Something is ongoing over at the sheriff’s department as Sheriff Shannon Dicus has appointed what is apparently the department’s eighth deputy chief.
Time was when the sheriff’s department, in addition to the elected sheriff, had an undersheriff, a single assistant sheriff and two or three deputy chiefs, all of which were above the rank of captain and considered elements of the command echelon. Several decades ago the department also had the rank of inspector, a position considered to be either one rank or two ranks above that of captain. The department has not employed inspectors for several administrations, at least since that of former
Sheriff Floyd Tidwell. Tidwell was himself an inspector under former Sheriff Frank Bland.The Sentinel has learned that Captain Garth Goodell, who has served as the station commander at the Chino Hills Sheriff’s Station and was thus the de facto Chino Hills Chief of Police as the sheriff’s department provides the City of Chino Hills with law enforcement service under a $17.213 million annual contract, is to be promoted to deputy chief on July 31.
At present, Horace Boatwright is serving in the capacity of undersheriff and John Ades and Sam Fisk are the department’s assistant sheriffs. Rick Bessinger, Ernie Perez, Shelly Krusbe, Trevis Newport, Noel Wilterding, Sarki Ohannessian and John Walker are the department’s current deputy chiefs. There is no indication that any of the deputy chiefs are to retire to make way for Goodell or that Ades or Fisk are to retire to allow one of the deputy chiefs to move up. Thus, it appears, the department will have eight deputy chiefs.
The position of station commander in Chino Hills is considered an important one, perhaps the second-most prestigious station command post behind that of Rancho Cucamonga.
The county has ten municipal police departments – Chino, Montclair, Upland, Ontario, Fontana, Rialto, Colton, San Bernardino, Barstow and Redlands. The county’s fourteen other cities – Chino Hills, Rancho Cucamonga, Hesperia, Victorville, Apple Valley, Adelanto, Grand Terrace, Loma Linda, Highland, Big Bear Lake, Yucaipa, Yucca Valley, Twentynine Palms and Needles – contract with the sheriff’s department for law enforcement service. Both Adelanto and Needles once had their own municipal police departments but opted to shutter them in favor of contracting with the sheriff’s depatment.
It has been disclosed that Goodell, who worked patrol and as a sergeant in Chino Hills relatively early in his career, will be assigned to the sheriff’s headquarters on Third Street in San Bernardino, where he is to supervise the sheriff’s employee resources and emergency operations divisions and the Glen Helen Training Academy.