FUSD School Police Return To Mounted Bicycle Patrols

(February 16) Three years after the Fontana Unified School District eliminated bicycle patrols by its district police officers at its campuses, the school board has reinstated the practice.
The district’s bicycle mounted police are outfitted with Cannondale mountain bikes on 29-inch tires, and they feature a siren and police lights.  A conditioned rider can achieve a speed of 25 miles per hour on the bikes.
While the officers’ assignments are general patrol of the campuses and the areas around them, the revival of the bike patrol program involves greater attention being paid to bicycle and pedestrian safety issues. As many as five percent of district students ride bikes to school.
The officers are empowered to issue citations, which in the case of non-motorized travel infractions, can be satisfied by an essay on traffic safety in lieu of a fine.

Forum… Or Against ‘em

By Count Friedrich von Olsen

It is 65 degrees Fahrenheit in Lake Arrowhead at the moment, which matches the 65 degree temperature in San Francisco. Nevertheless, things are very hot in San Francisco for Michael Peevey, the former president of the California Public Utilities Commission. After getting a search warrant, agents of law enforcement searched the homes of both Peevey and Pacific Gas & Electric Vice President Brian Cherry last month, looking for evidence of bribery, influence peddling and other felony conduct. If my sources are correct, Mr. Peevey has been involved in all level of double-dealing and conflicts of interest…
What we know is this: Peevey was the former president of Southern California Edison and subsequently served as the president of the of the California Public Utilities Commission until late last year. In March 2013, while he was supposed to be regulating California’s energy industry and looking after the interest of the state’s taxpayers and ratepayers, he held a secret, off the books, ex-parte meeting with Edison’s executive vice president of external relations, Stephen Pickett, in which Peevey essentially formulated the terms of a settlement with regard to the closing of the San Onofre nuclear plant that will cost ratepayers $5 billion. Where was this meeting held? At the Bristol Hotel in Warsaw, Poland, where incidentally, I once stayed…
We also know that in 2013 Mr. Peevey had some rather interesting written exchanges with Mr. Cherry regarding PG&E’s various issues and some problems it was experiencing. In one of the exchanges, Cherry told Peevey that Peevey “owed” something to PG&E. Ultimately, what Cherry wanted, it turned out, was for Peevey’s staff to ensure the appointment of an administrative law judge PG&E was certain would prove amenable to PG&E’s views with regard to a $1.3 billion rate case…
Here in San Bernardino County, at least in some circles. Mr. Peevey is viewed in a more favorable light. He was instrumental in intervening to undo a previous CPUC decision that allowed SoCal Edison to put 197-foot high electrical line towers through Chino Hills. Again in 2013, at his instigation, he and two of his colleagues outvoted two other CPUC commissioners to force Edison to take those towers down…
For his vote against the company he once headed in favor of Chino Hills residents, Mr. Peevey was widely lauded. But there were some disturbing questions at the time. Huge electrical towers are a reality all over California. Did he create a precedent by the 2013 action with regard to Chino Hills that would result in a trillion dollars worth of power poles all over the state having to be de-erected and the lines that run between them placed underground in cities elsewhere? What does this represent in terms of a burden upon rate payers in the future? Already, the implication of that action has come home to roost as the city of Ontario is now demanding that the continuation of the same line now being undergrounded in Chino Hills be undergrounded where it crosses over into its borders…
We are left with some disturbing questions, one of which is this: Did Chino Hills receive favorable treatment from Mr. Peevey and the California Public Utilities Commission because the residents of that well-heeled city (the most affluent city in San Bernardino County, I am informed) had the means to hire lawyers and investigators that other cities simply could not afford? Another is this: Did Mr. Peevey ensure a favorable outcome for Chino Hills and an unfavorable one for Edison on the undergrounding issue because he was trying to short circuit possible accusations that he was showing favoritism toward his former employer on the San Onofre issue? And this: Did Mr. Peevey arrange a vote in favor of Chino Hills because the aforementioned lawyers and investigators had enough information to subject him to blackmail?

Moses B. Garner

By Mark Gutglueck
Moses B. Garner, Jr., the son of Moses Baumgarner, a German immigrant, was born in Paducah, Kentucky on January 8, 1828. His father had changed his name upon arrival in America to Moses Baum Garner, and then to Moses B. Garner.
Shortly after young Moses’s birth, the family moved to Southern Illinois.  The senior Garner was active in community affairs and esteemed a “thrifty and fine farmer.”
The family farm, located at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, was benefited by the fertile land there and the family prospered.
Both of his parents, however, perished in the great cholera plague of 1851.
Educated in county schools, Moses Garner had no special advantages in his youth, such that he had no choice but to earn his own way from an early age.  As a very young man he took a position as a Pony Express rider. He then signed on as a deputy sheriff, and was later Hamilton County sheriff.
While holding this latter position, he married Hanna Hulda Heard on August 25, 1850, at McLeansborough, Illinois. His wife , who had been orphaned at the age of three and was raised by her grandmother on a large thoroughbred farm in McLeansborough,  was born on January 21, 1835. At that time, Southern Illinois was as renowned for its racing horses as Kentucky. Hannah was only fifteen at the time of her marriage. Upon her grandmother’s death, Hannah inherited a considerable estate.
In 1861, Moses Garner sold the Illinois property he owned with his wife, and they moved, together with their five children, to Montana, various regions of which were parts of the Oregon Territory,  the Washington Territory, Idaho Territory, and Dakota Territory, where gold had been discovered. They settled in Virginia City, where Garner partnered with a man known now only as Mr. Storey in a gold mine operation in Alder Gulch. He also managed to build and manage a hotel in Virginia City. His mining and venture into the hospitality industry proved profitable.
Winter in Montana was very severe. As a result Moses Garner developed what was diagnosed as “inflammatory rheumatism,” which left him all but fully incapacitated. Seeking a more moderate climate, he sold his Montana interest, and left with his family for Los Angeles in 1864..
They traveled by covered wagon, taking a route through Salt Lake City. When they encountered large rivers, they removed the wagon wheels and floated the wagons across.  Salt Lake city was a major trading post and junction for those heading to Oregon and California. The Garners stayed for a time at the home of Brigham Young while they obtained supplies and made arrangement to join a large wagon train forming for the sojourn to Southern California..
They came across the Mojave Desert and made the descent through the Cajon Pass. Before them on the way down, the San Bernardino Valley lay before them like an emerald paradise. Lucinda, the Garner’s third daughter, had been quite ill with the measles and she begged that they go no farther, so the family left the wagon train with a few of the others who were intent on settling in San Bernardino. The family found temporary lodging in an abandoned adobe dwelling in a cove on the north side of Little Mountain.  Mrs. Garner made this abode habitable by lining it with calico from blots of cloth she had stowed in the covered wagon.
Reconnoitering his business opportunities and his prospect for success in their new community, Garner opened a meat market, and shortly thereafter, a restaurant. He purchased some property on 7th Street between Waterman and Sierra Way and constructed a home for his family on a small hill overlooking what is now Seccombe Lake, but which was then pasture land. Warm Creek ran through it. There was also a large pond fed by fed by artesian wells. They lived at that home for many years.
Garner  prospered in the real estate business, buying and selling valley properties. He also had a citrus grove in Rialto and another in the Del Rosas area. He established a large truck farm at 3rd and Waterman, known as the “China Garden” because it was leased to and farmed by Chinese. Still interested in the breeding and racing of thoroughbred horses, the Garners opened a race track below 3rd Street, between Arrowhead and E Streets . It was known as “The Association.” He also had a financial interest in the narrow-gauge rail line between Redlands, San Bernardino and Harlem Springs.
Moses Garner became vice-president of the First National Bank of San Bernardino in 1875. The bank failed in the 1880s when the bookkeeper embezzled a large amount of the bank’s funds and left the country. Garner raised money to pay off the depositors by selling most of his personal holdings. He remained solvent only upon the timely repayment to him of a large loan made several years earlier. Eventually, he was able to recoup his fortune.
He was elected one of three Third District supervisors in 1882, joining Edward B. Daley and George Cooley in that capacity, and served from January 8, 1883 to January 8, 1885. After the county was officially divided into five supervisorial districts on August 6, 1884, he was elected Fifth District supervisor in the 1884 election and served on the board from January 5, 1885 until January 7, 1889.
While he was Third District supervisor, the city of Riverside, which was then a part of San Bernardino County, was incorporated as a city. Some eleven years later, after Moses Garner was no longer on the board of supervisors, Riverside County seceded from San Bernardino County.
The education of his children and grandchildren was a matter Garner took very seriously. He was a member of the school board for many years. He was a Mason and looked upon this affiliation in an almost religious sense, considering the Masonic Temple to be his church, although he was also involved as a member of the Southern Methodist Church for the entirety of his life. An ardent Democrat, fate spared him the shock of living long enough see one of his grandsons become a Republican Congressman and another a bipartisan state senator.
Garner died in San Bernardino on September 1, 1900 at the age of 72. He was survived by his wife, Hannah, who lived until age 105, and by seven of their ten children. Of the Illinois children, Mary Francis( Mrs. James W. Swing), Lucinda Celeste (Mrs. Henry T. Bryant). William c. and Robert F. were living. Margaret (Mrs. John H. Barton) had died. Of the California children, Jennie E. (Mrs. Elias Leamaster), John T. and Florence K. (Mrs. Frederick Park) were living. Emma Maude had died in her teens and Joseph A. had been killed in a hunting accident at the age of thirteen. Most of Mr. Garner’s descendants have stayed in California
His wife paid him perhaps the highest compliment a woman can, saying of him, “He was a good provider.”

Move Reportedly Afoot To Sack Colton Police Chief

(February 18) Among the first of newly-installed Colton City Manager Bill Smith’s tasks will be to find a way to ease police chief Steve Ward out the door, sources are telling the Sentinel.
Colton’s stock in Ward was at its zenith last June when the city council elevated him to the position of acting city manager in the immediate aftermath of the termination of city manager Stephen Compton. But there was discord and upheaval in the city and on the council over Compton’s sacking and the events that led up to it, including accusations that Compton was being scapegoated for having called city staff members to account for questionable activity which in some cases involved utilizing taxpayer funds to do favors for councilmembers.
After six weeks as acting city manager, Ward had enough and he resigned as the city’s interim top administrator on July 21, sending a scathing letter to the members of the city council announcing his desire to return to his post as police chief.  In that letter, Ward pulled no punches, asserting that some of the city’s department heads and council members were  dishonest, immature or irresponsible.
“There are directors, managers and council members that do not belong in our organization. I am not used to the childish, selfish, lie-to-my-face drama and games that I’ve witnessed… and it never stops!” Ward wrote in the letter, which was published in its entirety in the August 8, 2014 edition of the Sentinel.
In the letter, he told the council that it was his intention to return to “the goal of making the Colton Police Department the best in the Inland empire… a place people want to work for and not leave from.” But Ward’s acerbic characterizations in the letter placed him on a treadmill toward an exodus from Colton.
The November election resulted in Richard DeLaRosa, who was formerly on the council and had a good working relationship with Ward previously, being elected mayor. Indeed, DeLaRosa was employed in law enforcement before his retirement and seemed to be favorably disposed to Ward and his no-nonsense approach. But there is lingering displeasure with Ward among other members of the council stemming from the attitude expressed in his July 21, 2014 letter.
Summer Zamora Jorrin was also elected to the council in November. Jorrin is the daughter of Sarah Zamora, who was replaced as mayor by DeLaRosa. Ward’s letter was seen as something of an indictment of the Zamora administration, and it appears Jorrin is accordingly ready to see him leave.  Factions on the council have formed, putting DeLaRosa in the same camp as Jorrin and Suchil.On Tuesday February 17, the same night that the city council approved Smith’s hiring as city manager, the council also held a closed-door discussion, out of the view of the public, relating to the “public employment [of the ] police chief,” according to the council agenda. No reportable action was taken during that discussion, the city attorney reported, meaning the council had not yet officially voted to direct Smith to terminate Ward, who wants to remain as chief for two more years.
Nevertheless, the Sentinel is informed by a highly reliable source that at least three members of the city council want a separation package for Ward prepared by March 8. The heir apparent for the police chief’s slot is the senior lieutenant in the department, Joe Gutierrez.

Brown-Eyed Primrose

Chylismia claviformis is a species of wildflower known as browneyes or brown-eyed primrose. It is an annual plant growing from a basal rosette of long oval leaves and producing stems often exceeding half a meter in height. Atop the stem is an inflorescence of one to many primrose blooms, each with four white or yellow petals. The pistil may be quite long and has a bulbous stigma at the tip. The stamens are somewhat shorter and they bear long hairy anthers containing white or yellow pollen. The floral axis at the junction of male and female parts is bright red to maroon or brown. This species is found across western North America from the Pacific Northwest to northern Mexico.
The upright stems of chylismia claviformis are topped by a one-sided cluster of nodding white or pale yellow flowers, brown at the center, hence the common name of brown-eyed primrose. Flowers are formed of four pointed green sepals, often angled fully backwards, close to the pedicel, and four round white petals, which wither to deep pink. At the center are eight white stamens, the hairy anthers attached at their midpoint, and a longer style, holding a spherical stigma. The reddish-brown color comes from the inside of the floral tube.
Leaves are long, up to 8 inches, and irregularly divided into a dozen or more pairs of uneven, sometimes toothed lobes, the largest at the apex. They are produced mostly around the base. The main flowering period in spring is sometimes followed by a second blooming in the fall. There are eleven subspecies of chylismia claviformis, many with distinct ranges, differing in hairiness, petal color, glandularity, and leaf characteristics.

Suggestions Surface Relating To Board Chairman’s Drug Use, Coverup

By Mark Gutglueck
(February 13) A series of events has moved allegations of drug use by San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors Chairman James Ramos front and center, together with suggestions that county officials have ignored or covered up indications of that activity because of his extensive personal wealth which has been used to support other elected county officials’ own political efforts.
Ramos is the former tribal chairman of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, which owns the San Manuel Casino in Highland. The money generated at the casino has left Ramos – and other tribe members – well fixed. He and members of his family and tribe have invested a considerable portion of their money in Ramos’s political career as well as in supporting a host of other San Bernardino County politicians, including Ramos’s board colleagues, along with the county sheriff and district attorney. This appears to have advanced him politically and bought him a degree of immunity from prosecution.
Ramos’s tribe and family members have spoken openly, at least in certain contexts, about his drug use. Buried in court files at San Bernardino Superior Court is documentation referencing the supervisor’s former drug addiction. Moreover, a celebrated murder for hire case against two of Ramos’s family/tribal members and a subsequent civil action filed by the target of that attempted murder has brought into focus the connection between the San Manuel Tribe and the drug manufacturing, distribution, and sales activity of the so-called Mexican Mafia. This activity, key elements of which were being staged from the San Manuel Reservation, was flourishing at the time Ramos was serving as tribal chairman.
Whispers and innuendoes relating to James Ramos’s drug use have been afoot in San Bernardino County for years. That issue remained below the public radar because those most directly concerned, the members of the San Manuel Tribe, were content for the most part to deal with internal issues on their own, and within the tribe’s authority structure, Ramos himself held a high level of control.
The matter took a considerable lurch toward public exposure when Ramos in 2012 vied for Third District county supervisor. Well-funded with his own money and that of the tribe, Ramos put on a spirited campaign, augmented by support from other established county officials, including district attorney Mike Ramos, who stopped short of endorsing James Ramos but did make phone calls on his behalf to secure the endorsements of others. Through the generous application of campaign donations to other politicians, James Ramos was able to obtain their endorsements in return. Riding the political juggernaut he and the San Manuel Tribe had created with their program of generous campaign donations, James Ramos was able to fortify himself with the endorsements of Second District County Supervisor Janice Rutherford, Highland city councilmen Sam Racadio and John Timmer, Redlands city councilmen Paul Foster, Bob Gardner and Jon Harrison, then-Colton Mayor Sarah Zamora and Colton councilmembers Deidre Bennett, Frank Gonzales, Susan Oliva, David Toro and Vincent Yzaguirre, then-Yucaipa Mayor Dick Riddell and Yucaipa city councilmembers Greg Bogh, Denise Hoyt and Tom Masner, Yucca Valley Town Councilman Merl Abel, and Big Bear councilmembers Liz Harris and Dave Caretton. After a three-way race in the June 2012 primary in which no single candidate captured a majority of the vote, James Ramos cruised to an easy victory in November 2012, defeating incumbent Third District Supervisor Neil Derry in the run-off.
Largely ignored in the 2012 election season were underlying problems at the San Manuel Reservation, including those related to illicit drug activity involving the Mexican Mafia, a whirlwind of events in which James Ramos was himself caught up in.
The 832-acre San Manuel Reservation had traditionally been one of the most impoverished districts in San Bernardino County, where modern plumbing and utilities were once considered luxuries. James Ramos grew up in a trailer on the reservation in the foothills of the San Bernardino Mountains above Highland, where all but two of the streets were dirt roads. Crime, consisting of petty theft and assaults as well as low level drug offenses, was rampant.
A change in the tribe’s fortunes came in 1986 with the advent of a bingo hall, which generated some degree of revenue for the tribe. Sometime later, a card room was added to the bingo hall. That was successful and in the early 2000s, the tribe’s leadership, which at that point included James Ramos, pooled their members’ resources and obtained permits to convert the bingo hall and card room into a casino. That endeavor proved incredibly lucrative, and in relatively short order mansions began to sprout up on the reservation grounds, replete with luxury vehicles in their driveways.
An exact fix on the wealth generated for tribal members is hard to come by. One report was that the lowliest members of the tribe net $300,000 per year. Others more involved in tribal governance and casino operations are said to make more, as much as $1.5 million per year. James Ramos, who was the tribal chairman, is generally thought to be the wealthiest member of the tribe. One report, perhaps apocryphal, was that he was earning roughly $18,000 per day, or $4.77 million per year.
Accompanying the tribe’s newfound economic success was an intensification of some of the problems that had long dogged the reservation and its inhabitants. In some cases, tribe members used the influx of capital to bankroll an even more intensive version of the illicit drug activity they had heretofore been caught up in. This included participation in the enterprises run by international drug cartels. Whereas previously, those tribe members so involved had not merited serious attention from law enforcement, within months of the opening of the casino, members of the tribe and their associates had fallen under the scrutiny of a law enforcement task force focusing on a ring trafficking in massive quantities of methamphetamine.
On December 12, 2006, federal Drug Enforcement Agency officers, in cooperation with Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents and detectives and deputies from the Riverside County and San Bernardino County sheriff’s departments and officers from the San Bernardino, Ontario, Rialto, Colton and Redlands police departments, together with state parole officers fanned out among various Inland Empire locations to conduct raids and serve 64 search warrants and effectuate 119 arrests. Most prominent in the locations targeted was the San Manuel Reservation. Authorities said that two of those arrested that day, Salvador Orozco Hernandez and Alfred Orozco Hernandez, both identified as Mexican Mafia members, were known to have carried out their drug distribution operations from the reservation. Also arrested on December 12 were two tribe members, Stacy Cheyenne Barajas-Nunez and Erik Barajas, who are James Ramos’s cousins.
Then-San Bernardino Mayor Patrick Morris, who was both a former prosecutor with the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office and a San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge, stated at the time, “Clearly, we have penetrated deep into the infrastructure of the mafia.”
That raid would have significant repercussions, both on and off the reservation. Individuals affiliated with the drug distribution network, some of whom were Mexican Mafia members, others of whom were not Mafia members per se, but were involved in the drug trade at the street level or who were perhaps uninvolved but by unfortunate coincidence or circumstance had knowledge of drug distribution activity or had witnessed it, were perceived by the drug cartel’s higher ranking members as having possibly been informants. Some of those people ended up dead.
One person who would fall between the drug cartel’s crosshairs was Leonard Epps, who was at one time a bartender and manager of the Brass Key, a bar located in Highland not too distant from the San Manuel Reservation. Members of the Mexican Mafia, including San Manuel tribal members, used the Brass key as a rendezvous point, often exchanging drugs or money either in the establishment itself or in its parking lot. Because of what he had witnessed while tending bar in the Brass Key, including seeing meetings between cartel members and functionaries, including at least one who was killed in a gangland hit, Epps was deemed by the cartel as a risk.
Of particular concern to the cartel was Epps’ contact with James Seay, who frequented the bar. Seay was shot and wounded in front of The Brass Key on May 17, 2004. Tribal member Robert Vincent Martinez III was charged in the case, but the charges were later dismissed. Seay, however, pursued a civil case against Martinez on May 9, 2005. Martinez hired a lawyer, Trent Copeland, to contest the suit, but eventually settled the matter for slightly over $500,000. Just days after receiving that settlement, Seay was fatally shot in front of his mother’s house in San Bernardino. The killing remains unsolved.
Because of concern that Epps could shed light on the Seay murder, a contract on Epps was taken out. Through a near-miraculous series of events, however, Epps survived and the plot to kill him was discovered by the authorities. Subsequently, two of the tribal members arrested in the December 2006 raid, Stacy Barajas-Nunez and Erik Barajas, were charged with murder-for-hire in the botched attempt on Epps’ life.
Barajas-Nunez and Barajas were convicted in 2008 of the murder-for hire following court proceedings in which much of the information pertaining to the drug distribution activity taking place on the reservation was excluded. Despite those convictions, district attorney Michael A. Ramos, who is no relation to James Ramos, consented to Barajas-Nunez and Barajas being sentenced to probation, instead of state prison terms.
This in itself raised considerable concern about improper influence by the San Manuel Tribe over the district attorney’s office and Mike Ramos in particular. Mike Ramos has received over $70,000 in campaign contributions from the San Manuel Tribe.
Moreover, the tribe in 2008 entered into what many have said is questionable or possibly even illegal arrangement with the county of San Bernardino by which the tribe is subsidizing both the sheriff’s department and the district attorney’s office. Under this arrangement, which has been ratified by the county board of supervisors, between July 1, 2010 through June 30, 2013, the tribe paid the district attorney $1,048,909 to cover the cost of employing a deputy district attorney and a district attorney investigator during that span “to help mitigate the impacts of tribal gaming on the community.” Currently, the district attorney’s office is receiving funds in the amount of $1,111,403 over a three year period to offset the cost of employing a deputy district attorney and a district attorney investigator. Thus, the tribe paid the district attorney’s office $359,985 in 2013-13, is paying the district attorney’s office $370,364 in 2014-15 and will pay the district attorney’s office $381,054 in the upcoming 2015-16 fiscal year. In addition, the San Manuel Tribe is paying the sheriff’s department a substantial amount of money, at least $1,745,702 per year, for its services.
These payments to the sheriff and district attorney were initiated while James Ramos was serving in the capacity of San Manuel tribal chairman and have continued during his tenure as supervisor. He is no longer serving as tribal chairman.
This arrangement, in which the sheriff’s department and the district attorney have been receiving money from an entity that is entitled to a full range of governmental service and which is not obliged to pay any special fees or taxes for that service, has led to questions about whether law enforcement and justice, or the quality thereof, is for sale. In particular, as is relevant to the issue currently at hand, is whether James Ramos, as the tribal chairman responsible for creating the tribe’s policy of bestowing upon the sheriff and the district attorney this special funding, has created for himself a special status by which he and higher-ranking members of the tribe are immune from investigation and prosecution or are otherwise due and given special treatment not accorded to others.
Ken Barajas, one of the tribe members previously involved in tribal governance who was among those responsible for the founding of the San Manuel Casino and who is also the father of Stacy Barajas-Nunez and Erik Barajas, was in attendance at the November 6, 2007 tribal council meeting chaired by James Ramos. During the meeting a heated discussion relating to the law enforcement raid at the reservation the previous December and the ensuing legal issues including the prosecutions of Stacy Barajas-Nunez and Erik Barajas took place. There ensued accusations and counteraccusations of threats between Mike Ramos on one side and Ken Barajas and Stacy Barajas on the other. Subsequently, James Ramos filed for a restraining order against Ken Barajas and Stacy Barajas. In response, Ken Barajas filed with the San Bernardino Superior Court a sworn declaration in which he noted the “legal problems” his children were having but asserted that James Ramos had engaged in similar behavior that had led to his offspring’s travails.
“James Ramos had a serious drug problem in the past,” Ken Barajas stated. “Additionally, James Ramos was associating with the ‘wrong’ crowd. It was not uncommon for him to carry a firearm and threaten people with it, including relatives. All his family were quite tolerable (sic) of his conduct and gave him multiple opportunities to turn around his life. I was threatened by James in the past. James had pulled a gun on me when he was on drugs but I ignored those threats and lead (sic) him to get help.”
In the declaration, Ken Barajas does note, “James finally turned his life around.”
According to information provided to the Sentinel by four separate sources, however, some three years later, James Ramos appeared to have relapsed. In particular, he was described as having attended the funeral of a tribal elder in an obvious state of drugged intoxication. According to a statement indirectly obtained by the Sentinel from someone present, Ramos was “coked to the gills” and periodically snorting more of the drug while the service was yet ongoing.
In 2011, as word of James Ramos’s contemplated run for Third District supervisor the following year was making the rounds, there were recurrent reports that such an elective effort would prove unviable because his history of substance abuse would manifest as a liability he would be unable to overcome. That clearly did not turn out to be the case and the issue was not raised during the campaign.
Derry this week told the Sentinel that he was “told James had his own personal drug problem during discussions that were ongoing about drug activity and law enforcement efforts at the reservation.” And Derry said, he was given an account “of something from a few years ago, when one of the tribal leaders passed away, he came to the funeral completely ripped on cocaine.”
He had elected not to dwell on those issues during the 2012 election, Derry said, but rather concentrated on issues relating to improving the district. “To the extent I attacked him, it had nothing to do with his personal life but I did explore how he was going to have some huge conflicts with contracts the tribe had with the county if he was elected supervisor,” Derry said.
After his election in 2012 and his assumption of the board seat, Ramos was not hounded by any accusations or insinuations relating to substance abuse. The closest such references were observations made by some that in his public life his level of intensity and focus was somewhat inconsistent, and that he seemed more articulate at certain times than at others.
It was only within the last two months that the issue resurfaced. On January 6, he was chosen board chairman by his colleagues, succeeding supervisor Janice Rutherford. Board chairman in San Bernardino County is a significantly more powerful and authoritative position than supervisor. By the terms of the county’s charter, the board chairman is designated as the county’s executive agent. Whereas in years past being the county’s executive agent was far more significant, in 1948 the county created the position of a staff county administrative officer, relieving the board chairman of being a hands-on overseer of county operations. The county administrative officer post was reframed as the county’s chief executive officer in 2010. The board chairman continues to embody an enhanced level of authority, conducting board meetings and signing contracts and other documents on the board’s behalf. The county charter remains unchanged and a board chairman could utilize his authority to effectuate action in some cases unilaterally, if he were to be so bold as to do so. Elevating James Ramos to board chairman thus intensified the level of scrutiny to which he was subjected.
Last week, Ramos’s field representative for the Morongo Basin, Michael Lipsitz, was arrested at the sheriff’s Glen Helen Rehabilitation Facility, accused by the sheriff’s department of attempting to smuggle drugs into the facility while he was visiting a young man, Joshua Jonathan Rhodes, incarcerated there.
The sheriff’s department issued a press release concerning the arrest, which stated, “Michael Lipsitz is a field representative for Third District Supervisor James Ramos.”
Further down, the press release stated, “Sheriff John McMahon said, ‘When I learned of this disappointing news, I contacted Supervisor James Ramos and notified him of the investigation and arrest of one of his employees. Supervisor Ramos immediately terminated Lipsitz’ employment with the county.’ McMahon further stated, “Supervisor Ramos was shocked by the news, and assured me he has zero tolerance for any type of criminal behavior.’”
The manner in which sheriff McMahon, an elected official, presumed to speak for Ramos, also an elected official, and then preempted Ramos in making the announcement about Lipsitz’s firing immediately raised an alarm. As both supervisor and board chairman, Ramos holds a position of relative authority over McMahon, as the board of supervisors oversees the budget for the entire county and, in fact, controls the sheriff’s department’s purse strings. For many, McMahon usurping Ramos’s role of controlling the information relating to a personnel decision that fell within Ramos’s purview appeared to be a glaring indication that McMahon had leapt into the breach in a matter relating to the subject of drugs because it was simply too risky from a public information standpoint for Ramos to do so himself.
In other words, it appeared that McMahon had relieved Ramos of having to issue a public statement of his own pertaining to the matter, thus avoiding charges of hypocrisy that might be leveled at Ramos by his acquaintances or others if he made a statement condemning Lipsitz for being involved in a matter involving illegal drugs. Ramos has exacerbated this perception by consistently ducking any media inquiries about the Lipsitz matter.
County spokesman David Wert told the Sentinel that he was unfamiliar with any suggestions or accusations that James Ramos has used or is in anyway involved with illegal drugs.
“I have never heard anything to that effect,” Wert said. Nor, Wert said, had he personally detected any behavior on the board chairman’s part that would lead him to draw that conclusion.
Wert said there had been no private discussions among the board of supervisors or within the county chief executive officer’s staff pertaining to drug use on Ramos’s part or the risk the county might run by his appointment as board chairman.
“There was nothing in closed session,” he said of any discussions relating to Ramos’s appointment. “It was all done in public.” He added, “I don’t know what forum a discussion like that would take place in.”
Wert said he disagreed with the widespread interpretation that McMahon’s statement in the press release announcing Ramos’s action in terminating Lipsitiz was an indicator that McMahon had usurped Ramos’s authority or was in some fashion running interference for the board chairman. As the spokesman for the board of supervisors and the county’s chief executive officer, Wert said, “I do press releases where I ask the sheriff to contribute a quote or ask someone to contribute a quote. I didn’t see it as unusual. In my opinion, it was handled very well in the interest of full disclosure. The sheriff doesn’t usually disclose who a suspect is employed by. The news release laid it all out there, which is what I think good government is supposed to be all about.”
Interpreting McMahon speaking for Ramos with regard to the issues in the Lipsitz arrest as an indication that Ramos was hiding his drug use behind the sheriff, Wert said, “sounds like a stretch to me.”
The Sentinel contacted deputy county counsel Julie Surber, who had reviewed the arrangements between the San Manuel Tribe and the county for the subsidization of sheriff’s department’s law enforcement activity at the reservation and the subsidization of the district attorney’s office’s handling of cases originating on the reservation and at the casino as to both their form and legality. Surber was atypically tight lipped about those arrangements, whether the implication of the arrangements had changed after James Ramos became county supervisor and whether she was privy to any discussions where the topic of James Ramos’s alleged drug use had been broached. “I can’t comment on that,” Surber said four times to all questions addressed to her related to those issues.
The Sentinel’s call to Surber prompted a return call from Wert, who emphasized that Surber’s reticence should not be interpreted to imply that the topic of drug use on James Ramos’s part had been explored by county officials.
Surber, Wert said, did “not confirm she has heard anything one way or the other.”
As to the issue of whether James Ramos has a conflict by being a member of the tribe and a resident of the reservation that is serviced by the sheriff’s department is akin, Wert said, to considering whether supervisor Rutherford, who is now a resident of Rancho Cucamonga, has a conflict because Rancho Cucamonga has a contract for law enforcement service with the sheriff’s department. No conflict exists, Wert insisted.
The Sentinel’s efforts to engage James Ramos directly on the issue pertaining to the reports or insinuations about his drug use were unsuccessful. His deputy chief of staff, Molly Wiltshire, said she would convey the request for a statement or interview along to Ramos’s chief of staff Phil Paule, to determine if Paule or the supervisor thought such an exchange to be advisable. Despite further efforts to reach Wiltshire, Paule and Ramos, no statement was forthcoming by press time.
With regard to rumors about Ramos or whispering campaigns in general and the reluctance of Ramos and his staff to address them, Wert said, “I am not sure anyone is actually saying anything. Anyone can start a rumor. Anyone can whisper. When you comment on whispers and rumors you raise them to the level of an issue.”
Neither district attorney Mike Ramos nor his spokesman, Christopher Lee, responded to the Sentinel’s requests for input with regard to whether the prosecution of the Barajas/Barajas Nunez case unearthed any information implicating James Ramos in any drug-related activity.
Curt Hagman, who was elected to the board of supervisors in November and was sworn into office in December, told the Sentinel he had detected nothing about James Ramos’s comportment or manner that would suggest he was using drugs or was impaird in any way.
“I’ve only been on the board for five meetings now, but I haven’t seen anything like that,” Hagman said.
This is not the first go-round the county has had with such rumors regarding its board chairman. In 2006, then board of supervisors chairman Bill Postmus went missing for more than a month. Efforts to locate him were unsuccessful and reports began to drift in to the effect that he was incapacitated or undergoing drug rehabilitation. When news media outlets stepped up their inquiries about his whereabouts, seeking to get access to his official itinerary, county officials, led by then-county administrative officer Mark Uffer, spurned those requests, criticized the inquiries as violations of Postmus’s right to privacy and derided the reports of his drug use as false rumors and ill-informed gossip. The county went to court to successfully oppose having to make public Postmus’s itinerary and calendar. Two-and-one-half years later, in early January 2009, Postmus, who was then the elected county assessor, confirmed that he had fallen prey to the “scourge” of drug addiction, while claiming he had overcome it. Less than two weeks later, he was arrested for drug possession.
Frank Peterson is an attorney representing Leonard Epps in a civil suit against Stacy Barajas Nunez and Erik Barajas with regard to their having contracted the Mexican Mafia to kill him. Epps and Peterson prevailed in that suit and a jury has already awarded Epps, who is still a target for Mexican Mafia executioners and has had to assume a new identity and relocate himself and his family to a secure location, $4.5 million in compensatory damages. In April another civil jury will take up whether Epps is entitled to punitive damages.
Petersen said there are “deep” levels of drug distribution activity emanating from the San Manuel Reservation, involving massive infusions of monetary investments from tribe members sustaining that illicit operation. He said there was information to indicate James Ramos “is, or at least was, pretty heavy into the use of drugs.” But that, Peterson said, is really a minor issue compared to the drug manufacturing and distribution network that involves the reservation and some of the tribe’s members, which is betrayed by the arrangements, approved by the board of supervisors, to have the tribe make payments to the district attorney and the sheriff to have them look the other way.
“They have a lot of money and a lot of power,” Peterson said. “They definitely own the sheriff’s department and all of the police departments in the San Bernardino area. It is pretty well established that if they get caught, nothing is going to happen. They own the district attorney’s office. They own the courts. They own everybody. If you fight it, there’s a pretty good chance you will end up crippled or dead.”

SBPEA Mulls Merger With Teamsters As Survival Ploy

(February 12) In an effort to gain more muscle at the bargaining table and stave off further efforts to decertify it as the major union representing San Bernardino County government employees, the San Bernardino Public Employees Association is considering rechartering itself as an independent local of the Teamsters.
The San Bernardino Public Employees Association, which came into existence in 1938 as the representative of San Bernardino County and San Bernardino City employees, today handles collective bargaining for over 11,000 employees working for San Bernardino County and 3,000 others working for 16 of the county’s cities – Barstow, Big Bear, Chino, Chino Hills, Colton, Fontana, Hesperia, Loma Linda, Montclair, Needles, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, Redlands, Rialto, San Bernardino, and Upland, as well as three cities in east Los Angeles County, Claremont, Pomona and West Covina, and Banning in Riverside County.
For three quarters of a century, the San Bernardino Public Employees Association (SBPEA) had remained in a relatively secure position as the representative of the lion’s share of county workers, but beginning four years ago internal and external events and pressure have threatened to shatter the association.
Beginning in 2011, county chief executive officer Greg Devereaux began seeking across-the-board contract concessions from all of the county’s employee bargaining units to offset skyrocketing governmental operating costs and end what he termed an “institutional structural deficit” plaguing the county. Several of the county employee unions came to some form of terms or compromise with Devereaux, though not all were ready to accept the economies he proposed. Devereaux achieved a major breakthrough when he convinced the county firefighters union to agree to pick up the 7 percent the county had been paying into the firefighters’ retirement accounts and decrease their annual promotional increases from 5 percent to 2.5 percent. But the firefighters’ union had made those concessions conditional upon the other bargaining groups making concessions. In September 2012 SEBA, the Safety Employees Benefit Association, representing the county’s sheriff’s deputies, made contract concessions.
In April 2013, Devereuax imposed contract concessions on deputy prosecutors and public defenders.
In July 2013, SBPEA General Manager Bob Blough was abruptly terminated and rumors began to circulate to the effect that he was under investigation by the district attorney’s office.
In May 2014, two classes of county workers, nursing division supervisors and managers, accepted the county’s terms. The same month, SBPEA rejected the latest contract offered to the various classifications of county workers by the county. Of the 5,524 county employees who voted on the proposal, known as a tentative agreement, 3,523 voted no. The other 2,001 members of the San Bernardino Public Employees Association who are employed by the county who participated in the vote cast ballots of acceptance. Some 7,000 county employees represented by the union did not participate in the vote.
The May 2014 vote came amidst a secession move by a relatively small but vocal portion of county workers represented by SBPEA members. They expressed dissatisfaction with SBPEA’s efforts in representing them in contract talks with the county, urging their fellow union members to reject the contract Devereaux was proposing, while seeking a special election to decertify the San Bernardino Public Employees Association as the county general line employees’ representative and instead installing Service Employees International Union Local 721 as their bargaining unit.
That push did not succeed and SBPEA retaliated against the dissidents by expelling those members advocating the change and obtaining a restraining order against the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in June 2014, effectively ending SEIU’s ability to lobby SBPEA members.
The San Bernardino Public Employees Association’s reputation further eroded in October, when SBPEA officials disclosed that an audit indicated that between July 1, 2011 and June 30, 2013, a total of $595,444.82 in cash received by SBPEA was missing because it was never deposited into SBPEA’s bank account and was not in SBPEA’s safe. It was revealed that former general manager Blough appeared to have absconded with the money. The audit was provided to the district attorney’s office, which was asked to double down on its criminal investigation of Blough. That same month, the San Bernardino Public Employees Association filed a lawsuit against Blough in San Bernardino Superior Court seeking return of the missing money and lawyers’ fees.
Faced with a growing perception by many of its members that the union is ineffectual, SBPEA this week, on February 11, announced it has scheduled a vote for later this month on whether members will consent to becoming an independent local of the Teamsters.
“Affiliation with the Teamsters will strengthen our position at the bargaining table to achieve better contracts for all members,” according to the announcement. “Affiliation will allow us to fully engage in the political process on the state and local levels for… overall benefit.”
That announcement, posted on the SBPEA websites said that while the association has cut an effective swathe as an independent union for the length of its existence, the current political and circumstantial context makes affiliation with the Teamsters propitious.
“Local politicians have targeted our wages, benefits and pensions. We need to fight back to save our way of life,” the website states. “If we do not evolve and progress, we may lose it all. Affiliation will give us the support and the backing of an organization that has 1.4 million union members nationally and 140,000 locally.”

Feinstein Introduces Bill To Catalog Another 1.6 Million Desert Acres As Monuments

(February 10) Four months after President Barack Obama designated nearly 350,000 acres of the San Gabriel Mountains as a national monument, California Senator Dianne Feinstein this week introduced legislation aimed at increasing protections for approximately 1.6 million acres of desert landscapes, establishing two new national monuments and expanding Joshua Tree and Death Valley National Parks and the Mojave National Preserve.
Feinstein’s bill, the California Desert Conservation and Recreation Act of 2015, would establish the Mojave Trails National Monument, situated between Mojave National Preserve and Joshua Tree National Park, and the Sand to Snow National Monument, which lies between Joshua Tree National Park and San Bernardino National Forest, and it would protect waterways such as Deep Creek and the Amargosa River as Wild and Scenic Rivers, establish the Alabama Hills National Scenic Area and designate several new wilderness areas.
Conservationists and desert preservationists hailed the legislation as an effective means of maintaining an important part of California’s natural and cultural heritage and safeguarding a resource that should be accessible to the public for outdoor recreation activities.
Included in the public lands to be protected by the act are some 200,000 acres of once privately-owned land purchased or otherwise acquired by The Wildlands Conservancy, which has joined with the Campaign for the California Desert and the Alliance For Desert Preservation in supporting the bill. The Wildlands Conservancy transferred the property to the U.S. Department of Interior to be managed for recreation, habitat and cultural resource protection, and other conservation purposes.
Opponents of large scale solar projects in pristine areas of the desert are also in favor of Feinstein’s proposed legislation.
San Bernardino County Third District Supervisor James Ramos, a Democrat, commended Feinstein for taking up the proposed legislation, saying, “The California desert lands are important to our community’s quality of life and to our local economy. This legislation will help ensure that this legacy is protected for future generations.”
Feinstein is a Democrat.
The other San Bernardino County supervisor representing the county’s desert area, Robert Lovingood, had not commented on the proposed legislation by press time. Lovingood is a Republican.
Republicans differ with Democrats on the advisability of subjecting large swathes of San Bernardino County to federal protection. In the case of Obama’s set-aside of area within the San Gabriel Mountains and Angeles National Forest as a national monument, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, three of whose five members are Republicans, last year objected to Wrightwood, Mt. Baldy, the Baldy ski lodge and Cucamonga Canyon being included within the national monument boundary. Obama accordingly excised those four areas from the monument.
In the case of the San Gabriel National Monument, Obama used the Antiquities Act, first used by President Teddy Roosevelt, to create that monument by executive fiat rather than allowing a congressional bill to work its way through the Republican-majority House of Representatives. What remains to be determined is whether Feinstein can get the Senate and Congress to support her bill or whether she will ultimately rely upon Obama utilizing his executive authority to expand protection of the desert land. There is some question as to whether that approach will work because the Obama Administration has sought to encourage solar energy project development in the desert.

EVWD Requests Highland Let It Move Sterling Cloaca To Del Rosa

(February 9) The East Valley Water District has requested that the city of Highland allow it to relocate its planned sewage treatment plant from its previously-approved site on Sterling Avenue to another point in the Del Rosa area.
While East Valley Water District General Manager/CEO John Mura maintains the plant involves the most modern of technology and would accordingly produce no noise and no odor, the district’s effort to locate it on Sterling Avenue was nonetheless insensitive to the wishes of adjoining property owners, Mura said.
By putting the facility in the Del Rosa area instead of at the Sterling Avenue location, Mura said concerns of those around the Sterling Avenue site can be alleviated and the district can sell that property to finance purchasing the Del Rosa property.
Former councilmembers Ross Jones and Dennis Johnson said they were in favor of the transition and four of the current council members raised no objections.
But Mayor Larry McCallon, who is a voting member of the San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission board, said the district was rushing the matter by approaching the city council for the change at this point.
“You don’t even have a state permit,” McCallon said. The Local Agency Formation Commission must examine and vote on the matter. McCallon said he did not want to prejudge the matter as a member of the council if he was going to have to pass judgment on the issue at a later date in his capacity as a commission member.
There will also be an environmental review of locating the plant in Del Rosa.
The plant will treat effluent and then inject the treated and reclaimed water into the Bunker Hill Basin to replenish the water table. Adjoining the plant, according to Mura will be a park and community center, plus a satellite district office where customers can pay their water bills. The city council voted to accept a notice of intent for relocating the plant.