The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department is transferring a number of its senior personnel to different positions within the department’s command echelon.
Captain John Walker, who succeeded Darren Goodman as the commander of the Chino Hills Sheriff’s Station in 2018 when Goodman departed to become Upland police chief, spent nearly three years in that assignment. The sheriff’s department is now assigning him to oversee the West Valley Detention Center. West Valley, located in Rancho Cucamonga, houses 3,300 inmates. Engaged in their incarceration are some 1,100 employees, including sworn police officers, custody technicians, medical specialists, professionals, personnel engaged in security monitoring, food preparers, hygienists, groundskeepers, maintenance crew members and others.
Walker is to move into the position overseeing them effective May 8, tomorrow.
To move into the Chino Hills position in 2018, Walker was promoted from the rank of lieutenant and relieved of his previous billet as a shift operations commander at the Highland Sheriff’s Station.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, in addition to serving as the lead law enforcement agency in San Bernardino County and the roughly 19,099 unincorporated square miles of its 20,105 square mile confines, also provides contract law enforcement services to both of the county’s incorporated towns – Apple Valley and Yucca Valley – and 12 of its 22 incorporated cities – Chino Hills, Rancho Cucamonga, Grand Terrace, Loma Linda, Highland, Big Bear Lake, Yucaipa, Twentynine Palms, Needles, Hesperia, Victorville and Adelanto.
The Sheriff’s Department will replace Walker in Chino Hills with Captain Garth Goodell, who previously worked in Chino Hills as a patrol deputy and sergeant.
Captain John Billings is being moved out of his position as the commander of the sheriff’s department operations in Highland to replace Captain Mike Browne as the station commander in Hesperia. Browne came in to replace Captain Greg Wielenga two years ago. Wielenga was the replacement to Captain Miles Bentsen, who was hired away from the sheriff’s department in December 2015 to become Hesperia’s City Manager in January 2016, replacing former Hesperia City Manager Mike Podegracz.
Captain Casey Jiles, who was formerly the department’s spokesman, since late March has headed the Highland station. Jiles worked in the department’s administrative bureau previously, in the civil liabilities department, as well as a detective in the specialized investigations unit and homicide detail.
Jiles is assisted in this assignment by Lieutenant Matt Yost, who was previously employed in the department’s corrections division. Prior to that Yost worked in the department’s employee resource division, as a member of its special weapons and tactics team and as an investigator attached to the department’s command echelon and intelligence division. Historically, the department’s intelligence division works on heavy-duty criminal activity, such as that involving drug cartels and organized crime. It also involves itself in gathering political intelligence, including spying on the county’s elected officials and highest ranking staff employees.