Black sedge or black bog rush, which is scientifically known as schoenus nigricans, is a species of sedge which grows in the San Bernardino Mountains and the eastern portion of the San Gabriel Mountains as well as a few other isolated areas in San Bernardino County where there are marshes.
Sedges are flowering plants, which superficially resemble the closely related rushes and the more distantly related grasses.
In addition to its presence locally, black sedge is native to Eurasia, parts of Africa, Australia, and other places in southern North America, including Mexico and the southernmost United States. It occurs nearly exclusively, with an estimated probability of 99 percent, under natural conditions in wetlands and other moist and alkaline habitat, primarily including marshes, calcareous bogs, and wet flatwoods, springs, seeps, peat bogs, heath, and alkali flats.
A perennial plant, schoenus nigricans grows in low, tight clumps eight to 30 inches high, the clumps formed by stems, threadlike leaves bearing wide and dark brown ligules, which are thin outgrowth at the junction of leaf and leafstalk. The stems are squarish, smooth and wiry. The leaf blades are erect, wiry, thin, triangular, and channeled. Their sheaths are dark reddish brown to black.
This plant’s flower cluster consists of a small, flattened set of very dark brown spikelets. The fruit is an achene. Achenes are singularly formed carpels, which contain a single seed inside a hardened seed coat to which the seed does not fully adhere. A carpel is the female reproductive part of the flower, which exists as a modified leave-bearing structure. In the case of black sedge, the coated seed, or nutlet, is a hard, glossy white shell.
It blooms from spring to summer.
Black sedge might first be encountered as clumps of wiry stems and leaves, having blackish long-tipped clusters at the stem tips. Each cluster of blackish spikelets has one very long, stiff, pointed bract, jutting out from below.
From Wikipedia; https://plants.ifas.ufl.edu; the National Biodiversity Network’s website:   https://nbn.org.uk/   and https://howlingpixel.com.

Within days of one another toward the end of last month, two further indications of the brutalization and/or malignant neglect of inmates in the care of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department publicly surfaced.
On Wednesday May 22, the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office criminally charged former sheriff’s deputy Luke Van Ginkel, 22, with assaulting and threatening an inmate in December 2018. Also charged in the matter was inmate Alex Garcia, 40. Also criminally charged in the incident relating to Van Ginkel and Garcia was Deputy Arthur Enriquez, 33,
The sheriff’s department acknowledges having received credible accounts to indicate that on at least two separate occasions since he Van Ginkel began working as a guard at West Valley Detention Center, he engaged in action that crossed the line into criminal conduct.
On December 31, 2018, an inmate assaulted by Garcia lodged a grievance alleging maltreatment and staff misconduct relating to his beating.
According to the department, “During that same shift, a sergeant received the grievance and began the initial investigation. This initial investigation revealed alleged criminal misconduct involving deputies facilitating an assault on an inmate by another inmate.”
The department maintains that as of January 2, 2019, “the specialized investigations division began a criminal investigation, which involved interviewing more than 100 witnesses, reviewing extensive video and audio recordings, as well as collecting other evidence.”
Ultimately, according to the department, sheriff’s deputies Van Ginkel and Enriquez “were identified as the involved suspects. Van Ginkel was placed on administrative leave on January 3, 2019. He was hired on July 8, 2017 and started at the West Valley Detention Center on December 16, 2017. As of April 1, 2019, Van Ginkel no longer works for the sheriff’s department. Enriquez was also placed on administrative leave on January 5, 2019. He was hired on January 7, 2017 and started at the West Valley Detentions Center on July 22, 2017.”
There is yet no word as whether the union representing sheriff’s department personnel, the San Bernardino County’s Safety Employees Benefit Association, will intervene in an effort to reverse Van Ginkel’s firing. Van Ginkel attended Upland High School and graduated in 2015.
It is unclear whether Enriquez is yet employed with the department.
In the action taken by the district attorney’s office on May 22, Van Ginkel is charged with a violation of Penal Code Sections 422(a) – engaging in criminal threats and 245(a)(4) – assault by means of force likely to result in great bodily injury.
On December 24, according to the district attorney’s office, Van Ginkel told an inmate, Jose Angel Carillo, he was going to kill him.
The district attorney’s office further alleges that Van Ginkel subsequently set up a fight between Garcia, who is jailed on a murder charge, and Richard Freeman, who is likewise in custody on suspicion of murder. The fight took place on December 31.
Enriquez is charged with Penal Code 32 – accessory to a crime. Enriquez allegedly sought to deter the investigation in Van Ginkel’s action by filing a false report and making misrepresentations to investigators. Garcia, who assisted Van Ginkel in perpetrating the assault, according to the district attorney’s office, was charged with Penal Code 245(a)(4) – assault by means of force likely to result in great bodily injury.
Van Ginkel has his defenders, who say he is really a nice guy who only gets mean if he has a little too much sugar. He is scheduled for arraignment on June 17 before Judge Dan Detienne.
Enriquez is scheduled for arraignment on June 17 before Judge Dan Detienne.
Perry Belden, who was formerly an inmate at the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department jail in Joshua Tree, has filed a federal lawsuit alleging the neglect of his jailers while he was in custody led to the loss of both of his legs and his hand.
Belden’s ordeal began shortly after he was was taken into custody on March 27, 2018, in the aftermath of a March 16, 2018 incident at the Twentynine Palms home of his mother and stepfather. On the earlier day, Belden’s mother, Robin Olds, summoned the sheriff’s department when a fight broke out between Belden and his stepfather. Before officers arrived, Belden, who had previous convictions for obstructing a police office and grand theft, and was addicted to heroin, left the scene.
According to documents filed with the court, the sheriff’s department obtained a bench warrant for Belden’s arrest and deputies instituted a search for him, including returning to Olds’ home on no fewer than eight occasions to see if they could effectuate his arrest. Belden’s status as a known drug addict with previous arrests and convictions for theft and resisting arrest prompted a concerted effort to bring him into custody. Belden, who was lying low at an associate’s home, became aware of the warrant for his arrest and resigned himself to surrendering to authorities on March 27, 2018, having his mother tell the sheriff’s department where he was. Instead of responding as Olds and Belden believed was their understanding by coming to the residence where Belden was in order to take him into custody without incident, the deputies arrived en masse and armed with assault weapons. Belden took refuge in the attic of the home, whereupon the deputies fired a pepper spray bomb into the attic, at which point Belden plunged through the ceiling, injuring himself in the fall. According to court papers, the deputies then twice employed a stun gun on Belden when he was sprawled on the floor.
Because of his injuries, Belden was initially transported by deputies to the Hi-Desert Medical Center. Disclosure that Belden was a  heroin addict was made at that point to both Hi-Desert Medical Center personnel and the sheriff’s department. Belden was prescribed Klonopin to prevent withdrawal-induced seizures. According to the lawsuit, the department was on notice that Belden’s vital signs were to be monitored. Without regard to what they had been told, the deputies transported Belden to the Morongo Basin jail, which lacked even rudimentary medical facilities and had no trained medical personnel on staff. No medication was provided to Belden while he was incarcerated in the Morongo Basin jail.
During his arraignment at the Joshua Tree Courthouse on April 2, Olds said Belden “looked like death.” When Belden told the escorting deputies that he was feeling weak and ill, they responded that was what happened to “crackheads” who were out of crack and he would just have to “suck it up.” When he was unable to walk on his own power, they dragged him into the courtroom. Judge Bert L. Swift made no note of the circumstance either on or off the record, and took no action to ensure that Belden’s medical condition was looked into. Belden entered a plea to assault and vandalism, the vandalism being that related to his having fallen through the ceiling of the home where he was taken into custody.
“Perry took the first plea deal offered to him because he wanted to get out of local custody,” according to Belden’s suit.
On April 3, Belden was transferred to the West Valley Detention Center, where on the following morning his condition had grown to such a critical state that personnel there recognized his life was in danger. He was transported to the Arrowhead Medical Center, where it was in short order determined that Belden was suffering from septic shock brought on by unattended infections and was experiencing renal failure. To prevent the gangrene in his limbs from spreading further, doctors were obliged to amputate both his legs and left hand. His right hand was saved, but is now seriously deformed.
The county was served with the lawsuit on May 24. Neither the county nor Judge Swift, who is an employee of the State of California, were willing to comment on the litigation.

By clicking on the blue portal below, you can download a PDF of the June 7 edition of the San Bernardino County Sentinel.

Sentinel 06-07-19

By Mark Gutglueck
In a solid majority vote, the San Bernardino City Council this week ended its contract with Straddling Yocca Carlson & Rauth, the law firm to which it turned in 2012 to assist it in its entrance into, and then nearly five years later the penultimate exit from, Chapter 9 bankruptcy. It was Straddling Yocca Carlson & Rauth, and in particular one of the firm’s attorneys, Paul Glassman, who structured the manner in which the city went about stiffing scores of its creditors and vendors, paying some of the more lucky ones 80 percent of what they were owed, with far more receiving half of what they were due from the city, and many others less than that. In 2017, when the city made its official exit from bankruptcy, it had succeeded in stepping out from under slightly more than $350 million in debt, leaving in its wake dozens of those who had in good faith provided it with goods and services and had never been paid and were thus themselves driven right up to or over the precipice of bankruptcy and financial ruin.
The law firm of Straddling Yocca Carlson & Rauth including Glassman, however, was not among those who had nothing – or next to nothing – to show for its association with the city. Indeed, for assisting the city in skipping out on its debts, the firm was paid $25 million.
San Bernardino made the Chapter 9 filing in August 2012 after years of dwindling revenues, expenditures drastically exceeding income, and deteriorating financial numbers that resulted in $80 million in unfunded liabilities and a $49 million annual operating deficit. Chapter 9 of the United States Bankruptcy Code provides a financially distressed entity such as a municipality protection from its creditors while it develops and negotiates a plan for adjusting its debts.
Perhaps predictably, under the terms presented by Glassman to the bankruptcy court and Federal Bankruptcy Judge Meredith Jury, city employees and retirees did relatively well, and the lion’s share of generous pension benefits for then-current and former workers offered through the California Public Employees Retirement System were preserved, though current employees were called upon to make a greater contribution toward those pension plans, and some benefits were marginally reduced or modified. The city’s commitment to the California Public Employees Retirement System, which had been a major factor in breaking the city’s bank, was not erased, though the same level of benefits given to employees in the past through that system were discontinued for new employees.
Virtually every other entity, with only a handful of exceptions, that had made the mistake of dealing with the city both immediately prior to the bankruptcy and during it was treated far more shabbily by the city, as Straddling Yocca Carlson & Rauth and Glassman guided it through bankruptcy court.
Among the city’s creditors that did not fare as well were Luxembourg-based EEPK, holders of the city’s pension bonds, and Ambac Assurance Corp, which indemnified some of those bonds. When the city failed to provide them with the same terms of repayment as the California Public Employees Retirement System, they sued, asserting the bonds and whatever fees are associated with them fall under the same pension obligation as the payments to the pension system. That lawsuit was settled in March 2016 on the basis of an agreement by which the city agreed to pay not 100 percent but rather 40 percent of what is owed to EEPK and Ambac.
One class of creditors who were really burned were litigants and claimants against the city, including ones who had prevailed in certain lawsuits, among them those alleging they had endured civil rights violations relating to excessive use of force by the police department. Those entities and the lawyers representing them were provided with just a penny on the dollar for the first $1 million in judgments against the city.
The heavy legal work with regard to the bankruptcy ended with the city’s official exit from Chapter 9 protection in June 2017 in accordance with Judge Jury having signed four months previously on February 7, 2017 the city’s confirmation order and requested third party injunction preventing any remaining disputed claims from interrupting the bankruptcy exit. While at that point a majority of the city’s creditors had agreed to the plan, some stragglers refused to compromise or were otherwise insisting that the pittance the city had offered did not truly qualify as a compromise.  Straddling Yocca Carlson & Rauth and Glassman since June 2017 continued to represent the city with regard to those claims. Coming into Wednesday evening’s council meeting, it was the contention of Mayor John Valdivia and his chief of staff, Bilial Essayli, that Straddling Yocca Carlson & Rauth and Glassman since June 2017 continued to bill the city at a rate of $200,000 per month for what Valdivia and Essayli contend is minor legal mop-up work that should not cost that much.
Accordingly, Valdivia placed on the agenda for the Wednesday, June 5 city council meeting an item that called upon the city council to “review and consider termination of professional services agreement with Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth, P.C. for reorganization and financial restructuring advice.”
At the meeting, Valdivia said that as he was emerging from his vehicle in his allotted space in the parking structure at the civic center to come into the meeting, he was approached by “Mr. Clark [Thomas P. Clark, a Straddling Yocca Carlson & Rauth attorney], who was waiting for me.” Valdivia said that while “I respect his [Clark’s] eagerness and passion” with regard to Clark’s firm potentially losing some very lucrative work, he was intent on proceeding with the item before the council. “The point is we met with Mr. Clark,” the mayor said. Valdivia then gave the floor to his chief staff to “allow the public to know what exactly are the issues with the billing.”
“Mr. Glassman has been billing the city at about $200,000 per month in legal services,” Essayli said. “The mayor’s office has done an analysis of his bills along with representatives of the city attorney’s office. We are in agreement that those bills are excessive and frankly unreasonable. The city really can’t afford to wait to move on this item. We spent $2 million last year on legal fees from Mr. Glassman. The city did not have money budgeted for that. They had to dip into reserves in order to cover his legal services. We have budgeted for this upcoming year about $700,000 for legal bills related to the bankruptcy. At the current rate that Mr. Glassman is billing the city, he’s going to blow through that budget in about four months. We believe this work is just about wrapped up. The bankruptcy is done. This stuff is really not complicated. We believe BB&K [Best Best & Krieger, which provides contract city attorney services to San Bernardino] can transition. They are professionals. They can take on this work and do it at a rate that is much more efficient than what Mr. Glassman is charging us. So, if we wait another month, it’s going to be another month of $200,000 in legal services, and then you have to give him 30 days notice, so that is another $200,000, so the cost of waiting is $400,000, money we believe the city doesn’t have. So, if the council votes to terminate tonight, Best, Best & Krieger will work with him over the next month to transition, and if they believe they need Mr. Glassman to advise or consult, they can make that request to the city council. So, we strongly urge that this get heard tonight.”
Essayli went on, “The city still has some bankruptcy cases that are open. We have asked Mr. Glassman for a summary of the pending cases. He has not provided them after numerous requests. We believe the motion work is straightforward. We do not believe it should cost anywhere around $200,000 in monthly legal fees. We believe that should be closer to $50,000, at most. We’ve consulted with our assistant city attorney, and I believe she has a similar viewpoint on that. You can ask her. We think that, frankly, the bills are excessive. We’ve worked with him for the last four months to try to get his bills down, and I believe his statement was, ‘Well, the bills are what they are.’ So at this point, he’s not shown any willingness to rein in his legal bills, and that’s very concerning for us.”
Councilman Fred Shorett made a motion that the item be continued until the city council’s June 19 meeting. Councilman Jim Mulvihill seconded the motion.
Valdivia said, “This is a policy discussion that now goes back to the council, and the floor motion is to terminate the contract tonight. And so…”
“I believe the floor motion was to continue,” City Attorney Gary Saenz broke in.
Saenz disputed Essayli’s suggestion that it would take two months longer to disengage from Straddling Yocca Carlson & Rauth if the action was not taken that night. Essayli stated that what would normally be the council’s first meeting in July has been canceled. Saenz, who was advocating for a continuation of the item, pointed out that the matter could be taken up at the council’s second June meeting.  “There’s a meeting on the 19th,” Saenz said. “So, the indication that it is going to take two months longer is incorrect. It’s going to take two weeks longer, at worst, for this item to move forward. Now, this firm has been engaged with the city for seven years. To say that two weeks now is not acceptable after being in the relationship with them for seven years in my mind does not make sense. In the backup material there is an indication that says staff anticipates there will have to be replacement counsel. It has not been determined yet that there will be cost savings. If there will be cost savings, great. I understand that and perhaps Glassman, if he understands that, he might change whatever his attitude has been. But I think he should have an opportunity to be heard by this council as to those issues. And also remember this is an ongoing legal proceeding that is still open and is still in the bankruptcy court. There may be legal ramifications to this that are unknown at this time to this council. We heard Councilman Sanchez tonight and I agree with him wholeheartedly that an uninformed decision should not be made by this council. This council needs information from Glassman. I informed him yesterday. He was surprised that this item was on the agenda. He had not heard that it was on the agenda tonight and he suggested that a closed session at the very least to inform council of the legal ramifications, the legal consequences, perhaps, of removing him at this time, what those might be, so the council is informed. I’m only asking for two weeks. So, the delay will only be, ultimately, two weeks. If the council decides in two weeks they want to terminate the relationship, they can do that. They give him a 30-day notice, and there has been a two week-delay, which after a seven-year contract is not significantly consequential.”
Valdivia said, “My growing concern, Mr. Saenz, is that we have attempted patiently, we have done our due diligence to address the issue with Straddling Yocca since on or about the beginning of February. And we have waited patiently. Staff has worked with Mr. Glassman. We have attempted to reconstruct priorities and scopes of services, and the idea that he is somehow surprised is alarming. We have asked him to provide the bills and the invoices and to redirect priorities on expediting some of these cases. I don’t know where this is coming from that he needs another two weeks; we have a seven-year relationship. In fairness, the taxpayers of this community have already paid $25 million to Straddling Yocca, so as the Book of Ecclesiastes says “There is a time for everything.”
Saenz retorted, “Well, I understand that there has been $25 million expended. At the same time, his performance in the bankruptcy court has resulted in the saving of over $300 million. I think that’s pretty good bang for the buck, if you ask me. All I’m suggesting is he should have an opportunity to inform this council as to what the ramifications, the impact and consequences of that might be. And if he’s not able to do that, then of course this council is certainly justified in terminating the relationship, but not, I think, until they have that information, until he has the opportunity to respond to this council and in a closed session as well to discuss the legal issues as they pertain to the bankruptcy.”
“Why wouldn’t our city attorney advise us of that?” Essayli said, his reference to the city attorney being to the law firm of Best Best & Krieger.
Councilman Fred Shorett leapt into the breach.  “Excuse me,” Shorett said. “Thank you, Mr. Essayli. You are staff, not our city attorney. I tend to follow the experts or the people we pay to do that. I can’t see that after seven years and this horrible thing that we’ve gone through called bankruptcy that we can’t wait two more weeks, particularly at the request of our own city attorney. This is a legal matter. I am particularly interested in your characterization of ‘we,’” Shorett said, referring to Valdivia. “We, who have been working diligently and waiting patiently and talking to Straddling Yocca and these people to resolve some of the concerns that ‘we’ have?” he said. “’We,’ meaning who? Not I. I’m really concerned about it. I would like to hear from them before we pull the ripcord and cut him lose and I cannot imagine that two weeks is going to make a difference, not in this case, not to end something that is so important. And if he’s just saying, ‘I’m billing,’ and we’re not getting bang for our buck, we’re getting billed $200,000 a month and not getting service, I’ll be the first one to end that contract, the very first one, I’ll lead the charge, and I’ll sue them to get it back for lack of service or for malpractice.”
“I concur with that,” said Saenz. “If the bills are excessive relative to what the city is receiving for those services, then I agree that it should be terminated. But I think we need the specifics on that before we take this action.”
Shorett moved to continue the action on firing Straddling Yocca Carlson & Rauth and Glassman until the June 19 council meeting. Mulvihill again seconded the motion.
Councilwoman Sandra Ibarra then weighed in. She referenced the payment registry on that evening’s agenda, specifying, “In case no one saw it, Straddling Yocca, the total payout for the financial restructuring period ending 2/28/2019, a hundred and three, almost one hundred and four thousand [dollars]. Again, for the month of March, the financial restructuring period ending 3/31, they charged us an additional $128,622. That’s a total of $232,600, just about, for those two months. Do we have information on this restructuring? I know this came before us in February, that we were trying to transfer over to BBK [Best Best & Krieger]. That was the understanding. Can they provide us an update at the Tuesday meeting [June 11] during closed session instead of waiting until the 19th, since they already billed us for those two months?”
“If that’s council’s wish, they can make that request,” said Saenz. “My suggestion would be agendizing it for that meeting [June 11] and also for the closed session of that meeting. If council is that anxious, rather than having it at the regular meeting, I have no problem with that. But I think they should be given an opportunity to inform this council, before this council makes such a vital decision.”
Essayli said, “Mr. Glassman was here in February in both closed session and open session. If you remember his report, frankly, it wasn’t a very good report and it was hard to get a clear answer from him. That’s the trouble with him. So, we’ve tried for four months. He’s not acting in good faith, in our belief. So, we don’t believe two weeks is going to do anything other than incur the city more legal expenses.”
Councilwoman Bessine Richard asked for Sonia Carvalho, an employee with the firm of Best Best & Krieger, which has been hired to augment Saenz in his function as city attorney as his final year as elected city attorney winds down in accordance with the charter amendment approved by the city’s voters in 2016, which eliminated the elected city clerk’s and elected city attorney’s position as of Spring 2020. Best Best & Krieger is then scheduled to move in as the city attorney. By eliminating Straddling Yocca Carlson & Rauth as the city’s legal representative with regard to the remaining issues pertaining to its August 2012 filing for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection, the city will very likely increase the workload Best Best & Krieger will undertake, and thus the amount of remuneration it will receive.
Encouraged by that prospect, Assistant City Attorney Carvalho said, “I was just looking through some notes here. Following the city council’s closed session in February, the city council had directed me to reach out to Mr. Glassman and have a conversation with him. I sent an email to several members of our administrative staff in March. My email read as follows: ‘As directed by the city council, today City Manager [sic] Gary Saenz, Richard Egger and I had a conference call with Paul Glassman and his staff. Paul provided a thorough update.’ I go on to list the four actions, specific actions, [that] would be taken, that the small property claims, Paul would draft a letter to be sent to all claimants along with checks. We decided this would be an efficient way for him to handle these matters, and that he was to send out the letter no later than March 28. I don’t know from our finance staff whether that occurred, but that was what we had discussed and that was a summary of the email I sent. We were also to receive summaries of proofs of claims and Paul would prepare a letter to resolve four particular matters. I am aware that those four particular matters, that the letters did go out. There was also an issue about Paul speaking with someone at the county and school district to settle a number of the very difficult claims, and in that I had requested that your former city manager, ‘Please give us the contact information,’ as it was my understanding that she had begun to talk to them about those cases. We were also to get a summary of all of the 910 claims,” Carvalho said, without explaining what she meant by the term 910. “Paul was to prepare a brief strategy statement for all of the claims on this list. He was also supposed to identify an action plan, and provide an estimated timeline and budget. And finally, we asked him to prepare a summary of all the lawsuits. He was to prepare a brief strategy statement for each of these, a strategy statement so we could help evaluate whether we could resolve these and how much they would take, rather than just sort of letting them move forward on their own. He also identified cases that previous in-house counsel was managing, and had asked us for a review of these cases, which my partner, Richard Eggar, has been reviewing. So, that is what I did. That is what the council directed me to do, that is the work I did. I communicated that work. Our city attorney was on the phone with us, and he is familiar with the things we asked Paul to do. I don’t have a particular opinion on this. I take ethics very seriously, and I don’t feel that I should have any say in what your decision is. I just wanted to communicate to you that I did what you asked me to do, and I believe we need to continue to monitor this very carefully and be more proactive in making sure we get these cases closed as soon as possible”
“Did he provide the reports you requested, though?” Essayli asked.
“I have not received the reports that we had indicated in this email,” Carvalho said. “He did receive a copy of it.”
Councilman Ted Sanchez asked Carvalho, “You’ve had an opportunity to review their billable hours for the last 12 months, right?”
“Actually, just the last several months, because it wasn’t until you met in closed session that you asked me to specifically work with our city attorney to review those,” Carvalho said.
“Did those bills in your legal opinion seem excessive for the work being done?” Sanchez pressed.
“So, I mean always when you see a six figure bill for a month, you question why that amount is so high,” Carvalho said. “I don’t think that I’m personally qualified to tell you whether in fact any particular bill was wrong or not. Given what our conversation was in February, I would expect them to be more pro-actively managing this. I did not ask him to get his bills at any particular level. What I asked him to do was to explain to me in advance if he was going to send us a bill that exceeded a hundred thousand dollars. Actually, what I said in my email to him was, ‘If you are going to send us a bill that exceeds $67,000,’ because that’s how much we budgeted, ‘I would expect for you to send me in advance an explanation as to why the bill is more than $67,000.’ And I will say he did that the first month. Not in the subsequent months.”
“I think we have our answer,” Sanchez said. “This city is being taken advantage of by this firm, and they’re not acting in good faith as our partners guiding us through this bankruptcy. We need to seek legal services elsewhere. So, I make a substitute motion that we terminate the contract with Straddling Yocca and that we go into negotiations to contract this bankruptcy legal work to Best Best & Krieger.”
Councilwoman Bessine Richard seconded the motion.
Councilman Jim Mulvihill asked if Straddling Yocca could challenge the termination legally.
“In compliance with the contract, we can terminate by giving thirty days notice, and that’s the end of the deal,” Saenz said. “I wouldn’t expect there to be any liability or breach of contract as a result of doing that.”
Carvalho said, “I think the real issue here is whether or how – if you decide to do this, how you would go about doing this in terms of conversations with them in terms of transitioning, getting and files and really I think if you take this action this evening I would ask for the ability to continue to work with Mr. Glassman and in the event if there is something it would seem irresponsible for us to assume, that we would come back to council and have that conversation.“
“From my point of view they’ve been working on this for years, and so, if we were to terminate them, we’d be starting from point zero,” Mulvihill said.
“I don’t believe we would be starting from ground zero,” Saenz said. “There’s been a lot of work done pursuant to the contract to engage in a transition of sorts, to provide us with documents, with all of the work product that they have, and so on. So it’s not a situation where we would be starting from ground zero. There would be transition issues. There may be difficulties in the court that I’m not aware of that only Mr. Glassman could explain to you. I know there are current pending issues in the bankruptcy court itself relative to bankruptcy law that he is engaged in. So, this council should be provided with that information, and once they have the information, then make an informed decision rather than an uninformed decision as to what the full ramifications of those are. If we are not getting enough for our money, than I would applaud the termination myself. I’m not opposed to a termination. What I am suggesting is that without him [Glassman] present or without an opportunity for him to be heard, as I suggested when I told him last night that this is on the agenda, he was not aware that it was and would like the opportunity to be heard and believes that a closed session would be of value to the council in making this decision, a closed session regarding the legal issues currently pending in the bankruptcy court.”
“Paul Glassman was one of the keys to getting us through bankruptcy,” Mulvihill said. “The kind of briefs and presentations that he provided to the bankruptcy court, I think, eased our way through the bankruptcy process. So, I just think, from what the city attorney has said, wait two weeks. Let’s hear from them.”
“We believe it’s inappropriate for Mr. Glassman to advise the city on the legal ramifications or consequences of terminating his own contract,” Essayli said. “It’s a conflict of interest. He did provide a service to the city and he has been handsomely compensated, to the tune of $25 million.”
“This appears to be another one of those contracts that this administration wants to get rid of, and they want to do it their way, and I’m sorry, but the mayor and his chief of staff do not run this city,” Shorett said. “It’s the city council. We make these decisions.”
Sanchez’s substitute motion was voted upon and passed 5-to-2 with Shorett and Mulvihill dissenting.

Rod Foster,  who previously served in the capacity of the top administrative, de facto top administrative or in senior administrative posts with four San Bernardino County cities, has returned to take up the top managerial position at a fifth county municipality.
On June 17, Foster will officially assume the city manager’s post in Rialto. He will replace Mike Story, who departed as city manager 18 months ago. A succession of acting managers, including several of the city’s department heads, have headed the city on an interim basis since December 2017.
“We are thrilled to have Rod lead our extraordinary City Hall team and build on the momentum we have created over the past several years,” Mayor Deborah Robertson said.
Foster’s municipal experience began three decades ago when he was hired into a mid-level management position with the City of Chino. His next move up the municipal managerial evolutionary chain was when he he was hired into a similar post in Hesperia, where he soon acceded to the post of deputy city manager. While in that position with Hesperia, Foster was temporarily elevated to interim city manager in 2001 following the departure of David Berger as city manager there. At that time, Robb Quincey, representing Western Water, had sought to convince the Hesperia City Council to sell off its water division to that company. The council declined to make that sale, but was deeply impressed with Quincey’s presentation. Upon discovering that Quincey possessed a bachelor’s degree, master’s degree and doctorate in public administration, the Hesperia city council’s members moved to hire him to serve as city manager, despite Quincey having no previous municipal management experience.
For four years, Foster mentored Quincey, his boss, in how to run a city. When Upland, led by its then-mayor John Pomierski, equally impressed by Quincey’s outward appearance, lured him away from Hesperia to become city manager, Quincey insisted upon Upland hiring Foster as his next-in-command. A week after Quincey’s arrival in Upland, Foster departed from The City of Progress and signed on with The City of Gracious Living, where, for the next four years, he essentially ran Upland while Quincey served as the staff’s figurehead and Pomierski’s hatchet man.
Foster’s value as a public administrator was starkly illustrated after he absented himself from Upland to take on the position of Colton city manager in 2009. In the months after his departure, with City Hall then under the care of Quincey, the Upland ship of state foundered. In 2011, Pomierski was indicted, and then pleaded guilty to bribery charges in 2012. Quincey followed Pomierski into infamy, being unceremoniously shown the door by the Upland City Council two months after Pomierski’s indictment. He was subsequently criminally charged by the district attorney’s office with several felonies, including unlawful misappropriation of public money, gaining personal benefit from an official contract, and giving false testimony under oath. In September 2014 three of those charges against Quincey were dismissed and a felony conviction on a single count of conflict of interest by a public officer was entered against him
Contrastingly, Foster was earning accolades for his performance as a public administrator in Colton, which while ranking 13th in population among San Bernardino County’s 24 cities, boasted the seventh largest overall budget of the county’s municipalities, and was as close to being a full-service city as any of the county’s municipal entities. Colton was one of only two San Bernardino County cities with its own electrical utility, and it had its own police, fire, water, water treatment and cemetery divisions. Though it had privatized its sanitation department in 1997, the city was nevertheless a self-sustaining urban unit in virtually every other sense. Significantly, it was host to the main campus of the county hospital, known as Arrowhead Regional Medical Center.
Foster took up the governmental reins in Colton at a difficult and challenging juncture in the city’s history, after the departure of former city manager Daryl Parrish, who left Colton to become city manager with the city of Covina, taking with him the city’s finance director, Dilu DeAlwis. Shortly after their departure, the council learned that confident budget projections Parrish and DeAlwis had made previously were in error and that the city in fact had a $5.8 million deficit.
Foster immediately set about imposing several rounds of belt tightening, including substantial layoffs and salary and benefit cuts for remaining employees. This triggered virulent personal attacks on Foster, who with aplomb blunted and deflected those challenges by imposing upon himself an even heftier salary reduction than was being assessed against the rest of city staff.
He energetically pursued state and federal grants, even as the economy was contracting, consolidated city departments, radically reduced spending out of the city’s general fund, and beefed up the city’s general fund reserves from the $50,000 contained therein in 2009 to $2.3 million prior to his departure.
He also overcame the disadvantage of having to manage a city that was being ruled by a sharply divided city council, which involved a 4-3 ruling coalition headed by former Mayor Kelly Chastain. In 2010, Chastain was defeated by former Colton Community Development Director David Zamora, who had been a casualty of Foster’s staff downsizing.  This put Zamora into political ascendancy, but Foster deftly made himself indispensable to Zamora, as the city continued in its effort to turn a corner in stabilizing its finances. When David Zamora died in the summer of 2011 and was succeeded as mayor by his wife, Sara, Foster maintained his status as the consumate administrative virtuoso leading the city.
That job was taking a toll on Foster, however, who was often working 50 to 56 hours per week to stay abreast of the challenges that continued to dog Colton. In February 2013 he departed Colton to take the position as city manager in the affluent Orange County community of Laguna Niguel, replacing Tim Casey, who at that point had been Laguna Niguel’s first and only city manager during its then-23-year history.
Slightly more than four years later, Foster departed Laguna Niguel in June 2017. He immediately moved into the position of chief of parish operations at St. Edward the Confessor Catholic Church in Dana Point.
Foster, who is fully vested in the State of California’s Public Employee Retirement System and has achieved retirement age, nevertheless has a reason to take on a lucrative public agency management post in that his 18-year-old son, Kyle, is headed to Louisiana State University, which will entail $28,627 out-of-state student tuition along with room and board costs roughly in the range of $19,000. Foster will be provided with a salary of $240,000 per year together with $85,000 in benefits, such that he will receive $325,000 in total annual compensation. He is being provided with 120 hours of vacation leave up front, with the addition of 10 hours per pay period thereafter. He is being given 120 hours of sick leave up front, with an accrual rate of 10 hours per month thereafter. He is allowed 140 hours of administrative leave per year. The council also consented to provide him with an $8,500 relocation reimbursement if he moves to San Bernardino County and within 25 miles of City Hall within two years.
Foster earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of La Verne. He also has studied in the executive program at the University of California Berkeley, where he earned a certificate in strategic management of public organizations.
Foster will relieve Fire Chief Sean Grayson, who was appointed to serve as interim city manager in December 2018.
–Mark Gutglueck

As efforts to comply with a state-imposed mandate that water users in Indian Wells Valley reduce water usage to a sustainable level by the year 2040 proceed, it appears that San Bernardino County has been politically outmuscled within the regime that has been formed to effectuate those limitations.
Accordingly, the ability of San Bernardino County, its residents and its businesses at the extreme northwest corner of its jurisdiction to preserve for themselves the ability to draft sufficient water to expand development or increase industrial, agricultural and mining activity over the next century or beyond is on a trajectory to be sharply attenuated.
Indian Wells Valley straddles southeastern Kern County, southwestern Inyo County and Northwestern San Bernardino County. Underlying it is the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Basin, from which the City of Ridgecrest and its outlying area’s domestic, commercial, industrial and agricultural water users draw a portion of their water, as does the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station, the Searles Valley Mineral Company in Trona and a small number of industrial, commercial and domestic users in Trona.
Historically, the Indian Wells Valley Water Basin experienced roughly 7,000 to 11,000 acre-feet of annual natural water recharge per year. For three decades users of water in the basin have been drafting on average 28,000 to 30,000 acre-feet of water annually.
In 2015, then-California Governor Jerry Brown, in the face of a four-year running drought, mandated water-saving measures throughout the state. Water use in the Indian Wells Valley Water Basin was reduced to under 24,000 acre-feet, which still exceeded the estimated 7,300 acre-feet of recharge by 16,700 acre feet.
In September 2014, Governor Brown signed into law the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which requires local agencies to draft plans to bring groundwater aquifers into balanced levels of pumping and recharge.
Through a joint exercise of powers agreement, the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority was created with Kern County, San Bernardino County, Inyo County, the City of Ridgecrest and the Indian Wells Valley Water District as general members and the United States Navy and the United States Department of the Interior Bureau of Land Management as associate members, with each general member having one voting seat on the authority board and the federal associate members participating in all board discussions, but not having a vote.
The joint powers authority took as its mandate counteracting the overdraft of the aquifer underlying Indian Wells Valley.
The authority retained an engineering consultant, with which the authority and the Indian Wells Valley Water District have sought to derive a strategy for both reducing water use in the valley and increasing groundwater recharge to reach a balance of both that will end the overdraft.  Several different plans, or models, have been contemplated, but as yet have not been implemented. In virtually all of those, San Bernardino County/Trona/Searles Valley are to be provided with substantially less water than the entities in Kern County, which essentially dominate the board of the joint powers authority.
If the water allotments into the future are to be based on historic usage patterns, it is logical that San Bernardino County users will be given less water, since in recent years entities outside of San Bernardino County have made more active use of Indian Wells Valley Water than have domestic and industrial users in Trona and Searles Valley.
According to 2016 water use data, that year 10,253 acre-feet were drafted from the valley’s aquifer, in accordance with severe water use restrictions imposed by the state because of the drought, while roughly 7,650 acre-feet of recharge in the valley’s confines took place. In this way, there was a 2,603 acre-foot deficit from the Indian Wells Valley water table in 2016 alone. The largest water user was the Indian Wells Valley Municipal Water District, which drafted 6,412 acre-feet; the Navy, which used 2,041 acre-feet, was the second largest user; the City of Ridgecrest, which utilized 373 acre-feet, followed; domestic mutual water well operators used 300 acre-feet; well operators in Searles/Trona were the fifth largest users, having drawn 225 acre-feet. Inyokern drafted 102 acre feet. There were a number of de minimis uses, all of which drafted less than ten acre-feet. Their total use was 800 acre-feet.
Stetson Engineers has been designated the water resources manager for Indian Wells Valley.
The authority’s technical and policy advisory committee has made or is currently making a review of five separate overdraft reduction plans or models.
The first model calls for allowing a whopping 28,600 acre-feet to be drawn per year from 2022 to 2029, and dropping that usage pattern by one-tenth a year from 2030 to 2039 until the goal of 7,650 acre-feet is attained. That yearly pumping level would be sustained until 2070.
In a second model, roughly 20,000 acre-feet of drafting would be permitted to occur until 2034 or thereabouts, followed by 12 percent reductions per year for five years thereafter, with the 7,650 acre-foot goal achieved by 2040.
A third contemplated model would be implemented no later than January 2022, setting total pumping at that point until 2029 at 28,600 acre-feet. For the decade of 2030 to 2039 inclusive, ten percent reductions from the 28,600 acre-feet usage pattern would be initiated across the board until the “safe and sustainable” 7,650 acre-feet per year yield is reached, and then maintained through 2070.
The fourth model calls for modified and coordinated agricultural pumping with allocation transfers from farmer to farmer, initiating in January 2022. Rampdowns would occur for five years running until total maximum pumping of 12,000 acre-feet per year was attained as of 2027. That level of water use would be sustained from 2028 through 2070. If that did not match the annual replenishment pattern, further reductions would take place.
The fifth model would involve drastic near-term pumping reductions. San Bernardino County users would be reduced to drafting a minuscule amount of water from the Indian Wells Valley water supply under this scenario. Some have referred to this as a so-called nuclear option that will be implemented if no other options are accepted. Under this plan, pumping reductions would begin in 2022. All agricultural use of water would be ended and Searles Valley Minerals, the primary San Bernardino County user of water from Indian Wells Valley, would be disallowed any access to the aquifer as well. The Indian Wells Valley Water District, the Navy, the City of Ridgecrest, domestic well owners and mutuals, Inyokern, and a handful of domestic users in Searles/Trona would be collectively reduced to drafting no more than a total of 10,000 acre feet per year from 2022 to 2034.
Under the best of circumstances, San Bernardino County-based users could not expect the joint powers authority to come up with a water use restriction regime that will allot them more than 2.22 percent of the valley’s water.
Some advocates for San Bernardino County are alarmed by that prospect.
Virtually all of the other competing interests in Indian Wells Valley are progressing toward establishing into-perpetuity water drafting entitlements that far exceed those that San Bernardino County officials are managing to lay claim to for Trona and Searles Valley.
This action, which is taking place far from the county seat of San Bernardino, is happening without the knowledge or conscious regard of the San Bernardino County public. Only a very limited circle within San Bernardino County’s government structure, who have other duties and demands on their time and attention, have focused on this issue. In this way, concern is growing among those sensitive to the issue that the very real interests the county and its residents have in what is essentially an ongoing water rights adjudication process are being given short shrift. To them, the county’s failure to act during this crucial time is resulting in all of the other entities now competing to secure water availability in Indian Wells Valley outhustling San Bernardino County and San Bernardino County-based interests, such that the development, industrial, agricultural and mining potential in that remote end of the county is likely to be foreclosed for years, decades, generations and centuries into the future.
Exacerbating the situation is that Searles Valley Minerals, Inc. is currently owned by Nirma, an Indian company based in Ahmedabad, India. Its owners and management may not be sufficiently aware of the stakes that attend the process involving the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority and the water rights adjudication process to be prompted to timely action.
Bob Page, a principal management analyst with the county who since last summer has been serving in the capacity of the county’s chief elections officer as the interim registrar of voters for San Bernardino County, is the county’s representative on the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority board.
He disputed what he called the “theory” that San Bernardino County is faring poorly in the adjudication process vis-à-vis the Indian Wells Valley Water District, the Navy and the City of Ridgecrest or that the county is outmuscled politically within the context of the authority.
“San Bernardino County does not possess water rights in the basin, nor does it provide water to the nearby community of Trona,” Page pointed out. “Searles Valley Minerals asserts water rights in the basin, pumping water from wells in Ridgecrest and piping it to Trona. As a California Public Utility Commission-regulated water retailer, the company’s subsidiary Searles Domestic Water Co. has accepted the responsibility for ensuring the residents of Trona have a sufficient supply of water.”
Page said, “The county has ensured Trona’s needs are considered in the basin groundwater sustainability plan that is being developed by the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority. This has included appointing the company to seats on both the policy advisory committee and the technical advisory committee, which are helping the authority develop the groundwater sustainability plan. The county has also advised Searles Valley Minerals that it, not the county, is responsible for protecting its water rights.”
Continuing, Page said, “In no way has the county ignored or neglected the county’s interests or those of our residents. San Bernardino County has been actively engaged continuously since 2015 in efforts to bring water use in the basin into balance. This includes the negotiation of the agreement that formed the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority in July 2016. The county is one of the five member agencies of the authority. The goal of the authority and its member agencies is to achieve cost effective sustainable groundwater management that considers the interests and concerns of all of the communities and parties that rely upon the basin for their water supply. At the suggestion of San Bernardino County, the authority’s formation agreement requires a supermajority vote to approve or amend the groundwater sustainability plan to ensure it employs a collaborative approach. Despite the distance between San Bernardino and Ridgecrest, an appointed county representative consistently attends the authority board meetings – primarily in person and on occasion by telephone.”
Page offered, “As background, the State designated the Indian Wells Valley Basin as a critically over-drafted groundwater basin. The amount of water annually pumped from the basin is three to four times more than the natural recharge of the basin from rain and snow melt. As a result, groundwater levels drop one to two feet a year, which in recent years has caused nearly 100 shallow, private wells to go dry. Achieving sustainable water use in the basin by 2040 presents great challenges and will require sacrifices.”
Page said efforts to import water that might be achieved within a decade could attenuate the looming water crisis at the county’s northwest corner.
“The authority is developing a groundwater sustainability plan that considers multiple approaches to achieve water balance, including importation of water, increased reuse of wastewater, treatment of non-potable groundwater and conservation,” Page said. “With supplemental water resources being added by 2025, the authority’s engineering consultant believes that the sustainable amount of water available for use in the basin could be increased from 7,650 acre feet per year to about 12,000 acre feet per year.”
Page continued, “The authority’s engineering consultant has modeled different approaches to allocating that amount of water to pumpers, evaluating the impacts of ramping down water use over different lengths of time. The water allocation to parties will be based upon legal precedent regarding water rights. The authority board has not yet decided which approach it prefers for inclusion in the groundwater sustainability plan.”
-Mark Gutglueck

The jury this morning, Friday, June 7, reportedly reached a unanimous verdict in the capital murder case presented against Charles “Chase” Merritt in Department 1 at the San Bernardino Law and Justice Center since shortly after the outset of 2019.
The defendant is charged with killing all four of the members of the McStay family in February 2010.
Merritt’s trial lasted five months, with opening statements having commenced on January 7.  Jurors had been deliberating the case since May 30.
The verdict is scheduled to be announced by the jury forewoman at 10 a.m. on Monday, June 10, according to San Bernardino County Superior Court Risk and Safety and Media Relations Administrator Dennis B. Smith.

Back in the 1930s, a 47-acre parcel was set aside for recreation by the federal Work Projects Administration and it was given the designation Eastside Park. Its borders were from San Bernardino Road to Foothill Blvd, and from east of what was then the hospital campus’s eastern boundary to the Santa Fe Railroad spur track. It was during that time that Harold Stewart was asked by San Antonio Community Hospital if it could have five acres of the park. Mr. Stewart, who was president of both the Stewart Citrus Association, and the Upland Lemon Growers Association, spent 24 years on the advisory board for the Upland branch of the Bank of America and 15 years with the San Bernardino County Farm Bureau, and was also president for 10 of the 25 years he served on the board of directors for San Antonio Community Hospital. As importantly in the context we are considering, he had spent more than 30 years on the board of directors for the San Antonio Water Company, which appears to have owned the set-aside for the park.
So, when San Antonio Community Hospital in the late 1930s asked the San Antonio Water Company to carve out five acres of Eastside Park, Mr. Stewart, representing both boards, obliged the hospital with the sale of not just five of the park’s acres nearest to the hospital campus but ten, at $350 an acre.
After the end of World War II, in 1947, the German field canon that had been trained on our Doughboys during World War I and which Upland city leaders had secured and placed at Second Avenue and ‘’D’’ Street as a testament to the bravery of our war veterans was moved to the park to memorialize both World War I and World War II veterans. It was shortly thereafter that the park was rechristened Memorial Park.
Later, city rulers in their infinite wisdom or dubious lack thereof took other land: for the Hospital Parkway, a street from Foothill Blvd. to the San Antonio Community Hospital parking lot, for the Landecena Building, for the Upland Animal Shelter, and for the Gretzky Hockey Rink, which became the Scheu YMCA, with its $4 million dollar, 4.29 acre expansion for a swimming pool. These have all cut chunks out of the park, detracting from the grandeur our forefathers envisioned for it.
The YMCA has a 55-year lease agreement with an option for a 2-to-5 year extension. The YMCA pays the city $1,610 a month with an increase of 10 percent every five years. I don’t know how much those leasing other buildings in the park are charged, but park acreage is valuable income for a poor city. As far as I can tell, this is correct information.
If that’s the case, then what chunk will be next? Especially since the so-called Medical Hub is ever expanding and plans for a sports park at the 210 Freeway and north of 16^th Street have been discussed, it appears to me that Memorial Park will get smaller and smaller until it is just a lovely little area in which to sit and reflect or wait for an appointment, while the park’s recreation areas will have been moved northwest into the last available land that has remained barren until recently, the remnants of quarry property next to a heavily-traveled freeway from which tons of vehicle exhaust emanate daily, an environs where I do not believe it advisable for children, or anyone for that matter, to be recreating.
You might not know about Mayor John Pomierski changing the zoning of Pioneer Park next to Pioneer Junior High on 18^th Street to eliminate that park land and allow housing to be built around the original Chaffey Communities Cultural Center. Mayor Pomierski, subsequently disgraced with a conviction for bribetaking in his role as Upland’s highest political office holder, carried this elimination of Pioneer Park with the support of then Planning Commissioner and later City Councilwoman Carol Timm and one-time City Councilman Dave Stevens. Pioneer Park can be found on the 2010 Chamber of Commerce maps.
This brings us to today’s lawsuits involving 4.6 acres of Memorial Park. The arrangement was made behind closed doors between San Antonio Regional Hospital and the city, before the current council was sworn in. The council, as it was formerly composed, attempted to impose that land grab of our precious park property through what is called a validation action, meaning we have all been passively sued by the city and unless we respond to the lawsuit as active defendants and declare our grounds for resisting the park land sell off, the use of that property for recreational purposes will be lost forever. This validation lawsuit was in reality the city’s way of intimidating its own citizens to keep them from challenging City Hall over having made the park sale without doing what was legally required of it under California law, which is to have held a vote of the city’s residents on whether they wanted to give up that park land, which under the law and by the principles of fairness and rectitude, they are entitled to enjoy.
Marian Nichols is a lifelong Upland resident. Her father was Upland’s  former assistant city engineer and chief building inspector.

Within days of one another toward the end of last month, two further indications of the brutalization and/or malicious neglect of inmates in the care of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department publicly surfaced.
On Wednesday May 22, the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office criminally charged former Sheriff’s Deputy Luke Van Ginkel, 22, with assaulting and threatening an inmate in December 2018. Also charged in the matter was inmate Alex Garcia, 40. A third individual criminally charged in the incident relating to Van Ginkel and Garcia was Deputy Arthur Enriquez, 33.
The sheriff’s department acknowledges having received credible accounts to indicate that on at least two separate occasions since Van Ginkel began working as a guard at West Valley Detention Center he engaged in action that crossed the line into criminal conduct.
On December 31, 2018, an inmate assaulted by Garcia lodged a grievance alleging maltreatment and staff misconduct relating to his beating.
According to the department, “During that same shift, a sergeant received the grievance and began the initial investigation. This initial investigation revealed alleged criminal misconduct involving deputies facilitating an assault on an inmate by another inmate.”
The department maintains that as of January 2, 2019, “The specialized investigations division began a criminal investigation, which involved interviewing more than 100 witnesses, reviewing extensive video and audio recordings, as well as collecting other evidence.”
Ultimately, according to the department, sheriff’s deputies Van Ginkel and Enriquez “were identified as the involved suspects. Van Ginkel was placed on administrative leave on January 3, 2019. He was hired on July 8, 2017 and started at the West Valley Detention Center on December 16, 2017. As of April 1, 2019, Van Ginkel no longer works for the sheriff’s department. Enriquez was also placed on administrative leave on January 5, 2019. He was hired on January 7, 2017 and started at the West Valley Detentions Center on July 22, 2017.”
There is yet no word as whether the union representing sheriff’s department personnel, the San Bernardino County’s Safety Employees Benefit Association, will intervene in an effort to reverse Van Ginkel’s firing. Van Ginkel attended Upland High School and graduated in 2015.
It is unclear whether Enriquez is yet employed with the department.
In the action taken by the district attorney’s office on May 22, Van Ginkel is charged with a violation of Penal Code Sections 422(a) – engaging in criminal threats and 245(a)(4) – assault by means of force likely to result in great bodily injury.
On December 24, 2018, according to the district attorney’s office, Van Ginkel told an inmate, Jose Angel Carillo, he was going to kill him.
The district attorney’s office further alleges that Van Ginkel subsequently set up a fight between Garcia, who is jailed on a murder charge, and Richard Freeman, who is likewise in custody on suspicion of murder. The fight took place on December 31.
Enriquez is charged with Penal Code 32 – accessory to a crime. Enriquez allegedly sought to deter the investigation in Van Ginkel’s action by filing a false report and making misrepresentations to investigators. Garcia, who assisted Van Ginkel in perpetrating the assault, according to the district attorney’s office, was charged with Penal Code 245(a)(4) – assault by means of force likely to result in great bodily injury.
Van Ginkel has his defenders, who say he is really a nice guy who only gets mean if he has a little too much sugar. He is scheduled for arraignment on June 17 before Judge Dan Detienne.
Enriquez is scheduled for arraignment on June 17 before Judge Dan Detienne.
Perry Belden, who was formerly an inmate at the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department jail in Joshua Tree, has filed a federal lawsuit alleging the neglect of his jailers while he was in custody led to the loss of both of his legs and his hand.
Belden’s ordeal began shortly after he was was taken into custody on March 27, 2018, in the aftermath of a March 16, 2018 incident at the Twentynine Palms home of his mother and stepfather. On the earlier day, Belden’s mother, Robin Olds, summoned the sheriff’s department when a fight broke out between Belden and his stepfather. Before officers arrived, Belden, who had previous convictions for obstructing a police office and grand theft, and was addicted to heroin, left the scene.
According to documents filed with the court, the sheriff’s department obtained a bench warrant for Belden’s arrest and deputies instituted a search for him, including returning to Olds’ home on no fewer than eight occasions to see if they could effectuate his arrest. Belden’s status as a known drug addict with previous arrests and convictions for theft and resisting arrest prompted a concerted effort to bring him into custody. Belden, who was lying low at an associate’s home, became aware of the warrant for his arrest and resigned himself to surrendering to authorities on March 27, 2018, having his mother tell the sheriff’s department where he was. Instead of responding as Olds and Belden believed was their understanding by coming to the residence where Belden was in order to take him into custody without incident, the deputies arrived en masse and armed with assault weapons. Belden took refuge in the attic of the home, whereupon the deputies fired a pepper spray bomb into the attic, at which point Belden plunged through the ceiling, injuring himself in the fall. According to court papers, the deputies then twice employed a stun gun on Belden when he was sprawled on the floor.
Because of his injuries, Belden was initially transported by deputies to the Hi-Desert Medical Center. Disclosure that Belden was a heroin addict was made at that point to both Hi-Desert Medical Center personnel and his jailers. Belden was prescribed Klonopin to prevent withdrawal-induced seizures. According to the lawsuit, the department was on notice that Belden’s vital signs were to be monitored. Without regard to what they had been told, the deputies transported Belden to the Morongo Basin jail, which lacked even rudimentary medical facilities and had no trained medical personnel on staff. No medication was provided to Belden while he was incarcerated in the Morongo Basin jail.
During his arraignment at the Joshua Tree Courthouse on April 2, Olds said Belden “looked like death.” When Belden told the escorting deputies that he was feeling weak and ill, they responded that was what happened to “crackheads” who were out of crack and he would just have to “suck it up.” When he was unable to walk on his own power, the deputies dragged him into the courtroom. Judge Bert L. Swift made no note of the circumstance either on or off the record, and took no action to ensure that Belden’s medical condition was looked into. Belden entered a plea to assault and vandalism, the vandalism being that related to his having fallen through the ceiling of the home where he was taken into custody.
“Perry took the first plea deal offered to him because he wanted to get out of local custody,” according to Belden’s suit.
On April 3, Belden was transferred to the West Valley Detention Center, where on the following morning his condition had grown to such a critical state that personnel there recognized his life was in danger. He was transported to the Arrowhead Medical Center, where it was in short order determined that Belden was suffering from septic shock brought on by unattended infections, and was experiencing renal failure. To prevent the gangrene in his limbs from spreading further, doctors were obliged to amputate both his legs and left hand. His right hand was saved, but is now seriously deformed.
The county was served with the lawsuit on May 24. Neither the county nor Judge Swift, who is an employee of the State of California, were willing to comment on the litigation.

By Count Friedrich von Olsen

You can say that today’s column is for the birds, which is my effort to induce the publisher of the Sentinel to bring back his wildlife column, which has been sorely missed all these months while coverage of the Charles Merritt murder trial has been ongoing…
A ruby-throated hummingbird weighs less than 0.2 ounces, if you can believe that. It beats its wings over fifty-two times in one second to hover.  This enables this cute little critter to to suck nectar from flowers…
The rufous hummingbird is a migratory animal, the smallest migrant bird known to man, at only four inches long. Despite its paltry length, on a yearly basis it will make a sojourn of as far as 3,800 miles…
The slowest carinate bird is the American woodcock, which flies along at five miles per hour. For short periods of time, a hummingbird can move at zero miles per hour. In fact, on occasion hummingbirds will fly backwards,  registering a negative speed…
The fastest known speed of a bird in level flight is that of either the spine-tailed swift or the merganser, which is a type of duck, both of which have been clocked at one hundred miles per hour…
This one is hard to believe, but it is claimed that the jet larid is capable of staying aloft for as long as three years without landing. It is nothing for one of these to simply fly across the ocean. Swifts will spend way more of their lives in flight than they will nesting or perched or on the ground. It should go without saying that these types of birds are capable of sleep while they are in the air, doing so by gliding on air currents with their wings extended…
A group of crows is called a murder or congress. A bunch of owls is named a parliament, wisdom, or study. A collection of flamingos is referred to as a flamboyance…
Birds sense winter is coming on through changes in hormones that cause them to add more fat, the change in the length of the day, and by sensing minute changes in atmospheric pressure…
The bald eagle builds the biggest tree nest of all birds, measuring around nine feet across. The biggest nest ever found was nearly ten feet wide and weighed close to three tons. Vervain hummingbirds build the smallest nests of all birds, measure 3/4 of an inch…
Woodcocks and lots of ducks have their eyes placed at the perimeters of their heads such that they possess a 360-degree field of vision. This makes them see all things, either moving or flying around them…
The arrangement of a bird’s blood vessels cools the blood going into its legs and feet and warms the blood coming back in, so that when standing on ice, birds don’t lose an excessive amount of heat from their bodies…
The larger the bird, generally the more years it will live.  The big albatross, for instance, will live for up to eighty years…
Gentoo penguins appear to be the quickest swimming birds, reaching speeds of twenty-two miles per hour. This speed is more than that attained by some land animals. Emperor penguins will remain submerged in incredibly cold water for up to eighteen minutes…