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Sentinel 11-06-15

San Bernardino County Chief Executive Officer Greg Devereaux is seeking to arrange embattled county human resources director Andrew Lamberto’s exodus from the county, the Sentinel has learned.
Lamberto’s arrest on a charge of soliciting a prostitute last March resulted in his plea to a misdemeanor count in August, which netted Lamberto a sentence of completing ten days of community service work and three years of unsupervised probation. Three days after his arrest, Lamberto informed Devereaux of the matter, and Devereaux handled the issue as an internal administrative one, docking his pay for two weeks and curtailing his privileged status as a county department head to that comparable to an at-will employee. “Mr. Lamberto clearly understands, and has agreed, that even one additional issue involving his conduct, public or private, will result in his immediate dismissal,” Devereaux said in a public statement late last month after the incident became public.
Though Lamberto complied with county policy in disclosing to Devereaux his arrest, Devereaux did not inform the board of supervisors. There is no requirement within the county’s codes or policies that the chief executive officer make disclosure of the arrests or misdemeanor convictions of county employees to the board. Two months after the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, in the jurisdiction of which Lamberto’s arrest took place, publicly released information relating to his plea conviction, word wended its way to San Bernardino County, where it took several days for news outlets to confirm that the individual arrested near Newport Beach on March 27 was the same Andrew Lamberto who headed San Bernardino County’s personnel division. A firestorm of controversy erupted, with some heat vectored at the board of supervisors because Lamberto had remained in place. Within a few days, on October 23, Devereaux put out a public statement in which he explained that “Historically, disciplinary actions have been handled as purely administrative matters and not brought to the attention of the board of supervisors. Therefore I did not bring this matter to the board’s attention.”
In recent years, both Devereaux and Lamberto have come under increasing attack by the unions representing the county government’s employees, in no small measure because of their efforts, many of which were successful, in wringing contract concessions from those bargaining units as the county had to reduce spending as the result of the persisting economic downturn that has only recently begun to abate. The perceived faux pas with regard to Lamberto’s arrest and conviction and the exposure of the matter in the face of what was perceived as an effort to cover it up brought on calls for the immediate sacking of both men. This Tuesday, the board held a specially scheduled meeting that consisted primarily of a closed door discussion devoted almost exclusively to the Lamberto crisis.
In public, Devereaux offered a public apology to the board of supervisors over the handling of the matter and the board directed Devereaux to work with county counsel – the county’s stable of in-house attorneys – to draft by December 15 a policy for the board’s public consideration that would prevent a repeat of a similar situation.
The meeting was followed with widespread speculation on internet blogs and in print that hinted at Devereux’s pending demise. In particular, it was suggested, both Board Chairman James Ramos and supervisor Robert Lovingood were gunning to have Devereaux removed as county chief executive officer.
In fact, the Sentinel, has learned, no such threat to Devereaux exists. Indeed, his tenure at either the helm as county chief executive officer or the primary advisor to his successor is guaranteed contractually to last at least three more years. According to highly reliable and highly placed sources within the county government structure, all five members of the board of supervisors are aware of this contractual reality, understand the logistical and political difficulty of overcoming it and have no illusions that they could muster the grounds or consensus to force Devereaux’s departure.
Upon his hiring in 2010, Devereux was given extraordinary accommodations and protections in his contract. The position he took on, which formerly carried the title of county administrative officer, was changed to county chief executive officer. Furthermore, his predecessors could be terminated on a simple majority vote of the board members present, 3-2 with all five participating, 3-1 with four participating or 2-1 with three participating. Under Devereaux’s contract, to relieve him of his command, the board would need to muster four votes to do so. Also included in his contract is a one year/three year evergreen clause which prevents the board from firing him immediately without citing cause. In this way, even if the board were to assemble the four or five votes needed to cashier him, his departure as chief executive officer would not take place until one year after the vote. Additionally, the evergreen clause requires that Devereaux remain as an executive consultant to his successor for two years after that.
Moreover, in the instant case, i.e., that involving the decision to discipline Lamberto without bringing the underlying situation to the attention of the board of supervisors, does not technically qualify as a violation of the county’s policy. On a yearly basis hundreds of county employees are cited for infractions pertaining to non-work connected violations of codes and scores more are arrested and/or convicted of misdemeanors for crimes that do not take place in or at the workplace or during business hours. There is no requirement that those citations, crimes and/or convictions be reported to the board of supervisors. It is only when a county employee is convicted of a non-work related felony or a crime of any magnitude is committed or alleged to be committed in the county workplace by a county employee that a review of his/her employment status is initiated. Even in such cases, there is no requirement that the board of supervisors be in the loop.
The Sentinel has learned that members of the board of supervisors are cognizant of a “fine line” between what one county source said is “the need for the board to stay ahead of the curve on events” such as the Lamberto situation and “things of a private nature that get reported by an employee to his boss or supervisor. If a county employee tells his boss that he needs time off because he is going into rehab for an alcohol or drug problem, I’m not sure we want a policy that says that confidence has to be broken. If an employee is going through a challenge but it’s not affecting his work, does that have to be reported? In retrospect, this thing with Andrew could have been and probably should have been handled differently. Greg was a little naïve in thinking it could stay quiet forever. But his handling it administratively was not outside the county’s policy. What the board did is ask that we change the policy so the CEO has to report more detail when these types of things come and staff knows the board is engaged.”
The closed door meeting in which the board questioned Devereaux was an intense one, one of those privy to what went on during it told the Sentinel. About ninety percent of the discussion pertained to Lamberto, the Sentinel was informed. The other ten percent focused on Devereaux’s action. A concern the board had was the degree to which Devereaux might be withholding information about other county employees’ criminal convictions from them. When Devereaux was pointedly asked if there were other county department heads who had been charged with or convicted of serious crimes which Devereaux had knowledge about which he had not disclosed to the board, Devereaux directly responded that there were none. At least some of the board members were reassured by that. “One event doesn’t make a pattern,” one of the supervisors remarked.
The Sentinel was told that reports subsequent to the meeting that supervisors Ramos and Lovingood were gunning for Devereaux but did not yet have the votes lined up to effectuate their goal were far off the mark. Both rationally and calmly participated in the discussion but did not push Devereaux toward the door and did not wheedle their colleagues for action against him either, according to the well-placed source. To the extent that Devereaux was pressed hard by any of the supervisors, the Sentinel has learned, it was Josie Gonzales who was the most aggressive, though her pointed questioning fell short of demanding his resignation or an effort to assemble votes to oust him.
“Josie was more fired up against Greg than anyone else,” the Sentinel was told.
Devereaux remains on firm ground.
Nevertheless, there was a consensus among the board members that Lamberto has to go. Devereaux was told to find a way to persuade the human resources director to leave of his own accord, offer him some form of incentive to pack it in, ease him out, make it too uncomfortable for him to stay, force him out, throw him out or, failing all other means, terminate him.
According to the source, the sole reason the board is temporizing on pulling the trigger on Lamberto immediately and prefers to have Devereaux construct an exit that preserves some sense of decorum is that its members do not want to court the perception that “if someone is unhappy or discontented with somebody or something all they have to do is stage some protests or come before the board and we’ll start firing people left and right.”

SAN BERNARDINO—The San Bernardino City Council this week gave approval to yet another aggressive step toward rejuvenation of the county seat, entering into an exclusive negotiation agreement with AECOM, The Fransen Company and KB Homes to redevelop the Carousel Mall commercially, simultaneously intensifying the adjacent Theater Square and capping the effort with town homes/condominiums to be intersticed with the shopping opportunities.
Located as it is in the very heart of San Bernardino, the Carousel Mall, as it is now known, has become something of a metaphor for the entire city.
Herman Harris, Philip Harris, Arthur Harris and Leopold Harris opened the Harris Department Store in San Bernardino in 1905. For two-thirds of the 20th Century it was the principal emporium of that city, remaining under Harris family ownership and management well into the 1970s.
In 1972, what was then known as the Central City Mall, was built around the grand old Harris building. J.C. Penney, and Montgomery Ward joined it as major tenants, and the mall boasted 49 other stores or shops of varying sizes.
It was for a time a grand shopping location, temporarily besting its major rival in town, the Inland Center, which opened in 1966. At its peak in the mid 1980s it boasted more than 100 tenants. In the late 1980s it was renovated, and a carousel was installed in the bottom floor, at which point it was rechristened the Carousel Mall. But its fortunes waned with those of the rest of San Bernardino over the years, and by the late 1990s, it began to decline. The first major blow came when Gottschalks, which had bought out Harris, elected to close at that location in 1998 and relocated in the Inland Center. Three years later, in 2001, Montgomery Ward went out of business. At that point, J.C. Penney was the sole anchor. In 2003, J.C. Penney closed. The mall was sold in 2006. Two years later, in 2008, Lynwood-based developer Placo San Bernardino LLC, purchased a major portion of the mall for $23.5 million, with serious designs on reinvigorating it and obtaining short term financing to undertake improvements, signaling it was on a crash schedule to do just that. But that same year, Cinema Star shuttered its theater on the mall’s grounds.
Placo remained committed, however, refinancing its early short-term financing, with a $16.5 million loan from Center Bank.
In May 2010, with its plan stalled, Placo was failing to make its payments to Center Bank. The City of San Bernardino’s economic development agency swooped in and bought the property’s note and deed trust from Center Bank for slightly over $13.1 million. At that point, the city, based on backroom discussions with county officials, had visions of filling large portions of the mall with county offices.
Relations between Placo and the city had entirely broken down by that point. Placo, which claimed it was still intent on making a go of revitalizing the mall, said it was being undercut by the city which was militating to tenantize it with county government offices. The city pressed Placo to pay it the $5 million difference between the amount it had paid for the mall and the amount of money loaned it by Center Bank with interest.
In 2011, there were 33 shops in the mall. But the State of California’s move in dismantling all of the redevelopment agencies in the state seriously crippled San Bernardino’s ability to bring to bear the rerouting of future sales tax revenue, known as tax increment, to finance needed improvements on the 42.6 acres of struggling and unactuated potential in the city’s midst, within walking distance of City Hall and the county’s main administrative building and its historic courthouse and its newly completed 11-story Law and Justice Center.
The Harris building, which was later transformed into Gottschalks, was acquired in 1981 by Spanish retailer El Corte Inglés, S.A., which closed the Gottschalks in San Bernardino in 1998. El Corte Inglés, S.A , despite encouragement by San Bernardino has made no real progress in returning the landmark to its former grandeur. The J.C. Penny’s Store was acquired by the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians. The city holds title to practically all of the rest of the center.
In 2012, the city hit rock bottom, filing for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection. By late 2014, there were only 17 businesses at the Carousel Mall including four restaurants. Whatever prospect the city once felt it had of luring the county into locating its offices there have long since faded. In April 2014, the only county office there, county of San Bernardino’s Children and Family Services Division, which had entered into a ten year lease for 28,892 square feet of office space at 128 Carousel Mall, Building G, pulled up its stakes and departed.
Bowing to the obvious, San Bernardino gave up on the prospect of becoming the county’s landlord at the mall.
In November 2014, San Bernardino Mayor Carey Davis and San Bernardino City Manager Allen Parker, who were then on speaking terms with one another, sent a letter to more than 80 “development concerns” soliciting return letters of interest to the city relating to the mall. Those letters sought the developers’ vision of what could be done with the mall. Purposefully, city officials avoided providing any description of its own dictates or limitations with regard to the property, wanting to see what the development community’s conception of the potential of the property was. Fourteen developers responded to the proposal, all of whom presented ideas which deputy city manager Bil Manis said “had legs and could really run with this project.” Further evaluation continued and Manis said three of those, AECOM/Fransen, Tishman and Hunt and were deemed serious enough for him and community development director Mark Persico to engage them in substantial dialogue. Ultimately, city staff settled on a proposal by AECOM, The Fransen Company and KB Homes.
“The team that rose to the top that we are very excited to have involved with us as we actually negotiate toward a development agreement is the AECON Team in partnership with the Fransen Company and KB Homes,” Manis said on November 2. Manis said his office is working with AECOM and Fransen toward drafting a “development agreement to drill down what the phasing will be, what the time line will be, how it works financially.” Manis said the deal closed that night is a “six month agreement and a six month option to extend.”
The seriousness with which AECOM and Fransen are approaching the undertaking, Manis said, is demonstrated by a $10,000 per month non-refundable deposit that the city can use “to hire experts to get the city to get the deal. “Manis said AECOM and Fransen/KB are a “very strong team.” He said AECOM is an “international developer” and he pointed out that Fransen has already successfully worked in the city Regal Theaters. by t e
Von Davies of AECOM noted his company had worked with Fransen in the past. He said the tree entities – AECOM, Fransen and KB intended to “build on good work you have done at the Regal theaters, the transit center, and enlivening the city and make it a first class urban environment.” In describing his company, Davies said it had “global reach but we have all the professional entities we can bring to this project all the way from conceptual design through construction through management and with John’s team [i.e. Fransen], the ability to tenant these stores and with KB Homes to bring rooftops to the downtown. This is a unique opportunity and we think we are in a unique position to make that happen.” Davies said an early part of the project at reclaiming the Carousel Mall will involve expanding the existing “nighttime entertainment district to add to the Regal and Historic California Theater.”
Von Davies said the “theater square” will be the hub around which the redevelopment of downtown will take place.
Referencing other projects elsewhere that are similar to what is envisioned in San Bernardino, Davies said he foresaw “Main street with retail shops, cafes, restaurants jazz shops on the lower level and … boutique hotels smaller residential buildings, larger residential buildings, a small urban square they share. There is a general understanding that this community will work as a whole but be a partnership of many different entities. That is the vitality we hope to have in downtown San Bernardino, one that that compliments the civic functions already here, the historic court and the buildings on court street.”
Davies said the approach would be to build the mall gradually, one user and one store at a time, rather than drawing out a comprehensive plan that will not start until all of the pieces are master-planned and committed. “We will break it into bite size pieces with multiple players and multiple stakeholders.”
John Fransen echoed Davies’ comments, saying that the mall was being redeveloped to accommodate a multiplicity of users who will be able to flourish there and that the city cannot simply dictate or will stores, shops and restaurants into place.
“You have a great plan but need to be market driven to support that plan,” Fransen said. “It is important to note that Regal sitting there today, along with the California theatre creates a great opportunity to leverage the success and prior investment by the city The Regal portion of that theater draws over half of a million customers per year. I think we would all agree we are a little bit shy of restaurants when it comes to downtown. So, we think that step one is to take the existing success and leverage off of that. Lining the entrance are six former star cinema locations. There were 20 originally and Regal came in with 14 and does much more business than those 20 ever did. Those high floor to ceiling operations offer a great opportunity for a restaurant to sit next to a large generator of customers . There is parking already there so those locations along with several restaurant locations that can be built into the grassy area out front present an opportunity to be one of two catalyst projects to start the project. “
Fransen emphasized again that the city has to capitalize on the enthusiasm of private sector investment to make the mall redevelopment plan work.
“This has to be market driven and cannot be speculative,” he said. “We are not going to sit and wait. We are going to go into the marketplace and listen to the marketplace and draw users. The Theater Square is one of the engines that can drive the Carousel Mall site it provides capital to drive the project. It provides success and further success on further success and that will lead to other retailers.”

It appears increasingly likely that the legal teams representing a Rancho Cucamonga developer and three former county officials he is accused of extorting and/or bribing to achieve a $102 million legal settlement from the county in 2006 will attempt to construct a platform for their collective clients’ defense that uses as a primary plank arguments that the settlement payout the company received matched the damages the developer’s company sustained in its dealings with the county.
In this way, the fate of the four accused may hinge on two separate but related determinations by the judge, Michael A. Smith, hearing the case. The first determination will relate to whether the justification of the $102 million payout on civil or procedural grounds is relevant to the criminal case. The second determination will extend to whether offering any form of monetary inducement to public officials to influence their decision-making process is tantamount to bribery, even if the decision sought is a correct or legally justifiable one in other respects.
Recent and previous statements from the bench by Smith do not bode well for the defendants.
The Colonies Lawsuit Settlement Public Corruption Prosecution arose from the 3-2 decision of the county board of supervisors nearly nine years ago to confer a $102 million payout on the Colonies Partners development consortium to put to rest a lawsuit that company had brought against the county over flood control issues at the Colonies at San Antonio residential and Colonies Crossroads commercial subdivisions in Upland. The prosecution maintains that settlement was tainted by extortion, bribery, kickbacks, fraud and graft.
Jeff Burum, who with Dan Richards was one of the two managing principals in the 19-member Colonies Partners, was accused by prosecutors in a 29-count indictment handed down in May 2011 of having worked with former San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy union president Jim Erwin to first extort and then bribe former county supervisors Bill Postmus and Paul Biane to get them to vote in favor of the settlement in November 2006 and then providing a kickback to Mark Kirk, the chief of staff to another former supervisor, Gary Ovitt, whose third vote for the settlement was crucial to its passage.
The indictment was built around the theory that Burum and Erwin, with the assistance of public relations consultant Patrick O’Reilly, conspired to threaten Postmus and Biane with exposure pertaining to their respective homosexuality/drug use and financial insolvency during the 2006 campaign season when Postmus was vying for county assessor and Biane was stumping for a measure to increase the pay of county supervisors. The indictment further charges that the conspiracy broadened and intensified with the provision of four separate $100,000 kickbacks provided to Postmus, Biane, Kirk and Erwin in the form of contributions to political action committees each of those parties set up or arranged to have set up after Postmus and Biane acceded to the threats and voted to approve the $102 million settlement. Kirk, according to the indictment, was rewarded with the $100,000 donation to his political action committee for having persuaded Ovitt to vote for the settlement.
The strength of the indictment in large measure hinged on guilty pleas by Postmus on a host of political corruption charges relating to the alleged scheme, including conspiracy, bribery, fraud and criminal conflict of interest. Both Postmus and Erwin had been previously charged in February 2010 with criminal wrongdoing in relation to the settlement and Postmus’s guilty pleas came in March 2011, one month before he became the star witness before the grand jury that indicted Burum, Biane, Erwin and Kirk.
The case has been bitterly fought by both sides for four years, resulting in an interminable delay in the trial. Prosecutors twice filed appeals with the Fourth District Court of Appeals to reestablish charges thrown out at the trial court and there were two appeals by the defense to throw out charges kept in by the trial court, and an appeal by the prosecution to the California Supreme Court to reestablish charges thrown out at the appeal court level. While the case is now scheduled to go to trial in February, the prosecution is contemplating appealing its most recent setback in the case, a ruling from the Fourth District Court of Appeals, to the California Supreme Court. Simultaneously, the defense has now intensified its challenge of the prosecution’s case scheduled to go to trial in February, lodging motions with the trial court aimed at narrowing or eliminating entirely the charges the defendants face.
Some of those pre-trial motions were heard last Friday and will again be considered by the judge today, November 6.
And while prosecutors continue to propound their theory that the $102 million settlement was tainted by conspiracy, bribery, extortion, graft, fraud, perjury and public corruption, the defense camp is seeking to establish that prosecutors offered a selective set of facts to the grand jury that indicted the four, leaving out crucial details suggesting the $102 million payout was a reasonable one that needed no illicit facilitation.
Of crucial moment is whether the judge hearing the case is willing to entertain defense arguments that the legal position the county assumed in civil court in seeking to get from its insurance carriers partial reimbursement of the $102 million payment after the settlement was made is relevant to issues at play in the criminal trial. The county’s lawyers who represented it in that insurance recovery effort were brought before the grand jury that indicted the defendants, offering statements in response to prosecutor’s questions that suggested the Colonies Partners were not entitled to any compensation for the county’s activity, which included constructing a storm drain system which conveyed water from the northwest corner of Upland along a route paralleling the 210 Freeway and deposited that water onto the Colonies Partners’ land. In the lawsuit the Colonies Partners brought against the county and its flood control district, the company maintained that the county’s action not only created a massive drainage problem on its property, it rendered property intended for development undevelopable and it delayed the sale of other property within the subdivision, resulting in monetary loss to the Colonies Partners. In response to the lawsuit, the county asserted it had the right, based upon flood control easements granted to the county by the former owner of the property, the San Antonio Water Company, in 1933, 1934 and 1939, to channel water onto the property.
The office of county counsel, the county’s in-house lawyers, including deputy county counsel Mitch Norton, had worked with two outside law firms – Munger, Tolles and Olson and Jones Day – in spiritedly denying the Colonies Partners’ contention that the county had done anything inappropriate in using quarries that had been converted to catch basins on the Colonies property, which was shown on regional maps as an undevelopable flood zone, as a repository for the storm drain water.
After Postmus, Biane and Ovitt approved the $102 million settlement in November 2006, the board of supervisors gave direction to county counsel to seek through the insurance polices the county had with the California State Association of Counties Excess Insurance Authority and Travelers Insurance a portion of the money paid out in the settlement. The same month that the board voted to confer the $102 million settlement on the Colonies Partners, it also elevated Ruth Stringer to the position of interim county counsel. The board bestowed upon her the title of county counsel the following year. During her tenure, the county soft-pedaled its previous representations to the effect that the Colonies Partners were due nothing in return for the county’s use of the flood control easements on that company’s property and instead pressed the case that the county was entitled to reimbursement from its insurance providers. In making that case, the county contradicted several elements in its position in the civil suit against the Colonies Partners.
Relatively early on, in 2007, Travelers Insurance provided the county flood control district $9.5 million to satisfy its indemnification responsibility with regard to the Colonies Partners’ lawsuit settlement. But the California State Association of Counties Excess Insurance Authority dragged its feet, seeing extenuating circumstances with regard to the settlement that potentially mitigated or obviated its indemnification of the county. Finally, in January 2009, the California State Association of Counties Excess Insurance Authority officially rejected the county’s claim. In October 2010, the county, represented by Norton and an outside attorney, Costa Mesa-based Todd Theodora and his law firm, filed a lawsuit alleging the California State Association of Counties Excess Insurance Authority skipped out on its coverage obligation. “The California Association of Counties never adjudicated this claim in good faith because it did not want to have to provide coverage for a loss of this magnitude,” that suit stated.
The matter went before the Orange County Superior Court and ultimately, on November 10, 2014, Orange County Superior Court Judge Franz Miller ruled in favor of the county and against the California State Association of Counties Excess Insurance Authority, finding the county damaged the Colonies Partners, and as such the county was entitled to an arbitration award against the California State Association of Counties Excess Insurance Authority for the $10 million it was owed as part of the insurance coverage plus legal costs and interest. In a document signed on April 15 and filed on April 16, 2015, the California State Association of Counties Excess Insurance Authority agreed to the payment of $14,502,465.43 to the county as a final settlement of the claim.
In making the county’s civil case, Norton and Theodora and members of Theodora’s law firm repeatedly posited an argument before a panel of arbitrators with the Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services based in Ontario and the Orange County Superior Court that San Bernardino County had engaged in actions or “offenses or wrongful acts” against the Colonies Partners which resulted in “physical damage” to the Colonies Partners’ property and/or assets, such that the $102 million settlement was a reasonable one given that the value of one of the basins constructed on the Colonies Partners’ property to hold the storm water was $85 million, the Colonies Partners’ had estimated the cost of managing the basin over time at $75 million, the Colonies Partners valued at $43 million the lots the company claimed were devalued due to the cloud on their title which came about because of the county flood control district’s interpretation of its easements, the three-year delay the construction of Phase II of the project cost the Colonies Partners $36 million, and that the Colonies Partners sustained an $11 million loss because of higher infrastructure development costs as a result of the county’s action.
The lead attorney on Burum’s defense team, Stephen Larson, has seized upon the assertions made by Norton and Theodora in those court papers to posit the argument that prosecutors, when questioning Norton before the grand jury that indicted his client and the other defendants in 2011, failed to elicit from Norton testimony that would have potentially demonstrated to the jurors that the $102 million settlement was not unreasonable and Burum therefore had no reason to unduly influence, either by extortion or bribery, Postmus, Biane and Ovit through Kirk. To buttress his argument, Larson subpoenaed Norton, along with Stringer, who has since retired, Theodora, and the county’s chief executive officer, Greg Devereux, as well as former assistant district attorney Jim Hackleman, who was a part of the prosecution team that obtained the indictment against Burum, Biane, Erwin and Kirk. Hackleman is now retired but is a “volunteer” member of the prosecution team, according to the district attorney’s office.
By cross examining Norton, Stringer, Theodora, Devereaux and Hackleman, Larson intended to demonstrate to Smith that the district attorney’s office had knowledge of the exculpatory information that Norton and Stringer, who also testified before the grand jury, possessed, but that prosecutors intentionally hid that information from the jury. Additionally, defense attorneys have obtained information to the effect that Stringer, while serving in the capacity of county counsel, was secretly reporting to the district attorney’s office privileged information gleaned from closed door sessions of the board of supervisors, and that she was doing so without the consent of the members of the board. This was, Larson asserts, a violation of attorney-client privilege, and a violation of Biane’s constitutional rights against self incrimination.
The county sought to quash the subpoenas of Norton, Stringer, Theodora and Devereaux. The district attorney’s office in conjunction with the California Attorney General’s Office sought to quash the subpoena of Hackleman. Ultimately, with regard to the Norton, Stringer, Theodora and Devereaux subpoenas, Larson and the county arrived at a stipulated agreement by which the county agreed to turn over scores of documents and emails that relate to the issues Larson wanted to explore in his cross-examination of Norton, Stringer, Theodora and Devereaux. The Sentinel has learned that at least some of those documents and emails have been turned over to the defense, which is poring over them to find documentation and evidence of exculpatory evidence that was available to the prosecution that was hidden from the grand jury. It is anticipated that at least some of this material will be cited by Larson during oral arguments relating to a so-called Johnson Motion he has made, which if granted would dismiss the indictment because of prosecutorial misconduct in withholding such exculpatory information from the grand jury.
Despite the manner in which the defense is fortifying itself, suggestions around the courthouse are that Larson is digging a dry legal hole.
By the tenor of the decisions Smith issued on October 30, together with statements he made at that time as well as during the Summer of 2014 when a previous host of defense motions were heard, indications are that Smith, a former prosecutor, is disinclined toward nearly all of the legal theories Larson is propounding, no matter how thoroughly researched or eloquently stated. In addition, Smith has, if not consistently, more often than not sided with the prosecution on issues relating to the strategy of presentation, timing, and context.
One example of the latter was the insistence earlier this year by Larson and Erwin’s attorney, Raj Maline, that their clients go to trial no later than last month, the point beyond which Burum and Erwin had refused to grant further delays in their respective rights to a speedy trial. Smith refused to initiate Burum’s and Erwin’s trial in October, insisting that a case against all four of the defendants be put on at the same time and that the trial start in February. Another example was the prosecution’s request for a rare though not unheard of trial utilizing two juries. The prosecution wants a dual jury trial, and specifically sought Smith’s indulgence in having one jury consider the charges against Burum, Biane and Kirk and a differently composed jury deciding Erwin’s guilt or innocence. In making the request, prosecutors asserted that Erwin had been far more open with regard to public statements relating to the case than any of the others, having made some 121 utterances that are incriminating. They want to use at least some of those statements against him but do not want to risk a mistrial of any of the other defendants because though those statements may be deemed admissible against Irwin, they would be inadmissible against the others.
Mary Andrues, an attorney on Burum’s defense team, said the proper way to get around that dilemma would be to hold two separate trials, one for Irwin and one for the others. Given that the trial may go on for months, there is a real prospect that information heard by one panel will be shared inadvertently with the other, Andrues said.
Smith, however, sided with prosecutors, granting the motion for separate juries, while indicating defense attorneys would have an opportunity, through what are called motions in limine, to exclude certain of Erwin’s statements on an item-by-item basis.
Smith’s consideration and rejection of one of Larson’s motions, which called for the dismissal of misappropriation of public funds against all four defendants, presaged further rough sledding for Larson. Larson built his motion around the consideration that the Fourth District Court of Appeals in August dismissed a civil case brought on behalf of the Inland Oversight Committee and Citizens for Responsible and Equitable Environmental Development in April 2012 by attorney Cory Briggs, an Upland attorney. That case sought to have the Colonies Partners disgorge the $102 million based on the contention that the settlement should be null and void because it was tainted by bribery, extortion, conspiracy and other criminal acts as well as a conflict of interest involving Biane and Postmus. The Fourth District Court of Appeals ruled that the settlement was binding because a validation hearing for the settlement had been held in 2007 and a court at that time had upheld it. Larson asserted that the Fourth District Court of Appeals’ ruling confirming the validation judgment was tantamount to a declaration that the settlement was not only valid but lawful in all respects that that there was no probable cause to suspect or allege that the $102 million was appropriated without authority of law.
This resulted in Supervising California Deputy Attorney General Melissa Mandel, the lead member of the prosecution team, which also includes members of the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office, asserting the processing of the settlement had nothing to do with “bribes and the kickbacks,” which led to the settlement.
In a telling response, which echoed what he had said in a similar context last year, Smith concurred with Mandel, and dismissed Larson’s motion, saying that the appellate court’s decision in the civil matter did not preclude the filing of criminal charges, since the appellate court’s decision extended only to the question of whether the settlement was properly processed and did not pertain to the misconduct alleged to have been perpetrated by those who facilitated and approved the settlement.
“The criminal charges do not attack the validity of the settlement. They attempt to prosecute individuals for specific misconduct covered by the penal code,” Smith said.
This tears at the heart and soul of the defense Larson is constructing for Burum. What Smith appeared to be signaling was his acceptance of the prosecution’s theory that the $102 million settlement was conferred upon the Colonies Partners at least partially, if not wholly, as a result of the extortion that proceeded it and the bribery, in the form of kickbacks, that followed it.
What is not clear, at this point, is whether Smith’s ruling on the defense motions relating to relatively narrow and pointed issues of law prior to trial and with regard to allowing the case to go to trial will carry over to his rulings with regard to allowing Larson to make the same arguments in a slightly different form to the jury that will hear the case. Larson is doggedly angling at demonstrating the $102 million settlement was a reasonable one and that since the settlement was a defensible one, nothing untoward to effectuate it took place. Smith appears to be on the cusp of declaring that whether the settlement was justifiable or not is irrelevant entirely to the question of whether Burum, with Erwin’s assistance, first extorted Postmus and Biane and then bribed Postmus, Biane and Kirk and whether Postmus, Biane and Kirk then accepted those bribes.
On October 30, the specter of an even further delay in the trial descended over the courtroom as Mark McDonald, the attorney representing Biane, asked for a delay beyond the February 1 trial date. Larson and Maline, who have already raised strenuous objections to the delays in the case thus far, protested vigorously. Smith did not rule out a further delay, however, asking all attorneys to provide him with briefs on “finding good cause to continue the trial.”

More of the sordid details relating to the kidnapping murder of Nabil Nazir Attia Shehata have emerged.
Shehata, 53 of Barstow, was reported missing by his family on October 12. His body was found in the open desert near Highway 58 on October 19. Shortly thereafter, his vehicle was found to be in the possession of Bruce Lamont Fuller and Inor Montrell Robinson.
While authorities do not believe that Fuller or Robinson were directly involved in Shehata’s death, they have been charged with, in Fuller’s case, harboring or aiding a felony suspect/accessory and buying or receiving a stolen vehicle or equipment, and in Robinson’s case, unlawfully taking or driving a vehicle and harboring or aiding a felony suspect/accessory.
Dmorrion Avery Holmes, Michael Raynile Phillips, Tanisha Anthony and Klonie Karmell Steele McNeese are charged with murder and carjacking. Holmes and Phillips are charged with kidnapping, as well. All six – four men and two woman – have pleaded not guilty to the charges against them.
The preliminary hearing for the six began on November 3. Before Judge Vic Stull, prosecutor Mari Braun laid out enough detail through the testimony of Barstow Police officers and San Bernardino County Sheriff’s officers calculated to bind the defendant’s over for trial.
It appears that Steel McNeese lured Shehata into a situation in which Holmes, 18, and Phillips, 19, killed him.
Shehata became familiar with Steele McNeese, 19, more than a month ago. The two lived across the street from one another in Barstow. McNeese apparently first made contact with Shehata by bumming cigarettes from him. At some point, Shehata propositioned Steele McNeese, offering her $15 for oral gratification. According to the sheriff’s department, Steele McNeese never took Shehata up on the offer, but left the door open to that possibility. She entered his cell phone number in her phone as “This guy.”
Meanwhile, Anthony, 23, was in Barstow. A friend of McNeese, they were both in touch with members of what the sheriff’s department’s gang task force identifies as a “squad” or “clique,” which included Holmes, known by his alias “Take Off,” Robinson, called “Knuckles,”, Fuller, whose nickname was “Young Deuce,” and Phillips, who went by “Mister.” The squad was known as “Young N Gettin It” or YNG.
Anthony was in need of transportation so she could get to San Dimas to pick up her boyfriend Knuckles, i.e., Robinson, 21, who was staying at his sister’s house. It so happened that on October 12, Shehata had given Steele McNeese a ride to the Cactus Motel, where Anthony was staying. As Steele McNeese exited the vehicle, a Toyota Camry, Shehata asked if she would like to go over to his house. Steele McNeese declined the offer at that point.
Shortly thereafter, however, while Steele McNeese was in Anthony’s room at the Cactus Inn, Anthony’s need for a car came up in the course of their conversation. It was at that point that the plan to take Shehata’s car was cooked up, according to the sheriff’s department.
Steele McNeese called Shehata and arranged to meet him at Lillian Park. When Shehata arrived at Lillian Park, he was met by Holmes and Phillips. The next installment in the story comes from the Barstow Police Department.
A witness who lives in the 200 block of Lillian Drive later reported to police that on October 12 she heard a yell and she looked outside. She said she saw a man lying face down on the ground with two men hovering over him. The two men were kicking the downed man. They then dragged him to a Toyota Camry, lifted him and threw him into the backseat. They drove off.
According to homicide investigators Holmes and Phillips both said Shehata was still alive on the night of October 19, when they threw him onto the desert floor and left to drive back to Anthony’s room at the Cactus Inn.
When Fuller, 20, and Robinson were caught tooling around in Shehata’s Camry on October 19, they were arrested.
At that point, sheriff’s homicide investigators Adam Salsberry and Brendan Motley went to work on them. Salsberry and Motley climbed the ladder and got the two joyriders to acknowledge that the Camry had been used to retrieve Robinson from his sister’s house in San Dimas, that Robinson had used it to get to an appointment with his probation officer in Pasadena and to make a trip to Rialto. Fuller and Robinson then implicated Holmes, Phillips, Steele McNeese and Anthony in the theft of the car. When he was grilled, Phillips let it all hang out and filled in the blanks with regard to waylaying Shehata and taking him out into the desert and leaving him to die. Both Holmes and Phillips recounted the carjacking and kidnapping of Shehata and described in some detail the planning of the crimes in Anthony’s motel room.
When Shehata’s body was found on October 19 it was in a state of severe decomposition. He was bound with duct tape around his ankles, wrists and neck, with his underwear lowered below his groin area. An autopsy found two significant wounds to his head, described as small contusions on the right and left side of his head. Though his body was too decomposed for medical examiners to determine internal injuries or specify any single “obvious fatal injury,” Braun said Shehata died from “homicidal violence.”

Molycorp, Inc., which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in June, on November 3 filed a joint plan of reorganization with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. That plan, which was filed with its affiliated debtors, proposes an emergence from Chapter 11 through either a stand-alone reorganization that would substantially de-lever its balance sheet or a sale of substantially all of its assets.
Molycorp is the only U.S. miner and producer of rare-earth elements, 15 elements used as niche ingredients in magnets, batteries, catalytic converters and other high-tech products. At one time, the mine its corporate predecessor operated in a remote section of San Bernardino County was the world’s leading producer of lanthanides – rare earth elements. But the mine was closed down in the 1990s because of environmental concerns and during its hiatus, the Chinese leapt into the breach and became the owners and operators of mines producing in excess of 80 percent of the world’s rare earth elements.
Molycorp was a newly created company that took over the assets of the company formerly known as Molycorp that was owned by Unocal. It represented a daring effort by an American company to reassert American primacy in the provision of materials crucial to hi tech development and production.
Molycorp struggled, however, and for three straight years before its Chapter 11 filing, suffered quarterly losses.
The exit plan represents a major milestone in Molycorp’s bankruptcy process and, if approved, would position the company to successfully emerge from Chapter 11. The plan is supported by the company’s largest pre-petition secured creditor and its post-petition lender, investment funds managed by Oaktree Capital Management, L.P. and its affiliates.
The plan envisions a dual-track process pursuant to which the company’s assets are being actively marketed for sale, either as a whole or through the separate sale of its business units. The company’s four business units are chemicals & oxides, magnetic materials & alloys, rare metals, and resources, which consists primarily of its assets at the Mountain Pass Mine, located on the south flank of the Clark Mountain Range, just north of the unincorporated community of Mountain Pass in San Bernardino County’s extreme northeast corner. The company will pursue a plan process to sell its assets if the bid or bids received exceed certain value thresholds set forth in the plan. If the bids do not exceed the threshold values, the company will be reorganized with Oaktree as its shareholder around its chemicals & oxides, magnetic materials & alloys, and rare metals business units, and its assets at Mountain Pass will be sold.
The company has begun reaching out to a broad range of prospective buyers. The first round of non-binding indications of interest are due by December 1, 2015. Interested parties should contact Alexander Tracy of Miller Buckfire at Alexander.tracy@millerbuckfire.com.
“If approved, the plan would help to significantly reduce our $1.9 billion of debt and cut our interest expense, putting us on a more solid financial and operational footing going forward,” said Geoff Bedford, Molycorp president and chief executive officer.
Molycorp and its North American subsidiaries, together with certain of its non-operating subsidiaries outside of North America, filed voluntary petitions under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code with the court on June 25, 2015. The company’s operations outside of North America, with the exception of non-operating companies in Luxembourg and Barbados, were excluded from the filings. Molycorp Rare Metals (Oklahoma), LLC, with operations in Quapaw, Oklahoma, also was excluded from the filings as it is not 100% owned by the company.
Molycorp is being advised by the investment banking firm of Miller Buckfire & Co. and is receiving financial advice from AlixPartners, LLP. Jones Day and Young, Conaway, Stargatt & Taylor LLP have acted as legal counsel to the Company in this process.

Property that for three generations consisted of a vineyard and was later converted to a munitions plant that turned out the shoulder launched missiles transported across the globe to be filtered into Afghanistan to assist the Mujahideen in driving the Soviets out of their country and then was converted to a golf course will be transformed into a retail and residential development, according to a proposal by the Lewis Group of Companies.
The Lewis Group of Companies, the corporate successor to Lewis Homes, is seeking clearance from the city of Rancho Cucamonga to redevelop Empire Lakes golf course, which lies north and south of 6th Street between Milliken and Cleveland avenues in the southern Rancho Cucamonga. The Lewis Group of Companies is interested in developing the southern portion of the golf course into a mixed-use community with 2,500 to 4,000 rental and for-sale units, with retail space, according to the city.
The most likely inhabitants of the town home/condominiums envisaged in the project will be young and most likely unmarried professionals along with retired couples, widows or widowers. The housing is not likely to be well suited for families.
The city of Rancho Cucamonga has a history of working with the Lewis Group of Companies. Though the property is still in escrow, opposition to the project is growing and official approval of the plan has not been given, the city’s planning division is moving forward with facilitating the project by carrying out a preliminary environmental impact study to determine whether a zone-change amendment allowing the golf course land to be made over into a mixed-used zone is something that can be done without a full-blown
environmental impact report by means of what is termed a negative declaration of environmental impacts. That the city will simply brush aside the protests and objections to the project when its application comes before the planning commission and city council sometime in the spring or early summer is a foregone conclusion.
Those taking issue with project are golfers, many of whom have been using the facility which was designed by Arnold Palmer, since it was established by General Dynamics in 1996. General Dynamics had shuttered a facility it had built there in the mid-1980s to construct the Stinger Missile. By the mid-1990s, the post Glasnost and post-Perestroika eras were at hand. General Dynamics no longer had a pressing use for the plant. Moreover, the continued existence of a Cold War munitions plant in Rancho Cucamonga, a city which was growing dynamically at the time, was thought to be a potential hindrance to investment, as it stood as a monument to an effort that had contributed to the deaths of hundreds of Soviet soldiers and airmen. In a gesture of international good will, the building was razed and a golf course, with peaceful fairways and grand vistas of the entire valley, including the San Gabriel Mountains to the north, the San Bernardino Mountains and Mt. San Gorgonio to the east, and the distant Cleveland National Forest to the south, was created in its place.
Golfers, including a group of sight-impaired and physically disabled who have a golf program at Empire Lakes, have undertaken an effort to convince the city and the course’s ownership to preserve the golf course. They are seeking individuals willing to take a stand against the project by signing an online petition at saveempirelakes.com.
The plan will be given a public preview during a public hearing before the planning commission at Rancho Cucamonga City Hall at 7 p.m. on November 10.

By Count Friedrich von Olsen
I have a friend who is fond of saying, “I may not be right all the time, but I’m right more than I’m wrong.” Now, there’s an interesting notion. I will not pass judgment on my friend’s track record for accuracy. I am now given to wondering exactly what my batting average is in my decision making. No doubt, I’ve gotten some things right over the years. I think a few times, I might have hit the nail right on the head. But I also know this: I’ve made some calls that could not have been further off the mark than if I had deliberately tried to get it wrong. In fact, if I had tried to get it wrong in some situations, I would have gotten it more right than I did in trying to get it right…
So, what percentage of the time am I right? What percentage of the time am I mostly right? What percentage of the time am I more right than wrong? According to some research my butler, Hudson, did, I am not a good candidate to answer that question. Using some internet search device, he came up with hundreds of ways in which we humans delude ourselves into thinking we have done a straightforward analysis when, in fact, our examination is full of bias. There were so many of them, I cannot include them all in this column. But below are some of the more interesting ones along with the ones I recognized being guilty of myself. These are behavioral biases, social biases and what are called memory error biases. I pass them along, unvarnished, in the form Hudson provided them to me….
Anchoring or focalism: The tendency to rely too heavily, or “anchor”, on one trait or piece of information when making decisions…
Attentional bias: The tendency of our perception to be affected by our recurring thoughts…
Automation bias: The tendency to excessively depend on automated systems which can lead to erroneous automated information overriding correct decisions…
Availability cascade: A self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief gains more and more plausibility through its increasing repetition in public discourse….
Backfire effect: When people react to disconfirming evidence by strengthening their beliefs….
Bandwagon effect: The tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink and herd behavior…
Belief bias: An effect where someone’s evaluation of the logical strength of an argument is biased by the believability of the conclusion…
Bias blind spot: The tendency to see oneself as less biased than other people, or to be able to identify more cognitive biases in others than in oneself…
Choice-supportive bias: The tendency to remember one’s choices as better than they actually were and, in a self-justifying manner, retroactively ascribing one’s choices to be more informed than they were when they were made…
Confirmation bias: The tendency to search for, interpret, focus on and remember information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions.
Congruence bias: The tendency to test hypotheses exclusively through direct testing, instead of testing possible alternative hypotheses…
Curse of knowledge: When better-informed people find it extremely difficult to think about problems from the perspective of lesser-informed people.
Denomination effect: The tendency to spend more money when it is denominated in small amounts (e.g. coins) rather than large amounts (e.g. bills)…
Disposition effect: The tendency to sell an asset that has accumulated in value and resist selling an asset that has declined in value…
Dunning-Kruger effect: The tendency for unskilled individuals to overestimate their ability and the tendency for experts to underestimate their ability…
Egocentric bias: Occurs when people claim more responsibility for themselves for the results of a joint action than an outside observer would credit them with…
Endowment effect: The tendency for people to demand much more to give up an object than they would be willing to pay to acquire it.
Experimenter’s or expectation bias: The tendency for experimenters to believe, certify, and publish data that agree with their expectations for the outcome of an experiment, and to disbelieve, discard, or downgrade the corresponding weightings for data that appear to conflict with those expectations…
Focusing effect: The tendency to place too much importance on one aspect of an event.
False consensus effect: The tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which others agree with them.
Forer effect or Barnum effect: The observation that individuals will give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people. This effect can provide a partial explanation for the widespread acceptance of some beliefs and practices, such as astrology, fortune telling, graphology, and some types of personality tests…
Framing effect: Drawing different conclusions from the same information, depending on how that information is presented…
Functional fixedness: Limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used…
Hindsight bias: Sometimes called the “I-knew-it-all-along” effect, the tendency to see past events as being predictable at the time those events happened…
Hot-hand fallacy: The fallacious belief that a person who has experienced success has a greater chance of further success in additional attempts…
Identifiable victim effect: The tendency to respond more strongly to a single identified person at risk than to a large group of people at risk…
IKEA effect: The tendency for people to place a disproportionately high value on objects that they partially assembled themselves, such as furniture from IKEA, regardless of the quality of the end result…
Information bias: The tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action…
Illusion of asymmetric insight: People perceive their knowledge of their peers to surpass their peers’ knowledge of them…
Ingroup bias: The tendency for people to give preferential treatment to others they perceive to be members of their own groups….
Insensitivity to sample size: The tendency to under-expect variation in small samples…
Irrational escalation: The phenomenon where people justify increased investment in a decision, based on the cumulative prior investment, despite new evidence suggesting that the decision was probably wrong…
Just-world hypothesis: The tendency for people to want to believe that the world is fundamentally just, causing them to rationalize an otherwise inexplicable injustice as deserved by the victim(s)..
Loss aversion: ”The disutility of giving up an object is greater than the utility associated with acquiring it…”
Mere exposure effect: The tendency to express undue liking for things merely because of familiarity with them…
Money illusion: The tendency to concentrate on the nominal value (face value) of money rather than its value in terms of purchasing power…
Moral luck: The tendency for people to ascribe greater or lesser moral standing based on the outcome of an event…
Naïve realism: The belief that we see reality as it really is – objectively and without bias; that the facts are plain for all to see; that rational people will agree with us; and that those who don’t are either uninformed, lazy, irrational, or biased…
Negativity effect: The tendency of people, when evaluating the causes of the behaviors of a person they dislike, to attribute their positive behaviors to the environment and their negative behaviors to the person’s inherent nature…
Negativity bias: Psychological phenomenon by which humans have a greater recall of unpleasant memories compared with positive memories…
Normalcy bias: The refusal to plan for, or react to, a disaster which has never happened before…
Not invented here: Aversion to contact with or use of products, research, standards, or knowledge developed outside a group…
Observer-expectancy effect: When a researcher expects a given result and therefore unconsciously manipulates an experiment or misinterprets data in order to find it…
Omission bias: The tendency to judge harmful actions as worse, or less moral, than equally harmful omissions or inactions…
Pareidolia: A vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) is perceived as significant, e.g., seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon, and hearing non-existent hidden messages on records played in reverse.
Planning fallacy: The tendency to underestimate task-completion times…
Post-purchase rationalization: The tendency to persuade oneself through rational argument that a purchase was a good value….
Pro-innovation bias: The tendency to have an excessive optimism towards an invention or innovation’s usefulness throughout society, while often failing to identify its limitations and weaknesses….
Reactance: The urge to do the opposite of what someone wants you to do out of a need to resist a perceived attempt to constrain your freedom of choice.
Reactive devaluation: Devaluing proposals only because they purportedly originated with an adversary.
Self-serving bias: The tendency to claim more responsibility for successes than failures…
Semmelweis reflex: The tendency to reject new evidence that contradicts a paradigm…
Social desirability bias: The tendency to over-report socially desirable characteristics or behaviors in one self and under-report socially undesirable characteristics or behaviors…
Shared information bias: Known as the tendency for group members to spend more time and energy discussing information that all members are already familiar and less time and energy discussing information that only some members are aware of…
Subjective validation: Perception that something is true if a subject’s belief demands it to be true. Also assigns perceived connections between coincidences…
System justification: The tendency to defend and bolster the status quo. Existing social, economic, and political arrangements tend to be preferred, and alternatives disparaged, sometimes even at the expense of individual and collective self-interest. (See also status quo bias.)
Weber–Fechner law: Difficulty in comparing small differences in large quantities…
Well travelled road effect: Underestimation of the duration taken to traverse oft-traveled routes and overestimation of the duration taken to traverse less familiar routes.
Zero-sum heuristic:: Intuitively judging a situation to be zero-sum i.e., that gains and losses are correlated.

The son of William and Maria (Cox) Reid, Edward Winfield Reid was born in Madison County, Illinois on December 16, 1852. Though his father was a farmer, young Edward acquired a fine education, earning his bachelor of arts and later his master’s degree from Shurtleff College in Southern Illinois in 1875. In 1878 he received his M.D. degree from St. Louis Medical College. For several years he prospered from his growing medical practice.
On November 18, 1876 Reid married Miss Mary Jane Rennick, who was born March 1, 1851 in St. Francis County , Missouri, the daughter of George W. and Priscilla (Barry) Rennick. She was also a graduate Shurtleff College of Illinois, having received her A. B. degree in 1876, The Reids had two daughters, Gertrude, born in St. Louis on January 13, 1878, and Eunice Reid, born in Illinois on October 29, 1880.
To find relief from chronic asthma, Edward Reid went westward, to California, in 1882. After investigating a number of places in which to dwell, he bought twenty acres on Hellman Avenue in Alta Loma. There was little development in the area, which was described at that time as a wilderness.
Possessed of enterprise and courage, Dr. Reid undertook major improvements to the property he owned, breaking new ground in that area and setting precedents. He cleared and planted much of his acreage with citrus, and subsequently bought and planted another twenty acres. When he located in Alta Loma, the Southern Pacific Railroad was the only transportation line available and the nearest station was at Ontario. He initiated the development along Hellman Avenue, which in later years became the major arterial in the Alta Loma district. In 1883 he built a small house on his property, where he and his family lived for eleven years. In 1894, he erected a grander home, which was both more commodious and attractive. He lived in this domicile for many years.
Reid was a key driver in the establishment of Alta Loma, and proved indefatigable in his efforts to secure and ensure reliable water rights accrued to local landowners.
Initially, he was a tried and true Democrat. A sound money man, in 1896, the same year William McKinley defeated William Jennings Bryan, he crossed the partisan divide to become a Republican. It was thus as a Republican that he was nominated and elected to the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, representing the Second District, in 1902. He served from January 5, 1903 until his untimely death on September 2, 1912. He was chairman of the board from January 3, 1905 until January 3, 1911. He was credited with filling that office capably and efficiently.
A well- qualified and successful practitioner of medicine in Illinois, Reid appeared to have abandoned the profession once he relocated to California. His achievements in the private sector were primarily fundamental development of the citrus fruit growing potential in one of San Bernardino County’s prominent horticultural districts. Indeed, he was himself responsible in large measure for transforming Alta Loma into a prodigious agricultural community.
Beyond being an early grower of citrus, he explored the potential of exporting locally grown fruit nationally. He succeeded in organizing the first local packing house in the area, locating it next to a railway spur.
Having come to California primarily for the sake of his health, once in the Golden State he recovered remarkably and his vigor and freedom from the affliction of asthma allowed him to live usefully and enjoy his work and home In Alta Loma for nearly thirty years. His achievements, based upon ambition wisdom and good judgment, were of tremendous benefit to the community.
His daughter Gertrude was educated in several public and private schools and graduated with an A.B. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1902. She subsequently taught in the high schools of Whittier and Ontario.
Eunice was educated at the same schools as her sister, spent two years at Pomona College and graduated from the University of California at Berkeley. She taught for two years in Santa Monica. On June 19, 1906, she was married to R.C. Owens. Mr. Owens was a native of New York State and a graduate of Pomona College and from Hastings Law School in San Francisco in 1902. He went on to become a prominent member of the bar in San Francisco.
Dr. Reid was a prominent member of a number of local lodges and of the Elks Lodge of Pomona. The Reids were active in the Baptist Church and in numerous civic and philanthropic undertakings.
His death in 1911 was a resounding blow to the community of Alta Loma and San Bernardino County.
Upon her father’s death, Gertrude returned to Alta Loma to assume the responsibilities of looking after the family’s property and she demonstrated acute business ability and efficiency in handling the forty-acre estate.

Kameron Hamilton, once of Rialto and now 27-years-old, was convicted Friday, October 30, of the brutal 2012 stabbing death of prostitute Priscilla Santana at the Good Nite Inn in Redlands.
Priscilla Santana, 29, of Hemet, was stabbed 59 times, including in the back and skull. Hamilton was adjudged to be guilty of second degree murder and use of a knife in commission of the offense.
On May 30, 2012, Redlands police officers Sean Flynn and Breanna Herrera were dispatched to the motel in the 1600 block of Industrial Park Avenue in response to a disturbance call after the manager of the motel was told by a maid that someone was getting beat up in room 240.
When Flynn and Herrera arrived at the motel, they were told by the manager that he had entered the room next to Room 240 and heard four to five thuds coming from the other side of the wall.
When the police officers knocked on the door of Room 240, there was no response. After a second round of knocking, a pass key was used to open the door. An interior chain kept the door from opening completely.
After defeating the interior chain, the officers encountered Hamilton, who attempted to flee. Hamilton, then 24, was tackled and subdued and thereupon handcuffed. At that point, a bloody knife, which fell from a bag Hamilton was carrying when he was tackled, was seen by the officers. There would be testimony at trial that Hamilton had purchased the knife, described as a large butcher knife, earlier that day. Also in the bag Hamilton carried was a wallet that identified the victim.
Santana was found in the room lying face down in a pool of blood and suffering from multiple stab wounds.
Redlands homicide detective Andy Capps stated that there were too many stab wounds on Santana’s body to count. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
According to the San Bernardino County Sheriff-Coroner, Santana was stabbed somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 times and had more than 15 wounds to the top of her head and the rest on her neck and back. She had defensive wounds on her left hand and had a stab wound that penetrated her heart and hit an artery.
According to testimony, Hamilton arranged the meeting with Santana and then put his two toddlers to bed for a nap before driving to the motel, where he agreed upon a price for Santana’s services.
According to deputy district attorney Melissa Rodriguez, who prosecuted Hamilton, “At some point during the date, there was a dispute and the defendant demanded his money back. During the dispute, the knife was produced and was eventually used on the victim.”
Deputy public defender Eric Loftman elicited from his client testimony that it was Santana who first produced the knife, which she used to cut him on the arm before he took it away from her. Previously, when Hamilton was represented by attorney Nolan King, he suggested that it was her pimp who had engaged in the mayhem. There have been reports, never fully verified, that two individuals, Gregory Wayne Atkins and Andres Mancia-Meja, may have been running a group of prostitutes who regularly hooked up with their customers at the Good Nite Inn.
Hamilton faces 16 years to life when he is to be sentenced by Judge William Jefferson Powell on December 2 at the San Bernardino Justice Center.