12 minute read
News
NEWS Surfer Drowns at Bend’s Whitewater Park
Fellow surfers worked for six minutes to dislodge Ben Murphy from the artificial gates controlling water flow to a surf wave
Advertisement
By Jack Harvel
Credit Jack Harvel
More flowers are left in honor of Ben Murphy on a rock where surfers enter the water.
Ben Murphy, a 17-year-old from Bend, passed away on May 1 after being trapped underwater for over six minutes at the Bend Whitewater Park the day before. Murphy was surfing the standing wave at the Whitewater Park when he fell and got stuck in a gate that operates the waves shortly after noon.
Other surfers jumped in trying to help, and after many attempts were able to dislodge Murphy. He was pulled ashore upstream and given CPR by paramedics for 30 minutes before being transferred to St. Charles Medical Center.
“We were given 24 hours with our son after he had been pronounced dead. This incredible gift from God allowed us time to let Ben know just how much we loved him and how proud we were of the man that he had become,” Murphy’s father, Patrick Murphy, wrote in a statement released by Keith Kirkpatrick, a pastor at Journey Church where the family worshipped.
Doctors worked to resuscitate Murphy with defibrillators, but he didn’t respond. Patrick Murphy said an hour had passed when doctors approached him to let him and his wife know that their son passed away, but afterwards Murphy showed a sign of improvement.
“His finger twitched and his heart began to beat faintly. We continued to encourage him and the doctors started working on him again. His condition improved and they moved him to the ICU,” Patrick Murphy wrote.
Murphy’s vitals improved over the next eight hours, and he was given oxygen, medication and sedatives. The next morning, however, he’d sustained too much damage to save.
“This morning many of his organs showed severe damage from the trauma he experienced. The St. Charles staff went above and beyond in their efforts to save him, but unfortunately, he had multiple organ failure and his body simply shut down,” Patrick Murphy wrote.
It’s the first time someone died at the Whitewater Park since it opened in 2015. The park is operated by the Bend Park and Recreation District and uses 26 underwater gates and bladders that are permanently fixed to the riverbed.
“There were no river conditions on Saturday that we’re aware of that would have heightened risk. BPRD staff responded immediately and made operational changes to assist with rescue efforts by emergency responders,” BPRD wrote in a statement on May 2.
The surf wave is currently offline and will stay that way until BPRD and third-party experts can assess the conditions of the bladder and gate system, parks officials said.
“The Whitewater Park’s surf wave will remain flat until such time that we can fully assess what might have occurred in this tragedy,” BPRD wrote. “These efforts are urgent as seasonal water levels rise over the coming days and weeks.”
The park has had its fair share of injuries and maintenance issues. A month after opening in September 2015, it had to be closed for repairs after two of the pneumatic lines that inflate the bladders became damaged during construction. In June 2016 the tubing channel closed after people reported injuries and damaged floating gear after flipping. Later that year construction crews were deployed to direct water to the center of the channel to keep floaters from getting stuck or flipping.
“With three channels, work completed has been to different amenities at different times. The current evaluation is focused on the surf wave where the tragedy occurred,” BPRD Communications and Community Relations Manager Julie Brown wrote in an email.
Brown said there are anywhere from a dozen to hundreds of surfers on the whitewater channel in a given day. The district will look for any additional safety measures to reduce risk at the park in light of Murphy’s passing.
“Discussions about emergency shutoff capabilities and water rescue equipment have occurred in the past and are being revisited as part of the current evaluation,” Brown wrote in an email.
The whitewater passage and the passage meant for tubing will remain online as the surf wave is evaluated. Brown said there will be little information until further along in the assessment over the coming days.
Credit Jack Harvel
Flowers, candles and notes are left at the Bend Whitewater Park to commemorate Ben Murphy. The river bank is where surfers make their way to the surf wave.
Matter of Record
The City of Bend dropped a lawsuit that would’ve recouped costs for a large public records request
By Jack Harvel
On April 21 a judge agreed to settle a lawsuit between the City of Bend and the Central Oregon Peacekeepers, an activist group formed to protect social justice protests. The decision brings an end to a year-long legal fight and orders Bend to pay $18,000 to cover the Peacekeepers’ attorney fees.
The process started in January 2021 when Mike Satcher, a member of the Peacekeepers, requested public records from the City in regard to two 2020 protests. In the first protest on Aug. 12, 2020, over 100 people gathered to stop U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from detaining two undocumented men, and the second involved a confrontation between Trump supporters and Black Lives Matter Protestors on Oct. 3, 2020.
Satcher said he requested the documents in response to the deployment of the Crisis Emergency Response Team and the surveillance tactics allegedly used in the August protest, and the failure to arrest Jake Strayer after he brandished a revolver at protestors in the October protest.
“We wanted to get to the bottom of what was causing all of that. Why was there this overreaction to the ICE protest? Why was nobody arrested, even though there were so many attacks, including Jake Strayer pulling that gun? Why did Bend police choose not to arrest anybody on October 3? That’s why we made the request for the records,” Satcher told the Source Weekly.
The City billed Satcher $3,600 for the request, which contained over 6,000 emails and texts sent by Bend Police, elected officials and City staff. Bend city attorney Mary Winters described it as an extremely broad request at the time, and told OPB it could create a precedent of large and costly public records requests.
“There’s no denying the fact that it was a broad request,” Satcher said. “What we asked for were communications between city officials and, for example, members of the People’s Rights militia, or the 3% militia. We asked for communications, any emails to or from police officers about [the Central Oregon Peacekeepers].”
The City rejected a request to waive the fees—typically granted if the documents released are deemed to be in the public interest. The Peacekeepers appealed the City’s rejected fee waiver to Deschutes County District Attorney John Hummel, who sided with the Peacekeepers and ordered the City to deliver the records for free on March 4, 2021. The City complied, but sued Satcher to recover the $3,600.
“The City immediately released the requested records. This was thousands of pages. The City did not withhold any records pending the outcome of the lawsuit,” Bend Communications Director Anne Aurand wrote in a statement. “Second, for the City, the case was about the District Attorney’s incorrect legal analysis related to fees. It was not about the requestor.”
The ACLU of Oregon stepped in to represent Satcher in the lawsuit and a counterclaim against the City that would’ve declared the fee estimate excessive. The City maintains that Hummel’s March 4 decision is invalid, and Aurand said a separate decision from Hummel affirmed on June 29, 2021 their fee structure is constitutional.
“The City agreed to settle this case because the District Attorney subsequently acknowledged the City’s public records fee structure is authorized by Oregon law. Whether the City’s fee structure is legally valid was one of the primary questions the City was seeking to answer by filing suit,” Aurand wrote.
The fee structure this affirmed bills people for the hourly salary and benefit cost of records clerks over the course of fulfilling a request. The ACLU and Peacekeepers, however, consider it a win for access to public records, which can be byzantine and financially burdensome.
“Oregon’s Public Records Act guarantees that all people have the right to access public records in Oregon, but public bodies often thwart that guarantee by charging arbitrary and excessive fees for producing the records, and then by playing favoritism when deciding whether a requester is entitled to have those arbitrary and excessive fees waived (or not),” Rian Peck, of Visible Law and Vice Chair of the ACLU of Oregon Lawyers Committee,s said in a statement.
Satcher said the Peacekeepers plan to release the entire cache of documents to the public after they go through and redact any potentially sensitive information. The records themselves have already confirmed some of the Peacekeepers’ concerns, Satcher said. An after-action report from the Bend Police Department suggests CERT was deliberately deployed at the ICE protest, rather than simply being diverted from training in a call to all available officers as Bend PD previously claimed. Records also show BPD sought background checks for at least two activists at that protest.
“I just hope that somewhere, someone out there in the world has gotten interested in the topic of public records as a result of all of this,” Satcher said. “These records already belong to us, so we should be asking for them all the time.”
Photos Credit Nicole Vulcan
The situation got a lot more tense when agents from U.S. Border Patrol arrived at the Aug. 12 protest.
Signs left at the scene of the ICE protest in Bend the following day.
Noticias en Español Los investigadores descubrieron que los trabajadores agrícolas de Oregon sufrieron experiencias inhumanas durante la pandemia.
Entre febrero y julio de 2021, investigadores llevaron a cabo 48 entrevistas con trabajadores agrícolas en zonas agricultoras de todo el estado, concluyendo que los trabajadores agrícolas padecieron vivencias peligrosas e inhumanas durante la pandemia.
A menudo, los trabajadores agrícolas carecen de la protección otorgada a la mayoría de las profesiones. Pueden correrlos debido a llevar a cabo actividades sindicales y no se les paga horas extras de trabajo, dos de las protecciones plasmadas en la Ley Nacional de Relaciones Laborales y la Ley de Normas Laborales Justas (FLSA por sus siglas en inglés). Las fincas que no contraten a más de siete trabajadores al año están exentas de todas las regulaciones por parte de FLSA, incluido el salario mínimo. Oregon se convirtió en el octavo estado en otorgar pago por horas extras de trabajo a la mayoría de los trabajadores agrícolas durante su corta temporada de trabajo de este año. El estudio, el cual fue una colaboración entre la Universidad del Estado de Oregon, la Universidad del Estado de Portland, la Universidad de Oregon, la Universidad de Ciencias y Salud de Oregon, el Instituto de Estudios Rurales de California y docenas de organizaciones para el servicio comunitario, da seguimiento en una encuesta realizada entre agosto y septiembre de 2020 y profundiza más en las experiencias personales que los trabajadores agrícolas enfrentan.
El estudio documenta la falta de protección contra el COVID en la fuerza laboral, la inseguridad de alimentos, la pérdida de ingresos, la crisis en el cuidado infantil y la falta de acceso a la información para el apoyo médico, social y económico.
“A través de los años que he enseñado, le tengo que seguir recordando a la gente que la forma en la que llega el alimento a nuestra mesa es a través de las manos de la gente,” dijo en una rueda de prensa el profesor Ron Mize, autor del estudio. “Es un trabajo difícil y mal pagado, lo cual mantiene bajo el precio de los alimentos, hace que tengamos suficiente comida; y, aun así, descuidamos constantemente el hecho que los trabajadores agrícolas son fundamentales para el sistema alimenticio.
Cincuenta y tres por ciento de las personas entrevistadas dijeron que no se sentían protegidas en el espacio laboral y muchas personas dijeron que salieron positivas durante el transcurso de las entrevistas. A menudo, las protecciones durante la era de COVID no fueron comunicadas debido a la barrera del idioma, especialmente entre el 30% de las personas encuestadas, las cuales son indígenas y hablan otro idioma Mesoamericano en lugar del idioma español.
El reporte termina con una lista de 14 recomendaciones, incluyendo el fortalecimiento de las actividades de auditoría en el lugar de trabajo de la Administración de Seguridad y Salud Ocupacional, la ampliación de la elegibilidad para las horas de trabajo extra y el acceso a los servicios de salud mental impartidos culturalmente.
Ex corredor de campo de Bend acusado de asesinato
La familia de Amara Marluke declara que el ex corredor de campo de Mountain View, Keenan Harpole, abuso de ella física y psicológicamente
Por Jack Harvel Traducido por/Translated by Jéssica Sánchez-Millar
La policía del condado Deschutes arresto a Keenan Harpole el 4 de abril in Bend alrededor de las 8:30 por presunto disparo y por matar a Amara Marluke alrededor de la 1 am cerca del plantel de la Universidad del Estado de Portland (PSU por sus siglas en inglés). La oficina del alguacil transportó a Harpole al Condado Multnomah y lo entregó a la policía de Portland. Hardpole se declaró inocente a los cargos de asesinato de segundo grado y por el uso ilegal de un arma y está detenido sin oportunidad de fianza.
Marluke era una artista de 19 años, activista y cursaba su primer año de universidad en PSU para terminar su licenciatura en música. Harpole también estaba cursando el primer año de universidad y llegó a formar parte del grupo de fútbol americano, aunque según a Universidad, tuvo que dejar el equipo. La tía de Marluke le dijo a la revista People que la pareja estuvo saliendo y que empleó violencia doméstica poco después de haber comenzado la relación en el verano de 2021. “El detective me dijo que había fallecido y no podía creerlo. Y sigo sin creerlo, sigo…me sigo resistiendo,” le dijo la madre de Marluke a KATU-2, la señora Amy Marluke. Había personas alrededor de ella tratando de alejarla y para ayudarla a que se mantuviera alejada. Pero, creo que todos pensamos que habría tiempo, que habría una oportunidad para que ella sanara y para que eligiera algo diferente. Simplemente se agravaron las cosas rápidamente.”
Un reporte de A Washington Post report encontró que cerca de la mitad de todas las mujeres que fueron asesinadas en la década anterior fueron asesinadas por su pareja anterior o actual. Más de un tercio de los hombres que cometen asesinatos domésticos eran propensos a la violencia y habían sido condenados por abuso doméstico, tenían alguna orden de restricción o habían cometido otros delitos violentos.
