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Sentinel 07-15-16

By Mark Gutglueck
A backlog of evidence and witnesses being accumulated by investigators with the California Attorney General’s Office looking into criminal acts and negligence in San Berardino County’s Children And Family Services Department implicates San Bernardino District Attorney Mike Ramos and one of his employees, deputy district attorney Michael Dauber in an effort to obstruct justice, information provided by some of those witnesses shows.
Among the witnesses having already provided or poised to provide information that Ramos and Dauber moved to terminate the 2015-16 San Bernardino County Grand Jury’s inquiry into abuse of children by their guardians and foster parents, including cases in which children died while under the purview of Bernardino County Children and Family Services Department, is the former San Bernardino County Superior Court presiding judge who has since been elevated to the State Appellate Court, as well as Children and Family Services Department case workers who sought to bring the incidents of abuse to light.
Going back as early as 2013, there were rumblings within the San Bernardino County Children and Family Services Department about both abusive biological parents as well as abusive foster parents entrusted with the care of children who were in the process of being placed for adoption. In several cases, those Children and Family Services Department employees’ concerns were not adequately addressed. Complicating the issue were the confidentiality restrictions imposed on the case files, making it difficult for those with concerns to bring the issues out into the open or to the attention of others outside the department for some means of resolution.
The San Bernardino County Grand Jury’s annual session runs in accordance with the governmental fiscal year, from July 1 to June 30. Late in the 2014-15 term, information was provided to the grand jury relating to the circumstance pertaining to the abuse of children under the Children and Family Services Department’s supervision. Because those reports arrived so late in the grand jury’s term, no official inquiry into the matter was opened, and the 2014-15 Grand Jury, which had as its adviser deputy district attorney Charles Umeda, made no reference to those issues in the final grand jury report, which was released on June 30/July1, 2015. At the end of July 2015, Umeda was appointed to serve as a Superior Court judge by Governor Jerry Brown. To replace Umeda, district attorney Mike Ramos selected deputy district attorney Michael Dauber to serve as grand jury adviser.
A member of the 2014-15 Grand Jury was James Wiebeld, who had retired as a sheriff’s deputy after a 30-year career in law enforcement. Wiebeld was a holdover to the 2015-16 Grand Jury, which after its ranks filled out, elected him sergeant-at-arms. Wiebeld sought to have the grand jury maintain its focus on several issues that had been taken up by the 2014-15 grand jury, which had in his view not been sufficiently resolved or reported in the 2014-15 Grand Jury’s report. Among those issues was that pertaining to the abuse of children under the purview of San Bernardino County Children and Family Services.
What Wiebeld and other grand jurors encountered, the Sentinel has been told, at first consisted of Dauber’s subtle effort to steer the grand jury away from the subject. When grand jurors persisted, Dauber used progressively firmer and eventually much harsher methods to discourage the investigation, ultimately resulting in the blunting of the investigation’s focus and its shift away from the nonfeasance, misfeasance and malfeasance within the Children and Family Services Department that allowed the criminal abuse and even deaths of some of the children at the hands of their parents and guardians to take place.
The failure of Children and Family Services to step in and stem the abuse was of moment with higher ranking elements in the county because attorneys had already been in contact with the families of some of the abused children and had initiated cases on behalf of those children and their families or were in the process of doing so.
To Ramos, who has striven to remain on favorable terms with both the county’s political establishment and its senior administrators, and to Dauber, who is answerable to Ramos, Wiebeld’s established status as a grand jury leader able to influence at least a handful of his colleagues on the panel heightened concern that they might be faced with a rogue grand jury that would take the focus on abused and dead children in a direction that could prove monetarily costly for the county.
That discomfort grew into a state of alarm, when on August 27, 2015, Fox 11 News in Los Angeles reported that “children who were under the supervision of the San Bernardino County Department of Children and Family Services … were being abused, tortured, and killed.” According to that report, in certain cases, children had been entrusted to foster parents who had previously been caught abusing children living in their homes. In one of those cases, according to Fox 11, a child had died at the hand of an abusive foster parent after the San Bernardino County Department of Children and Family Services was made aware of the sadistic nature of that foster parent. The Fox 11 News report made reference to an ongoing grand jury investigation.
The following day, Friday August 28, a special meeting was convened at the county administrative building which was attended by county executive officer Greg Devereaux, district attorney Mike Ramos, the director of Children and Family Services, Marlene Hagen, and a handful of other high level county officials. The primary topic discussed, the Sentinel was told by a reliable source, was the formulation of a cover story and talking points calculated to defuse the issue of negligence in the San Bernardino County Children and Family Services Department which led to the deaths of children in the foster parent system it oversaw.
The county, through its official spokesman, David Wert, has denied that Devereaux spoke to the district attorney on August 28 or that he had ever spoken to Ramos about Children and Family Services or grand jury matters.
Forthwith, however, county officials in August and September moved to identify those responsible for the leaks that resulted in the foster child deaths becoming public and sought to squelch any further release of information. Grand jurors, whose investigations and proceedings are considered to be confidential and are informed of such and sworn to secrecy when a grand jury is impaneled, were threatened with arrest and prosecution if they violated that oath.
In September, attorney Valerie Ross filed lawsuits against the county on behalf of former social workers Eric Bahra and Mary Anna Whitehall. Those lawsuits alleged that Bahra and Whitehall were pressured to remain silent about what they knew of the abuse of children in the foster system, and when they did not they were retaliated against.
Wiebeld was suspected of being Fox 11’s source for its August 27 report and subsequent follow-ups. District attorney Mike Ramos accompanied Dauber and a single member of the grand jury to the office of Marsha Slough, who was then the presiding judge of the San Bernardino County Superior Court. Wiebeld, Slough was told, was proving disruptive. Slough subsequently summoned Wiebeld to her office. She informed him that he was an at-will volunteer and that his services were no longer needed. After Wiebeld was bounced from the panel, Dauber, with some prevarication, told the remaining members of the grand jury that Wiebeld had voluntarily resigned his commission as a grand juror for personal reasons.
Before the grand jury’s term ended on June 30, six other members of the grand jury who had been sworn in on July 1, 2015 to serve a full year – Robert Turley, Benjamin Royland, Rebecca Fults, Allen Burt, Paul Gorsky, Douglas Kinzle – left, either voluntarily or as a result of having been shown the door. The mass exodus from the grand jury itself was telling: No grand jury in San Bernardino County going back to the 1970s had suffered anywhere approaching that number of defections. At last, when the grand jury delivered its final report for 2015-16, it was noted that social workers with the department did not make a practice of “recording interviews with clients” because “Children And Family Services management was uniformly opposed to the idea of tape recording client interviews… their stated reason for this opposition [being] confidentiality and possible intimidation of the client.” The report stated that “interviews with CFS [Child and Family Services] management revealed that social workers who had observed a parent under the influence did ‘not necessarily’ notify law enforcement or remove the child from the home.”
The report further noted “areas of concern about the relationship between CFS and law enforcement agencies. Interviews with law enforcement officers disclosed areas that potentially hindered investigations. Law enforcement officers disclosed, and CFS management confirmed, that CFS reports requested by law enforcement are first sent to county counsel [i.e., the county’s in-house lawyers] for review prior to being released. Law enforcement officers stated that CFS social workers are reluctant to remove abused and neglected children from their homes. Officers further stated that CFS does not always inform investigating officers of the location of a child, which causes delays in investigations.” The report also noted that law enforcement investigators “informed the grand jury that receiving redacted reports from Children and Family Services hinders their investigations” and prevents law enforcement officers from making so-called pretext calls to parents or guardians suspected of sexually abusing children.
The report stated that there were delays in Children and Family Services’ response to its request for information, including one in which it took the department “a period of seven months and 23 days from the date the request was submitted” to provide the information sought.
The report stated, “In interviews with county counsel employees it was stated that CFS is focused on family unification, while county counsel would prefer the safety of the child to supersede family unification. Additionally it was reported by law enforcement officers that CFS is interested in keeping families together while law enforcement seeks to arrest perpetrators of child abuse.”
The report states that there was a 15.5 percent rate of employee turnover in the Child and Family Services Department in 2013-14 and a 23.8 percent employee turnover in 2014-15, such that social workers are “overwhelmed” by heavy caseloads.
In the report there is no mention of the deaths of any children who fell under the rubric of the Children and Family Services Department system. Nor did the report make reference to reports received by the grand jury which indicated that social workers who had made an effort to bring incidents of the abuse of children to light had been actively discouraged from doing so.
The civil cases brought against the county by attorney Valerie Ross on behalf of former social workers Eric Bahra and Mary Whitehall allege higher-ups in the Children And Family Services Department sought to keep the abuse scandal under wraps. Whitehall claims she stood witness to an effort to discredit Bahra after he locked onto a series of cases involving some 39 children who had been placed into the care of a single foster father over a period of 12 years, during which time accusations surfaced that the foster father had sexually abused some of his charges, including photographing them nude. Bahra who was just short of serving out his 12-month probationary period as a county employee, was terminated after he raised the issue of inadequate cross-referencing of abuse reports in the department’s computer system in June 2013 and then sealed his fate the next month by reporting that he suspected one or both parents of an infant who had died showed signs of methamphetamine use and that the dead child’s four siblings appeared to have been abused.
According to Whitehall, supervisors in the Department of Children and Family Services did not comply with Bahra’s recommendation that the department move against the parents and have the children placed into foster care, but acted against Bahra for having breached confidentiality and for having falsified his reports. The Department of Children and Family Services’ rejection of Bahra’s recommendation, according to Whitehall and Ross, endangered the safety of the four surviving children.
According to Whitehall’s suit, she and two of Bahra’s colleagues went to the extraordinary step of filing motions in juvenile dependency court alleging their employer, the Department of Children and Family Services, committed fraud upon the court as part of an effort to discredit Bahra and justify his firing. Six days later, Whitehall was placed on administrative leave. She later resigned.
Just a week prior to the release of the grand jury’s final 2015-16 report, after the scandal pertaining to the abuse of children lodged in San Bernardino County’s foster care system had been percolating for months, the California Attorney General’s Office announced it was looking into allegations of failure to act with regard to the abuse of children or criminal negligence by the Department of Children and Family Services.
Unlike San Bernardino County Deputy District Attorney Michael Dauber, the grand jury adviser who last year threatened individuals with arrest if they were to disclose nonfeasance or misfeasance and malfeasance by Children and Family Services Department employees, California Attorney General Kamela Harris said publicly to San Bernardino County residents, “If you have any information about those agencies falling short of their duty, much less harming children, tell us because we are concerned and we’re paying attention and we’re prepared to prosecute.”
The Sentinel has learned that Harris’s investigators have been apprised of the effort to short-circuit the grand jury’s investigation last year and have been informed that grand jury members Robert Turley, Benjamin Royland, Rebecca Fults, Allen Burt, Paul Gorsky, Douglas Kinzle, and James Wiebeld can shed light on that incident, along with Appellate Court Justice Marsha Slough, who last year at the behest of grand jury adviser Michael Dauber and district attorney Mike Ramos removed Wiebeld from the grand jury. The investigators have also been provided with the names of Eric Bahra and Mary Whitehall as witnesses as to what occurred in the 2013-14 time frame internally at the Department of Children and Family Services.
This week, Valerie Ross, Bahra and Whitehall’s attorney, told the Sentinel, “Based on what I know of this case and what the attorney general has said, I believe her investigators would be very interested in interviewing my clients. As of today [Tuesday, July 12], I do not believe they have been interviewed, and I think I would know. I can’t say whether their being interviewed is imminent, but if we take the attorney general at her word, I believe they will be interviewed at some point.”
Ross told the Sentinel that in a conversation with Dauber last summer, he told her that if one of her clients came forward to speak about what she knew of Child and Family Services’ failure to act on child abuse cases, her client would be arrested. “He said that directly to me,” Ross said. Ross said she did not know whether Dauber had also repeated that threat to her client but that she assumed he had. “I know he did so through me,” Ross said.
Asked if she considered Dauber’s statement as an effort to dissuade a witness, Ross said, “I would draw that conclusion from that, obviously.”
Dauber did not respond to any of several phone calls or a letter seeking his version of events. He offered no response to questions as to whether his action had come at Ramos’s direction. Dauber declined to explain why he and Ramos had moved to have Wiebeld removed from the grand jury.
An unanswered question relating to what occurred in reaction to the attempt by the grand jury to take up the child abuse/Children and Family Services issue last year is what would have motivated Ramos and Dauber to shut the grand jury investigation down.
One individual steeped in the matter who agreed to speak to the Sentinel off the record said that county officials, including Ramos, have closed ranks to prevent abuse in county-supervised programs, such as those overseen by Children and Family Services, from being documented, because they fear the prospect that civil cases, in which the county has potential liability in the hundreds of millions of dollars, will be successfully prosecuted based upon that documentation. The district attorney’s office is running away from the subject and because it does not want to be put in the position of having to prosecute crimes against children involving foster parents, the Sentinel was told.
“Children and Family Services was a severely mismanaged office,” the source told the Sentinel. “There was lot of nepotism, with people who were not qualified holding supervisory positions, resulting in big errors. What I know is that there was systemic abuse that had gone on for 13 to 15 years, with 54 possible victims by the time this went over to the grand jury. This was a big deal. You had decisions being made by the department in individual cases in numbers that reflect gross ineptitude and negligence on a grand proportion. When a foster home is decertified, meaning a child or children are being removed from that foster home, that means they are never going to place another child in that home. But you had cases where a decertification had occurred, and another foster family agency with a county contract to supply homes never checked what had occurred involving the others, and children got placed back into the homes that had supposedly been decertified. Identifying information that would have prevented that from happening never got entered into the county’s system. This was extraordinarily bad. Later on, through a lawsuit, that information was coming up and they did everything they could to quash it. An investigator’s notes were deleted. There are Children and Family Services documents that are not correct. They were relying on doctored documents and they knew they were doctored. Confidentiality is supposed to be a shield that protects families and children but Children and Family Services and now the DA’s office is using confidentiality requirements as a sword against the whistleblowers so the county can operate unfettered. Money is at the base of this. If the investigation the grand jury wanted to do had gone ahead and the information got out, it would result in lawsuits that would bring the county to its knees.”
Asked about the progress of the attorney general’s office’s investigation and its timetable for working through the various witnesses to what had occurred in San Bernardino County, Rachele Huennekens the press secretary of the Office of the California Attorney General, said, “We can’t comment on any specific details about the investigation, in order to protect the integrity of the ongoing review.”

The San Bernardino City Council this week mandated that the new municipal charter that is likely to go before voters in November maintain one of the current provisions in the city’s electoral process that was set for revision. In most other respects, a previously previewed document put together by a committee that outlines how the city is to function in the future remains intact.
The city’s current charter was in the main adopted 111 years ago, in 1905, with some changes having been made to it through the electoral process when initiatives to make those specific alterations were approved by the city’s voters.
Suggestions that the current charter is antiquated and not in keeping with the modern standards of organization and governance for most cities in the state prompted the council to appoint a charter review committee to come up with a new operational blueprint for the county seat with a population of just over 214,000. The vast majority of those proposed changes was approved in concept by the council in May, including undoing the charter’s current provision of requiring that those elected to the city’s public offices receive a majority vote in their elections. The charter review committee had dispensed with that requirement, calling for the victor in a race with three or more candidates who received the most votes to accede to office, even if his or her vote total is less than 50 percent. While the council previously tentatively approved that change, this week it reconsidered and has now called for the policy of having the two top vote-getters in a race where the victor does not receive a majority face each other in a run-off election.
The full form of the proposed charter, which must go before voters to replace the current one, is to come back to the city council on August 4, at which time the council will vote whether or not to actually send the charter proposal to a vote in November.
The current charter, which provides for a mayor who has administrative power close to or co-equal to that of the city manager but gives the mayor no vote on normal council decisions but does allow him/her to break a tie or veto any 5-2 or 4-3 votes, has been decried as one that leaves the city without a clearly defined demarcation of leadership, as stated in the phrase “Everyone is in charge so no one is in charge.”
The intent of the new charter, its drafters maintain, is to establish clear lines of authority and responsibility by which the city council makes policy and major financial decisions, while the day-to-day operation of the city is delegated to the city manager.
The charter proposal as drafted ends the mayor’s authority to appoint department heads, designates the city manager as the city’s chief executive officer, keeps the mayor elected at large and retains the current number of wards in the city at seven. It changes the timing of elections from odd-numbered years to have them correspond with presidential and gubernatorial elections in even-numbered years and dispenses with the elected status of the city clerk, the city attorney and the city treasurer, such that those positions would be hired ones, nominated by the city manager and approved by the city council. The new charter reduces or eliminates the city attorney’s purview in engaging in policy considerations. The mayor would remain ineligible to vote on routine matters but would still have tie-breaking power and veto power, though such vetoes could be overridden with five votes. The city would keep its 30-day residency requirement for running for office, the current requirement and the longest permissible under California law. The new charter keeps in place each individual council member’s ability to appoint committee and commission members.
The new charter provides for a water department and library that are independent from the city council’s direct control and are overseen by library and water boards. The civil service department continues as the appeals forum of disciplinary action.
This week councilman Henry Nickel floated a proposal to change the proposed charter to designate the mayor’s term as two years instead of the current four. Nickel said this would give all members of the council the opportunity to run for mayor mid-term during their tenure in office so as not to require that those running risk losing their council positions if they lose the mayoral election. The motion failed to achieve a needed fourth vote, as council John Valdivia was absent and the three votes of approval by councilmembers Fred Shorett and Bessine Richard and Nickel were countermanded by those of Virginia Marquez, Benito Barrios and Jim Mulvihill.

The director of the county’s preschool services department is proposing to have the federal government provide the county with over $9,800 per child to boost the participation of each of more than 1,200 three- and four and five-year-olds in the county already enrolled in the Head Start Program. The requested $12,407,804 federal government grant will come on top of the more than $42.6 million the county is already receiving yearly for the program.
Head Start is a program of the United States Department of Health and Human Services that has been in existence since 1965 and provides comprehensive early childhood education, health, nutrition, and parent involvement services to low-income children and their families.
At locations throughout San Bernardino County, there are currently 292 children enrolled in full day, full year services, and there are 3,577 children enrolled in part day, part year center-based services. The program includes health services, and developmental and behavioral screenings, with the overall goal of increasing the school readiness of young children in economically disadvantaged families. Other services include parent education, family support, and social services, which are designed to support and empower Head Start families.
Diana Alexander, the director of San Bernardino County’s Preschool Services Department, this week told the Sentinel, “The current program provides full day services to 7.5 percent (292) of the children we serve; the rest receive part day services. This supplement would enable us to provide full day services to 40 percent (1,254 children) of the children we serve.”
At present, according to Alexander, “The Preschool Services Department is receiving $42,656,596.00 to run both the Head Start and Early Head Start programs. Our county contribution at present, or non-federal share requirement is $10,664,150.00. We do not receive any general fund dollars from the county.”
Alexander this week sought and obtained permission from the board of supervisors to apply for the federal grant.
“The Preschool Services Department will use the Head Start Program supplemental grant funds to extend the duration of comprehensive, developmental and preschool services from part day, part year to full day, full year for 1,254 children in Adelanto, Apple Valley, Crestline, Fontana, Highland, Ontario, Phelan, Redlands, Rialto, San Bernardino and Upland.,” Alexander told the board of supervisors. “The request includes $7,425,994 for increased ongoing operating costs for the Head Start Program and $4,981,810 for one-time start-up costs for items such as purchase and installation of several modular buildings, playgrounds, and shade structures, as well as one-time initial purchases of classroom supplies. The grant application is due to the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families by July 22, 2016.”
Alexander told the Sentinel, “The local contribution to the program, or non-federal share portion, would be $3,101,951.00. We will not be receiving any general fund dollars from the county for these services.” Alexander said, “Approximately 13 Preschool Services Department preschools and 305 staff, consisting of some new hires along with some current staff whose time will be allocated to this work and will be impacted by this change to full day services, will be involved. The cost per child is $9,895.”
Alexander said, “Research suggests that having high-quality, full school day and full school year care is particularly important for low-income children to succeed in kindergarten and beyond. Based on this research, the Office of Head Start is working to expand the number of children who participate in full school day and full school year programs. Extending the duration of time in Head Start programs also enables greater alignment with extended-day kindergarten. Extended-day kindergarten exceeds the four-hour maximum of other kindergarten classes. In some school districts, extended-day kindergarten classes are the same length as those for the older elementary school students.”
The application for federal grant money to augment San Bernardino County’s Head Start Program was made even as the federal funding for the already in-place program during the current fiscal year is not yet a certainty. On April 19, 2016, the the board of supervisors approved the submission of a grant application to United States Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families for continued support of Head Start program services in the amount of $37,929,317, for the grant period of July 1, 2016 through June 30, 2017. The application was submitted to meet the requirements for grant continuation of the Head Start Program. As of earlier this week, United States Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families had not yet issued a grant award for the program.

In the continuing saga of Needles’ fire truck tug-a-war, that city’s “fire auxiliary,” a community based organization formed in opposition to the San Bernardino County Fire District’s takeover of the city’s fire department operation, has received a copy of correspondence on official San Bernardino County Fire District letterhead addressed to Rick Daniels, city manager of Needles. In that letter, San Bernardino County Fire Division Chief Thomas E. Marshall addresses the issue of the return of the fire “engine” to the local city fire department in the event of “de-annexation” or dissolution of the newly formed Needles service area of the district.
In the letter, Marshall declared that as of June 29, the “engine” was “annexed to [the] county fire [district]” and “we have determined that if the city were to de-annex, we would be able to sell it back to the city at the market value at the time. Additionally if the engine reaches the end of its useful life prior to that potentially occurring, the city would have the first right of refusal.”
There is one hitch, however. Marshall said it should be noted that “the county fire district has been paying all of the repair cost that would normally have been the city’s responsibility for the last 3 years. These repairs have averaged more than $45,000.00 per year. Additionally, that engine is currently in the shop for extensive repairs estimated to cost more than $35,000.00 this year.” Marshall further asserted that “All equipment on the engine would remain the property of the county fire district as all equipment originally purchased by the city has passed its useful life and has already been replaced by the district.”
The fire auxiliary’s administrator, Ruth Musser-Lopez, speaking before the city council on Tuesday, July 12, objected to the conclusions arrived at by Marshall, characterizing his written proclamation to be “shyster business. All of you on the council except Louise Evans voted for this, to get around Prop 13 and 218 that requires a 2/3 vote of the electors before taxing again…especially one like this which disproportionately burden the poor…We’ve been paying over $600,000 a year for the county to run our two-man fire department and now they say that ‘they’ paid for the repairs and the replacement equipment? They have provided us with no fiscal accounting showing how their money and not ours was used for this” she said.
The Sentinel has learned that the auxiliary intends to file a rebuttal letter with the city and county and to make a public records request for all contracts and agreements between the city and county pertaining to the fire operation and for the financial records of the fire operation for the last three years, including income and expenditures.
“We need a grand jury investigation on this. The county drove the engine into the ground taking it out of town into wilderness fires and on the I-40 to do county business,” Musser-Lopez said. “They had an obligation to maintain the fire truck in the same condition as when they received it—especially since they were using it for county purposes. We should not have to pay for the truck all over again when we were also paying them to run the fire department and keep the equipment up. The reason the county was paying for the repairs is because we were paying them to pay for the repairs and the repairs were mostly needed because of county business, not because of fires in town. We are two weeks into this annexation and Mr. Marshall is claiming that the district paid for all of this. It’s time to open the books on county fire and expose this county rip off.”
The Marshall letter was an outcome of a settlement reached by Musser-Lopez, who filed suit in pro per, and Needles City Attorney John Pinkney at the court steps short of a legal action for an injunction was to be filed just before certification of the annexation by San Bernardino County’s Local Area Formation Commission (LAFCO). During the informal negotiations between the parties, a promise was made by Pinkney and Daniels via teleconferencing with Marshall that the auxiliary would receive a written statement from county fire that the fire engine would be returned to the city should the voters decide to de-annex. “Marshall’s terms are unacceptable,” Musser-Lopez pronounced. “We are going to need a new city council this November who will demand that the city manager and attorney fight for the people of Needles for the return of our fire truck without paying for it all over again, once we de-annex and re-establish our bludgeoned fire department.”
Meanwhile, in a related action, members of the fire auxiliary, Musser-Lopez, Ed Mathews and Mary Stein filed with the city their intent to circulate a voter initiative pertaining to the reestablishment of the fire department. On Tuesday, July 12, a ballot title and summary prepared by the city attorney was received by the auxiliary.
The title given by the city attorney is “Initiative Measure Prohibiting and Dissolving Annexation to a County Fire District and Mandating the Maintenance of a City-Staffed Fire Department.”
The ballot summary as prepared by the Needles city attorney states:
“The proposed initiative measure seeks to prohibit the City of Needles from taking any action to annex the city’s territory to the San Bernardino County Fire Protection District. The proposed measure further seeks to prohibit the city from enlarging the district’s sphere of influence into the city’s territory. In addition, the measure seeks to require the city to operate a fire department for the provision of fire protection services consistent with current International Organization for Standardization standards.
“The proposed initiative measure also seeks to dissolve all district ‘service zones’ including ‘Service Zone FP-5 Needles’, in the city existing at the time the ordinance is passed, in addition to any agreement to increase the district’s sphere of influence into the city’s boundaries. The proposed initiative measure further seeks to prohibit the city from transferring or leasing the city fire department’s property to the County of San Bernardino or district as a part of any reorganization or annexation plan.  In addition, upon dissolution of Service Zone FP-5 Needles, the proposed initiative measure seeks to require the city manager to negotiate for the return of the city fire department’s property.
“The proposed initiative measure requires the city fire department to be managed in a manner that preserves the current International Organization for Standardization insurance ratings and by a fire chief employed by the city. The fire chief will be required to employ or contract fire fighters for the provision of fire services. The fire chief will also be required to cause a map to be made and updated, identifying the locations of all fire hydrants within the city and to maintain said fire hydrants in operating condition.
“The proposed initiative measure seeks to repeal the district service zone flat tax of $148.24 and to impose a one-time tax, for a period not to exceed two (2) years, upon each parcel within the city at a rate of 0.15% of assessed value, not to exceed $120.00 per parcel per year. The tax imposed by the initiative measure will be used for the city fire department’s start-up expenses, including the cost of staffing, equipment and education and training of the city fire department’s professionals.”

San Bernardino County finalized its adoption of a revised ordinance prohibiting commercial soliciting at the county Hall of Records, two months after Superior Court Judge David Cohn ruled the initial ban unconstitutional.
The same company which successfully challenged the previous anti-soliciting ordinance came before the board of supervisors this week to again question the intent and legality of the county’s action.
The first anti-soliciting ordinance passed in July and August of 2015 – Ordinance 4282 – added Chapter 30 to Division 1 of Title 4 of the San Bernardino County Code to prohibit solicitation to market or advertise products, services, or property by any person, association, group or other entity on county property. The ordinance was framed with the California New Business Bureau in mind. The company has offices in Norwalk in Los Angeles County, Santa Ana in Orange County and San Bernardino in San Bernardino County, and offers a full line of services to start-up and existing businesses with regard to filing for corporation or partnership status, permits, licenses, establishing trademarks, registering and other applications with regard to operating a business. A major line of service at the company’s San Bernardino location, which is located across the parking lot from the county’s Hall of Records, is assisting those applying for fictitious business names in the county recorder’s office.
Because of the California New Business Bureau’s proximity to the Hall of Records and its practice of stationing its employees near the county facility and approaching those going into or coming out of the county clerk/recorder’s office, which is located on the ground floor of Hall of Records, the company was seen as an interloper by many newspapers in the county. Bonafide newspapers derive a major portion of their income through the publishing of legal notices, such as those for fictitious business names, which are registered at the county clerk’s office. Some newspapers, such as the Sentinel coordinated with the California New Business Bureau to publish those notices. Other newspapers did not.
As a consequence of complaints from some of the newspapers, the county last year passed Ordinance 4282, which banned solicitation on county property and at, within and around county facilities in general. In September the county began enforcing the ordinance, but significantly, did so only at the Hall of Records, located at 222 West Hospitality Lane in the City of San Bernardino. Four California New Business Bureau employees were cited for being in violation of the ordinance and were hit with fines. In some cases, those fines totaled several thousand dollars.
California New Business Bureau owners Eleazar Duque and his son Steven retained the services of Pasadena-based attorney Oscar Acosta. Acosta filed an action in San Bernardino Superior Court in which he challenged the ordinance on freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and tortious interference grounds.
Two months ago, the matter came before Judge David Cohn, who found that the California New Business Bureau was engaging in protected commercial speech, that the ordinance was impermissibly vague and that the ordinance was unconstitutional. Cohn ordered that the fines be vacated.
While the county did not challenge Cohn’s ruling, it set about redrafting the ordinance. In the redraft, the county removed exemptions that were contained in the original ordinance. Moreover, it limited the applicability to just the Hall of Records, a move that betrays that the target of the ordinance is the California New Business Bureau.
Indeed, whereas the staff report accompanying the ordinance passed in 2015 made no direct reference to the California New Business Bureau, the staff report accompanying the newest ordinance makes explicit reference to the company. In the staff report for the June 28 meeting at which the board of supervisor held its first vote on the revamped ordinance, Terry W. Thompson, the director of the San Bernardino County Real Estate Services Department, wrote, “Ordinance No. 4282 was challenged in a state court action by the California New Business Bureau as facially invalid. On May 10, 2016, the court issued a tentative decision determining that Ordinance No. 4282 was unconstitutional due to the exemptions section.”
Thompson stated, “Commercial activity on the Hall of Records Campus is an intrusion upon, and creates significant interference with, the ability of individuals to access the county’s services and information. Patrons are confronted by in-person solicitors and vendors peddling third party products and/or services just at the moment they are seeking to access free government information and/or services. This interferes with the function of the Hall of Records Campus. The county recorder has received from patrons of county services at and within the Hall of Records Campus numerous written complaints, including complaints of being accosted by aggressive solicitors, of being misinformed by third party solicitors that certain of the county clerk’s functions have been relocated to the premises of a private business, and of misidentifying third party solicitors as county employees because of their wearing lanyards with identification badges similar in appearance to those worn by county employees. Moreover, county employees have reported incidents with third party solicitors that were intimidating, confrontational and gave rise to employees’ concerns for their personal safety.”
The explicit mention of the California New Business Bureau in the county staff report and the move to downgrade the anti-solicitation ordinance to one that applies to the only county facility where the California New Business Bureau plies its trade, taken together with the consideration that the county never enforced Ordinance 4282 against a host of other vendors at other county facilities, again leaves the newest solicitation ban subject to legal challenge.
Prior to Tuesday’s vote to adopt the new ordinance, both Eleazar Duque and Steven Duque warned the board of supervisors’ that the county’s action was likely to lead to a further legal challenge.
Eleazar Duque said, “Last year you passed Ordinance 4282, which was determined to be unconstitutional. The sole purpose of that was to put California New Business Bureau out of business. For whatever reason, the supervisors have decided to put an honest, hardworking group of people out of work. This new ordinance you are proposing now has the same intent, to put us out of business. For what reason again, your God only knows why. You claim we mislead, that we intimidate, that we impede, that we harass, that we defraud people. Let me tell you who impedes: You have impeded us as to our freedom of speech, freedom of enterprise. You have impeded us to do our job, just because you can. You talk about misleading. Let me talk about misleading, Mr. Thompson writes, ‘The court tentatively determined that 4282 was unconstitutional.’ It wasn’t tentatively. It was done. It was found to be unconstitutional. Let me tell you about defrauding. Your code enforcement wrote thousands of dollars worth of citations to us, personal and through the mail on an unconstitutional ordinance. Is that defrauding? They defrauded us of thousands of dollars, your code enforcement people. You talk about intimidation. Your people use Gestapo tactics to intimidate us. The DA went to our office, as did the fire department, police department, code enforcement, sheriff’s department. We got anonymous calls that our office was going to be burned down if we didn’t move out. Is that intimidation? You talk about us, trying to make an honest living, that we intimidate people. Our employees are more educated, more professional than any of your county employees.”
Steve Duque said, “This is the second time we have been here and it seems like our voices are never heard. I’ll just do this for the record because after I speak you guys will go ahead with the decision you have already made behind closed doors. Let the record state that San Bernardino County has made it their goal not only to crush us but to run our small business out of town. We’ve been doing ethical business for 12 years in three different counties. San Bernardino County has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars drawing up and defending these unconstitutional ordinances, which were deemed to be unconstitutional in a court of law. And now you are going to spend hundreds of thousands of more dollars to file this new ordinance. The ordinance says you are trying to protect the public. I’m sure that we’re not public enemy number one. I’m sure that San Bernardino County has better things to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on, maybe on the men and women of law enforcement who put their badges on every day and risk their lives on trying to really protect the public. Maybe the hundreds of thousands of dollars could go for that. Or maybe the hundreds of thousands of dollars you guys have already spent and are planning to spend on this new ordinance could go to the public schools or even the kids who are dying in the custody of San Bernardino County instead of trying to run us out, an honest business. It’s funny that you guys opened [this meeting] up in prayer and in Hebrews, because the people who work for us, one of them is a certified minister, the other is a youth pastor and the other is a worship leader. These are the people you are trying to run out by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on these new ordinances. I’m strictly here for the record because I know your decision is already made. I hope you take this into consideration and think of better ways to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars like you already did on trying to protect these unconstitutional ordinances.”
The board of supervisors, with supervisor Janice Rutherford absent, voted 4-0 to pass the ordinance.
Eleazar Duque told the Sentinel that the accusations against his company, in particular that its employees are in any way interfering with members of the public in their efforts to access public records are patently false, He said the claim that his employees have misinformed members of the public about the location of public offices are likewise fabrications. He said his employees make no claim to be county employees and carry clip-on identification and where shirts with logos clearly identifying themselves as California New Business Bureau employees.

San Bernardino County has joined with Kern and Inyo counties, the City of Ridgecrest, the United States Navy and United States Department of the Interior Bureau of Land Management to initiate the formation of a joint power authority to counteract the overdraft of the aquifer underlying the extreme northwest end of the county.
Indian Wells Valley straddles southeastern Kern County, southwestern Inyo County and Northwestern San Bernardino County. Underlying it is the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Basin, from which the City of Ridgecrest and its outlying area’s domestic, commercial, industrial and agricultural water users draw their water, as does the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station, the Searles Valley Mineral Company in Trona and the remainder of industrial, commercial and domestic users in Trona.
Historically, the Indian Wells Valley Water Basin experiences roughly 7,000 to 11,000 acre-feet of annual natural water recharge per year but for three decades has been using on average 28,000 to 30,000 acre-feet of water annually. Last year, California Governor Jerry Brown, in the face of a four-year running drought, mandated water saving measures throughout the state. Water use in the Indian Wells Valley Water Basin was reduced to under 24,000 acre-feet, which still exceeds the estimated 7,300 acre-feet of recharge by 16,700 acre feet.
In September 2014, Governor Brown signed into law the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which requires local agencies to draft plans to bring groundwater aquifers into balanced levels of pumping and recharge.
What has been proposed is that through a joint exercise of powers agreement, the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority be created with Kern County, San Bernardino County,
Inyo County, the City of Ridgecrest and the Indian Wells Valley Water District as general members and United States Navy and United States Department of the Interior Bureau of Land Management as associate members, with each general member having one voting seat on the authority board and the federal associate members participating in all board discussions, but not having a vote.
This week the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors approved having the county join the authority, agreeing to put up $15,000 by August 15, 2016 toward the initial capital needed to finance the operations of the authority through December 31, 2016. Kern County has initially estimated the total cost to form and operate through 2020 a groundwater sustainability agency and develop a plan to sustainably manage the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Basin as mandated by state law at $2,210,000.
The Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Basin is currently the sole source of potable water for the residents, businesses, schools, and government agencies located in the community of Trona and the residents within approximately 615 acres of unincorporated, privately-owned land in the northwest portion of the County adjacent to the City of Ridgecrest. Trona is located at the extreme northeast corner of San Berbnardino County.
The Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Basin underlies 382,000 acres of land primarily in Kern, but also includes the northwestern corner of San Bernardino County and a southern portion of Inyo County. The primary retail water supplier is the Indian Wells Valley Water District, which serves Ridgecrest and the surrounding area, including the 615 acres in San Bernardino County. Additionally, private domestic, commercial, agricultural and governmental users pump groundwater from the basin, including the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station and Searles Valley Minerals. The Searles Valley Mineral Mining Company pipes basin water to its operation in Trona, and sells some of it to the residents and other business, school, and government facilities in Trona through its subsidiary, the Searles Domestic Water Co.
Based on prior studies of the basin, the annual use of basin groundwater (an estimated 23,700 acre feet in 2013) may exceed the annual natural recharge of the basin with rain and snow melt (an estimated 7,300 acre feet in 2013) by as much as 225%. It is also estimated that the groundwater level in the basin is dropping one to two feet each year. As a result, in January 2016, the State Department of Water Resources designated the basin as a critically overdrafted basin, requiring the groundwater sustainability agency for the basin to submit a groundwater sustainability plan by January 31, 2020.
Since October 2015, Kern has, with the assistance of an outside facilitator, led discussions amongst the local agencies with overlying jurisdiction in the basin about the formation of a
collaborative groundwater sustainability agency with the goal of cost effective sustainable groundwater management. These discussions produced the recommended agreement.
Don Zdeba, the general manager of the Indian Wells Valley Water District, this week told the Sentinel that the groundwater sustainability plan is intended to apply to “all major pumpers in the valley.” He said that his company has “a relatively small number of customers in San Bernardino County.”
Zdeba, who was formerly the general manager of the Searles Valley Mineral Corporation in Trona before he took on the assignment of director of the Indian Wells Valley Water District, estimated the amount of water being drawn from the basin’s wells to serve Trona at “approximately 2,500 acre-feet per year.” He said that water is conveyed to Trona through the Searles Valley Mineral Corporation’s pipeline. A portion of that water, he said goes “to the boilers at the Searles Valley Mineral plant.”
Zdeba said there are wells in Trona but that the water drawn from them is “brackish. It is used to feed the mineral plant” and is not safe for human construction, he said.
Options the authority will have to overcome the overdraft include, Zdeba said, reducing water use and purchasing water from elsewhere and using it to recharge the basin.
“We could mandate cutbacks,” he said, “or we could find an imported source. I don’t know how realistic that is given the drought conditions. We do have both Los Angeles aqueducts that pass through this basin. We could arrange for a water trade or to take some of the water out of the aqueduct. We would have a lot of hoops to jump through to do that. That water comes from Inyo County and given the history of Los Angeles having taken water from Inyo County for a century, Inyo County might not go along with more of its water being taken for use outside its borders.”

How entrenched is drug use in Fontana? Over the last four decades until the distinction was commandeered by certain cities in Mexico that host international drug cartels there, Fontana competed with areas in San Bernardino County’s High Desert as the methamphetamine manufacturing capital of the world. Now comes word that even the household pets in Fontana are addicted to the stuff.
Jack Sparrow is a two-year-old Chihuahua. Until recently, on a typical day, the diminutive canine would lethargically emerge into a wakeful state, and then languidly struggle to shake off its torpor. The dog’s malaise would persist, as in a seemingly listless manner it padded about, perhaps taking a drink at its water bowl, showing less than enthusiasm as he gnawed at some hard dog food in his food bowl. The seemingly exhausting task of taking nutrition completed, Jack would stroll toward the living room, barely able to summon up the energy to jump up onto the couch, where yet another nap would beckon.
At some point during the day, however, Jack would again awaken and when he did, he would come upon the tiny white lines of methamphetamine powder his master had laid out for him. Setting first one and then the other nostril close to the treat, Jack would inhale the acrid drug, which at first stung his sensitive canine nasal membranes, causing his eyes to water and his whole body to shudder temporarily, a physical ritual that on some occasions might be punctuated with a sneeze. But in no time, Jack would shake off his sluggishness and become a new dog and his old self once again, prancing about, standing for as long as ten or eleven seconds on his back feet, intensely interested, at least for a short while, in whatever happened to grab his interest until something equally or more interesting took up his attention. This enthusiasm would last for hours and he would yelp about this and that, almost always unintelligibly for hours on end until, his system having metabolized the dose of methamphetamine, he would grow sleepy again, and crawl off to drop into a stupor once more.
Fontana is now famous, or as it were, infamous, for its meth snorting dog, having done New Orleans and the cigarette smoking chimpanzee it features at its zoo one or two better. This is unsurprising, given the nature of Fontana, which is where two of America’s largest outlaw motorcycle gangs – the Hell’s Angels and the Devil’s Disciples – were founded, where the Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party had active chapters into the 1990s, where members of those biker gangs acted to preserve the peace at city council meetings by occupying the seats between the members of the Ku Klux Klan and members of the city’s northside African American activist groups who attended those meetings in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s, where one of the biggest outlaws in American History, Al Capone, had his vacation home, where the local newspaper for decades has had no shortage of reports on criminal activity, burglaries, robberies, assorted acts of mayhem, beatings, killings, etc., where one of its former city managers infamously set up a credit line at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas as a means of laundering the kickbacks he was receiving from the development community for his chaperoning of projects through the city’s land use permitting process.
The entire city, which has grown to become the county’s second largest city population-wise at over 204,000 residents, is still seen as a bastion of backward thinking louts, where many of the city’s natives were left brain damaged by the cloud of toxic industrial exhaust that hovered over the city after spewing from the smokestacks at the steel mill that operated there in the 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, where inbred criminals or semi-criminals have congregated for decades. Residents of nearby cities refer to the place as “Fontucky” and it is the butt of jokes such as “What do a hurricane in Florida, a tornado in Arkansas and a divorce in Fontana have in common? Someone’s fixin’ to lose a trailer.”
On July 5, Jack Sparrow’s owner, Isaiah Nathaniel Sais, brought the dog to the Inland Valley Veterinary Specialists and Emergency Center in Upland. Veterinarians observed the dog convulsing and to be hypersensitive to noise and sudden movement. Sais said he believed the dog might have overdosed on “crank,” a slang term for methamphetamine.
A toxicology test showed that Jack had indeed ingested the drug.
Sais left the care center, taking Jack with him.
Personnel at the Inland Valley Veterinary Specialists and Emergency Care Center contacted the Fontana Animal Services Team, informing them of what had occurred and that Sais had given, at the time of Jack Sparrow’s check-in, an address in the 10400 block of Hemlock Avenue in Fontana. When the Fontana Animal Service technicians went to the residence, they found Jack still suffering from the effects of the drug and they confiscated the dog.
A report on the matter was submitted to the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office Animal Cruelty Task Force unit for review, and an arrest warrant for felony animal cruelty was issued for Sais.
Fontana Police located Sais near Foothill Boulevard and Vineyard Avenue in Rancho Cucamonga on July 8. Sais was arrested without incident and booked into West Valley Detention Center on the warrant.
Jack was taken by the animal control officers back to the emergency center in Upland, where he continues in residence. As Jack undergoes treatment to wean him of his drug addiction, it is hoped by those caring for him that he will recover to the point that he will be a candidate for adoption.

At the risk of coming across as hopelessly eccentric, overly fastidious, archaic and pedantic, I feel the need to express my absolute dismay at Americans’ misuse of the words tragic and tragedy. The overuse and outright misuse of the terms grate on me like a piece of loosely held chalk streaking across a blackboard. America is my chosen home and I love this place, but this absolute bastardization of the English language is for me an illustration of one of this nation’s primary shortcomings, which is its failure to instill in its students a classical education…
Americans throw around the terms tragic and tragedy with absolute abandon, using them whenever something bad has happened. This is a misapplication of the words and the sense they are supposed to convey. If someone dies, according to Americans, it is a tragedy. If a plane crashes, according to Americans, it is a tragedy. If a train jumps its tracks, according to Americans, it is a tragedy. If a candidate they consider to be unqualified for office gets elected, according to Americans, the outcome of the election was tragic. If a group of people, or one person for that matter, are or is senselessly slaughtered by some unhinged individual, according to Americans, the event is tragic. If someone succumbs to natural causes, according to Americans, the death is a tragedy. If a company that offers a product that was widely in favor with the consuming public goes out of business, Americans call that a tragedy. In actuality, none of these as generically described are tragedies and three of them – the election of someone deemed unfit for office, the death by natural causes and the failure of a business – could never qualify in the strict sense of the word as a tragedy…
The concept of tragedy and the tragic was defined, if not invented, by Aristotle. In The Poetics, his work that defined expressive art as it was then known, Aristotle dwelt upon the dramatic arts, comedy and tragedy. Although he did not dismiss comedy as an art form, he made clear that he considered comedy – the depiction of life as it was then known with a light air that made fun of or found the humor in social conventions or created a narrative of social conventions being defied or ignored or broken such that mores were held up to ridicule – to be a lesser art form than the more serious dramatic presentation of tragedy. In Aristotle’s world view, comedy was frivolous and tragedy was important. Tragedy dealt with the human condition and moral issues in a way that was at once humbling and remindful of mankind’s perilous state, as well as instructive and in some stoic and even painful way, uplifting, an appeal for us humans to eschew our foibles and shortcomings and aspire to a more noble existence and to be careful and considerate about how we do just that…
Anyone, any mere mortal, could defy social convention, if he chose, said Aristotle, essentially. Any man could be an actor in his own personal comedy. But not just anyone could be the protagonist in a tragedy, according to Aristotle, and that is the point that is lost on most Americans…
In Aristotle’s classical definition, a tragedy comes about when a tragic hero inflicts upon himself an undesirable fate. In almost all cases, this undesirable fate was death. Tragedy requires a tragic hero. And a tragic hero is not just anybody. A tragic hero cannot, according to Aristotle, be a common man. A tragic hero is one who has risen above, or naturally exceeds, average status. In the tragic drama of antiquity, almost all of the heroes were of noble birth, that is, of high social rank. They are, to use a concept that is somewhat foreign to the American way of thought, better than everyone else in almost every way. Tragedy is not steeped in egalitarianism. Tragic heroes are rich. They are intelligent and skilled. They are handsome. They are energetic and active. In some cases they may be thinkers, but more than that, they are doers. They are enabled by their social status and the support of those around them. They are enviable. But as admirable and above average as tragic heroes are, they are still human. And like all humans, they are imperfect. They are in some way flawed. And it is that flaw, aside from mere chance and caprice, that is an essential element to their demise, although chance and caprice may play a role, too. Aristotle used the term “hamartia” to describe the hero’s fatal flaw. Each tragic hero is ignorant or unsuspecting of his own particular hamartia, or at least insufficiently aware of its implications. In a tragedy, according to Aristotle, events move together and in combination with the hero’s hamartia, and as a consequence he is laid low. He goes from being on top of the world to being defeated, utterly defeated, driven into what is truly “a tragic fate” from which there is no recovery. Usually, this means he is killed…
What tragedy illustrates, according to Aristotle, is that we are all mortal, that we are all vulnerable, that no matter our status or talent or consistent string of luck and fortune, we all have an imperfect understanding of the world, a blind spot, and our ignorance can lead to the loss of our status, of our good fortune, or life itself. What is further illustrated by tragedy – true tragedy – is that we can never be absolutely secure in our pride and overconfidence and that there are forces greater than ourselves which control our fate and that sometimes that hidden force of destruction lies within us…
In their misinterpretation of the terms tragedy and tragic, Americans seize upon the elements of mortality and fate that are inherent in the concept of tragedy and apply the words as if someone dying is all there is to it. But there needs to be more to what occurred than a death to make that event tragic. That is not to say that someone’s death could not be tragic. A death might be a tragedy, but then again, it might not be. Take for example, someone who contracted cancer and died. Well, if the deceased had been a scientist laboring with isotopes in his laboratory in a cutting-edge search for a formula for cold fusion that holds out the possibility of transforming mankind in a pursuit that only a scientist of his high caliber could pursue and while doing so he became so enthralled with his mission and so focused on making progress that he failed to take adequate precautions with the materials he was using and thereby exposed his tissues to some form of radiation which led to his sarcoma, then his death would be tragic. Conversely, if some fellow was too lazy to weed his garden and instead insisted on using a chemical herbicide to control the weeds that had cropped up among his vegetables and in addition to breathing the fine drops of mist from the herbicide as he sprayed it in the garden he later ate the radishes and celery and broccoli and string beans he grew in that toxin-laden soil and developed cancer as a result, his death from that cancer would not be tragic. In the first case, a high functioning man of science functioning at the highest order and striving toward a noble goal would have been undone by his own carelessness. His death would represent a tragic loss. In the second case, this was no personage of high function or nobility and that he met a sad fate because of his own stupidity would not rise to the level of tragedy. Similarly, a plane crash might be a tragic one, though most likely it would not be. Let us posit the existence of an aviator, let us say one who like Howard Hughes was independently wealthy and was devoted to using that wealth to explore the uncharted possibilities of manned flight, who was constantly pushing the envelope of his profession. If such a man or woman personally designed and then tested avionic devices intended to improve the performance of aircraft took to the air in one such plane outfitted with his or her newest invention and that device failed, sending his or her plane plummeting to the ground and taking his or her life, that would be tragic. When a passenger or a bunch of passengers get on a plane and the plane crashes, their deaths are not tragic. First off, a tragedy is specific to one individual whose death comes about because of his hamartia, his excessive pride and his inability to see his own shortcoming. Tragic death is not collective death as typified in the bad luck of some people who get into a flying machine that for no reason related to their own action or choices fails. In the Aristotelian sense, a tragic hero is a single individual who stands above others, a person of exemplary quality “whose misfortune is brought about by some error or frailty of his own doing…”
Americans have grown sloppy in their use of the language. They have conflated the concept of tragedy into that of death. For them, the term tragedy is interchangeable with the term fatality. Those are two significantly different things. Tragedy is a noun. Tragic is a modifier, an adjective. Both are woefully overused. Easily, in 90 percent or more of the cases where the term tragic is used it is being misapplied. Better adjectives in these cases would be “heartbreaking” or “sad” or “deplorable” or “terrible” or “mournful” or “heart-rending” or “poignant” or “painful” or “shocking” or “lamentable” or “grim” or “grievous” or “woeful” or “sorrowful…”
Part of the problem arises, of course, from the emotion-laden circumstances surrounding death and the loss people feel at such times, which are not conducive to lecturing people on etymology or the classic definitions of words or to be criticizing their word choices. When one hears the words tragedy or tragic being misused, it may not be advisable, politic, socially acceptable or safe to tell someone whose family member has just died or inform a room full of policeman at a funeral of a colleague killed in the line of duty that it is only out of ignorance that he, she or they are referring to such a matter as a tragedy…

Since at least 2004, the city of Needles has met the state law requirement to provide fire protection services within its boundaries by contracting with the San Bernardino County Fire Department (SBCoFD). Prior to that the City operated its own Fire Department with a Fire Chief and Paid Call Firefighters (PCFs) and volunteers. On January 5 of this year the SBCoFD Fire Chief notified the City that the cost of the contract would double from $600,000 to $1.224M. The budget the County demanded was for 6 firefighters at $149,087 each, portions of 4 management Chiefs at $270,495 (1) and $236,748 (2) and $197,796 in materials and supplies including dispatch, and County Administrative Overhead of $60,794. Alternatively they have provided a proposal for reduced service level of 3 firefighters and a portion of 4 chiefs, supplies and administrative overhead for $612,000. County offered four alternatives, either 1) pay the additional charges, 2) obtain fire services from another provider, 3) annex the city of Needles into the taxed County Service District thus taxing its citizens to makeup the difference, or 4) re-establish a city fire department. The city council opted for the path of least resistance for the city….annexation and taxation of its population. The decision divided the community with some resistant citizens forming the Needles Fire Auxiliary. While attempting to reestablish the city fire department by voter initiative the city’s fire engine is the subject of controversy—it was transferred to the County as a part of the annexation and now bears the county seal/emblem on its doors as it continues to be housed in the city’s fire house waiting for the completion of the county fire station. Figure 1.
The fire engine subject to the county/city tug-a-war was not the City’s first. Prior to the county taking the reigns, the city had three fire engines that they were using for a period of time. The Needles Fire Auxiliary is researching fire truck history in the community and recollections are currently being recorded.
Though not the same 1956 fire engine as in the photo (Figure 2), locals recall a Needles fire engine that looked very similar to the circa 1950s Seagrave pictured. At the time of the purchase of the fire engine in 1956, Mark M. Wetmore (81), long-time resident of Needles, claims to have been the youngest member the fire department. He was 21 at the time. He reported that he was responsible for having wrote the check for $1000 for the payment on the truck. The funds came from a local fundraising campaign and Wetmore recalls selling Christmas trees as part of that effort.
The truck was kept at the “National Old Trails Garage” between the “Burger Hut” and the Claypool building (now Palo Verde College) which is now a vacant lot. Wetmore recalls that the proprietor of the garage at the time was Bob Lorrimer and Lorrimer’s name is French for “saddle maker.”
Wetmore describes the fire department at the time as a “volunteer” fire department and recalls that Howard Cox was the Fire Chief. “There was a system of steam whistles that was used to alert volunteers. One short with two longs, one long with a short, etc. would determine exactly what precinct the fire was located. By the time the one leaving the fire station with the fire truck got to the fire, all of the volunteers would have arrived because they knew exactly where to go and could see the smoke.” He added that the Fire Chief “had a good control over the system and got training scheduled for everyone as well. The California Department of Industrial Education would send instructors to Needles to provide them with training on fire fighting techniques.”
“At the time, the town was prosperous and you very seldom saw boarded up house or a “for sale” sign. Over the years, prosperity has provided us with some of the finest parking lots in the country…one of the best examples is right down town here where the California Hotel used to be.”
The whereabouts of the Seagraves today is not exactly known however Wetmore and others say that it must have been sold, that it was restored by the owners who reportedly now live in Kingman, Arizona, and frequently show it off in local parades.
Prior to that, the City had available to them a truck that had been gifted to them by General George S. Patton, recalls Wetmore. “The truck was said to be outfitted with water tanks and hoses and pumps built on a heavy duty four wheel drive military truck, an American LaFrance. A brass plaque was rivoted on to the panel on the passenger side with a description of the vehicle, its size, weight, tonnage and various dimensions. There was also a diagram of the gear shift panel. Another brass plaque was also riveted there on the panel and it stated that the truck had been donated to the City of Needles by General George S. Patton.
The city of Needles was founded in May 1883 as a result of the construction of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway which originally crossed the Colorado River at this point. The name was derived from the Needles, pointed mountain peaks where the wind-blown holes in them (which can only be seen by boat from the Colorado River), at the south end of the valley.
Originally a tent town for railroad construction crews, the railroad company built a hotel, car sheds, shops and a roundhouse. Within a month the town also boasted a Chinese washhouse, a newsstand, a restaurant, a couple of general stores, and nine or ten saloons. The town became the largest port on the river above Yuma, Arizona.The Railway and the Fred Harvey Company built the elegant Neoclassical and Beaux-Arts style El Garces Hotel and Santa Fe Station in 1908 which was considered the “Crown Jewel” of the entire Fred Harvey chain. The landmark building is on the National Register of Historic Places and is currently being restored.
William W. Light, a former railroad engineer who after 38 years retired in 1997, attested to the fact that just about every locomotive catches fire at some point as “there is a lot of heat coming off the engine and with all the pressure and all the fuel there is bound to be a fire. Turbo chargers get hot and every one catch fire at some point. Coming back from Barstow we were hauling an empty coal train going back to New Mexico. The caboose calls me up and he can see it better than I can from his perspective on the curve. He called out ‘you have three engines on fire.’ Three! We usually only have one, think we better put it out, I said. We put it out but all the fire extinguishers were expended. I said it might catch fire again and we’ll have to watch it burn. We were coming to Needles. I get into Needles and there was nobody was there so we went through with no fire extinguishers. We didn’t get paid extra for putting out the fires and the extinguishers weighed 50 lbs. We had to pull the pin and there is nozzle that releases a dust powder of fire retardant chemicals. We never got paid extra [for fighting fire, using chemicals, lifting equipment or being submitted to dangerous situations].
“Everyone thinks that a fire fighter is some one who puts out fires—they pull on their pants, they’re ready to go whenever that bell goes off, hit the brass pole, slide down, gather up their dalmatians and put on their big funny hats, then the way they go. Well that’s not the way it aways is. We had volunteer fire fighters who never got paid. Putting out fires in buildings and locomotives is a lot different than fighting forest or range fires like county does.”