think it shows that this is some- body who stands up for herself.” Looking for a female dermatology provider? Jill Conway, PA-C Jill’s expertise is adult and pediatric medical dermatology, with a passion for women’s health. Lindsey Clark, PA-C Lindsey provides skin care for all ages, with a passion for medical dermatology and aesthetics. Bend • Redmond • Sunriver 541.382.8819 derm-health.com