George de Randich

Sounds like that police officer wanyed to make his quota of moving
violations!
George de Randich

-------Original Message-------

From: Julie Wose / Thane Jennings
Date: 6/14/2008 7:53:17 PM
To: obra@list.obra.org
Subject: [OBRA Chat] Deschutes County Sheriff Hates Bikes!

Today was the annual Double Dawg Tandem ride to Smith Rock and back from
Bend sponsored by Hutch's of Bend. The ride was relatively uneventful
until the way back. Approximately 15 of us were pulled over in Redmond for
rolling a stop sign. One in our group came to a full stop but this went
unoticed by the sheriff deputy. The sheriff used his siren and then
pulled in front of the group and slammed on his brakes. Traffic was
completely blocked in one direction. The deputy proceeded to scream and
yell and lecture us, not on running the stop sign but on causing an
accident that had happened earlier in the day. He also called for back-up
because we were such an unruly bunch. It was his contention that someone
on the ride pulled in front of a car causing him to swerve and hit someone
else head-on. As far as I can tell no one in our group caused or even saw
an accident. A number of the folks on the ride who were behind our group
had stopped for several flats and they came across the aftermath of the
auto accident. One of the folks who stopped for the flats is an EMT who
works for Lifeflight, he rendered first aid to the victims of the auto
accident. This is in direct contradiction to the Sargent who lectured us
about causing the accident, he claimed that no cyclist had stopped, this
is untrue, a whole group had stopped to render assistance. Every cyclist
who happened to ride by our group was stopped by the county sheriffs and
warned that they were watching cyclists in Deschutes County and that
Hutch's Bicycles was going to be sued because it was one of the riders on
their sponsored ride that had caused the accident. We were told that the
sheriff was fed up with the bad behaviour of cyclists and that the sheriff
would not tolerate it in the future and that we were to pass this
information on to our fellow cyclists.

I plan on writing a letter to the Deschutes County Sheriff and demanding
an explanation. I don't like the way the Deputy Dozer personnally
threatened everyone in our group, his behaviour was completely
unproffessional. No one in our group caused an accident yet we were
blamed by someone who clearly hates cyclists. I would appreciate hearing
from anyone else who was on the ride who can provide their version of the
days events and I would encourage other cyclists who were pulled over to
write to the Deschutes County Sheriffs office and set the story straight,
we did not cause this auto accident!

Thane Jennings


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