The trial of San Bernardino County City Councilwoman Treasure Ortiz began in earnest on Monday morning and ran into immediately intractable complication as a result of the limitations imposed by District Attorney Jason Anderson on the deputy district attorney, Carlo DiCesare, who is prosecuting the case.
Ortiz is charged with two counts of recording conversations she had in 2024 with San Bernardino Police Chief Darren Goodman and the president of the San Bernardino Police Officers Association, Sergeant Jose Loera, without having first obtained their consent. Complexifying DiCesare’s task is that the primary evidence against Ortiz – the audio recordings of Ortiz’s conversations with Goodman and Loera – contain statements by the police chief and union president which implicate now-retired San Bernardino Police Detective Steve Desrochers in the illegal use of the police department’s facilities and assets, a matter which the district attorney’s office for political and practical reasons has made a commitment to not prosecute.
In addition to having to put on a criminal case against Ortiz that is reliant on evidence implicating a law enforcement officer the district attorney’s office deliberately excised from the underlying case, DiCesare is faced with Ortiz’s contention, which is backed up by statements and testimony of witnesses to the conversations, that Ortiz obtained the non-verbal consent of both Goodman and Loera in recording their statements, which pertained to an investigation of a criminal matter.
The rulings by the judge overseeing the case accommodating the prosecution’s effort to keep Desrocher’s allegedly criminal actions from becoming a focal point for the jury resulted in the creation of holes in the prosecution’s narrative of guilt and the defense’s narrative of innocence, such that the presentation of evidence and testimony interrupted by scores of objections to questions posed to the witnesses and numerous judge-attorney sidebar interruptions that jury distraction had become a major concern of the judge by Wednesday.
By late Thursday afternoon, yesterday August 27, 2026, at which point the prosecution had rested and defense witnesses were being heard from, doubt was cast over the proceedings as a member of the jury had reported to a bailiff who in turn informed the court that another juror had expressed an opinion about what verdict should be reached, a premature conclusion with regard to the facts of the case, given that the presentation of evidence and testimony had yet to conclude and deliberations had not yet begun. That juror is due to be questioned Monday morning, prior to the witness who was on the stand Thursday, former San Bernardino City Councilwoman Kimberly Calvin, returning to the courtroom, Department S-18, located on the sixth floor of the 11-story San Bernardino Justice Center to resume her yet-to-be-concluded testimony.
The case against Ortiz is a complicated and highly nuanced one, rife with political implication and questions with regard to the integrity of the San Bernardino Police Department. In seeking to simplify the case, which grew out of an investigation that was originally angled at Desrochers rather than Ortiz, who was considered a reporting witness in the matter at the outset, the district attorney’s office has paradoxically complexified the matter, resulting in Judge Melissa Rodriguez, a former prosecutor herself, granting a series of motions in limine, that is, restrictions on the evidence to be presented, questions to be asked and answers by witnesses to be heard by the jury, which pertain to the crime Desrochers was accused of committing.
At issue in People vs. Ortiz, is the district attorney’s offices contention that Ortiz in reporting what she contends was Desrochers’ unlawful accessing of data bases maintained by federal and state law enforcement agencies used her phone’s audio recording device to memorialize her provision of that information to members of the police department looking into the matter – Goodman and Loera – by using her phone to record her statement and their reaction to and reception of that information in a way that is in violation of California Penal Code Section Code Section 632(a).
Under California Penal Code Section 632(a), recording a conversation without all parties to the conversation being aware that the recording is ongoing is classified as electronic eavesdropping, a misdemeanor. The district attorney’s office now maintains that Ortiz victimized Goodman and Loera by recording their statements without their consent. Ortiz, in her defense, is maintaining that she gave Loera both verbal and visual indication that she was recording the conversation and provided Goodman with visual indication that she was recording their exchanges. She further maintains that neither the police chief nor the police union president, a sergeant with the San Bernardino Police Department, could have a reasonable expectation of privacy in a situation in which a citizen was reporting to them details of a crime that was under investigation by their department. Compounding the paradox is that both Goodman and Loera made statements on those audio recordings that Desrochers had indeed improperly exploited access that the San Bernardino Police Department has to state and national law enforcement data bases to obtain restricted information relating to Ortiz that was utilized in electioneering material against her put out by her political opponent in the 2024 election, whom the San Bernardino Police Officers Association had, at least initially, endorsed.
The case has drawn widespread attention for a multiple of reasons, not the least of which is the circumstance in which the basis of the charges against Ortiz evolved, which included Goodman and Loera having acknowledged two years ago that Desrochers, one of the past presidents of the police officers association, had utilized privileged law enforcement information for political purposes, only to retract those admissions in the face of intensive controversy and condemnation of the police department. The juxtaposition of denials by Goodman and Loera that the San Bernardino Police Department’s access to a privileged data base had ever been abused and their statements, in the form of Ortiz’s recordings of their voices and written transcriptions of what they said that were posted to the internet last year, manifested as a potentially devastating blow to the credibility and professionalism of the police department.
This led to a very public spectacle last year in which San Bernardino city officials, the police department and the police officers’ union, including Goodman and Loera, came across as attempting to put the genii back into the bottle.
It was in that atmosphere, which was rendered all the more acrimonious by Ortiz having lodged a claim with the City of San Bernardino in May 2025 followed by the filing of a lawsuit against the city in November 2025 relating to Desrochers’ accessing of the data base and the use of the information against her during the 2024 election cycle, that the district attorney’s office made a decision against pursuing a criminal case against the at-that-point-retired Desrochers, Instead, the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office filed two misdemeanor charges against Ortiz for having recorded her exchanges with Goodman and Loera.
For generations, the San Bernardino Police Officers Association has proven the most influential entity in determining the make-up of the seven-member city council representing the 62.24-square mile city’s seven wards and that panel’s presiding officer, the mayor, who is elected at large. Going back at least until the 1980s there have been reports, none of which were ever officially confirmed, that the police officers’ union and its smaller and less powerful counterpart, the San Bernardino Police Management Association representing the department’s lieutenants and captains, have made information gleaned from various electronically-linked data bases law enforcement agencies are granted access to available to candidates for city office the members of those unions favor. Those data bases include the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, known by its acronym CLETS, which connects public safety agencies across the state to criminal histories, driver records, and other databases; JDIC, the Justice Data Interface Controller, a law enforcement data communications system operated and maintained by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Data Systems Bureau which serves as the central message switching hub for law enforcement agencies across Los Angeles County, providing instant access to local, state, and federal criminal justice databases and enables agencies to send and receive official administrative messages across the county, state, and nation, information from which is available to the San Bernardino Police Department by special dispensation; the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department’s Central Name Index, that agency’s cybernetic file system that logs deputies’ field contacts with, detainment of, citations issued to and arrests of subjects or suspects, along with charges filed against them and resulting convictions, as well as victim and witness statements, granted to the San Bernardino Police Department at the sheriff’s discretion; and NCIC, the National Crime Information Center, considered the United States’ primary database and information registry for tracking crime-related information, maintained by the Criminal Justice Information Services Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
NCIC, CLETS, JDIC and CNI data are all subject to slightly variant but generally uniform restrictions with regard to authorized access, how the information can be utilized, with contents restricted to official purposes related to law enforcement, criminal justice, and national security.
On November 8, 2023, after Ortiz took out nomination papers to challenge then-incumbent Damon Alexander in the March 5, 2024 Primary Election to represent San Bernardino’s Seventh Ward, she met with former San Bernardino City Attorney Jim Penman, who was also vying for election to the Seventh Ward post. At that meeting, Penman informed her that the San Bernardino Police Officers Association intended to conduct a campaign against her candidacy, in so doing referencing information relating to her that had been gleaned from a law enforcement data base. He urged her to drop out of the 7th Ward race to avoid sustaining damage to her reputation. Ortiz thereafter looked into the matter and scheduled a meeting with Police Chief Goodman. She told Goodman about the union’s incipient efforts to oppose her in the election and how that effort was based, at least in part, on information relating to her contained in at least one law enforcement data base. Goodman said he had looked into the matter and had determined that no such use of the data base by members of the department had taken place.
On March 4, 2024, Ortiz and Penman. Respectively, proved the two top finishers in the Seventh Ward contest, qualifying for a runoff against one another in the November 5, 2024 race.
Ortiz, despite having been told by Goodman that there was no substance to her contention that the department had run her name through any of the law enforcement data bases to dig up derogatory information that could be used by the Penman campaign against her during the election season, continued to bird-dog the police chief with regard to the issue, insisting there were individuals within the department who had direct knowledge about the efforts against her. Goodman continued to express his skepticism about what Ortiz was telling him, seeking to assure her that the professionalism among the department’s ranks was such that no one employed there would have abused the department’s authority or resources to push a political agenda , In a final effort to assure her that she was barking up the wrong tree, he acceded to her request to launch an inquiry with the custodians of the various data bases to ascertain whether anyone in the department had accessed the entries relating to her in the cybernetic files shared by local, state and federal law enforcement agencies.
Just as the 2024 election season was heating up, on August 8, 2024, Goodman contacted Ortiz, informing her that the California Department of Justice had responded to his request that it do an audit of requests of the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System for information on individuals matching Ortiz’s identity and birthdate, and that it had been verified that her name had been run and information pertaining to her retrieved from the database. Goodman apologized for having expressed doubt about the veracity of what she had told him and for the department’s invasion of her confidentiality. He identified Desrochers as the party that had accessed the system in retrieving her file, provided her with the date and time that the access had been made and told her there was going to be a criminal case put together against Desrochers, based on his illegal use of the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System.
Six days later, late in the morning on August 14, 2024, Ortiz texted Goodman, inquiring about the Department of Justice Audit Report. Goodman said he would attempt to schedule a meeting with her the following week to go over the report.
Over the course of the afternoon and into the evening, there were internal department communications between Goodman and other members of the department at the command level about the misuse of CLETS and its application for political purposes, in particular how it had, at the very least, the appearance of being related to the San Bernardino Police Officers Association’s endorsement of Penman. Loera was brought into the conversation, whereupon a consensus was developed that it would be best all around for the Police Officers Association to rescind its endorsement of Penman.
At 9:54 p.m. Goodman texted Ortiz to let her know he was still working on the matter.
Discussions continued among principals in the police department, and Goodman called upon Loera to meet with Ortiz. Communication between Ortiz and Loera ensued, and they agreed to meet at DJ Coffee Shop, located at 265 East 40th Street in San Bernardino that afternoon. Ortiz arranged for San Bernardino Sixth Ward City Councilwoman Kimberly Calvin to attend the meeting.
By the time that meeting took place at 2:45 p.m., the Police Officers Association had made a withdrawal of its endorsement of Penman. Ortiz used her cellphone, which was placed on the table, between her and Calvin sitting on one side and Loera opposite them, to record the conversation that ensued.
On the recording, Loera can be heard telling Ortiz and Calvin that he had not been aware of Desrochers’ use of the CLETS database for political purposes until the previous day, but that he had been thoroughly brought up speed with regard to what had happened. He owned up to what had occurred.
“I’m here to formally apologize for what they did in the past,” Loera is heard saying. “Clearly, I got a phone call yesterday. You got a phone call too. And I was just like, ‘What? Are you kidding me?’ Like, that’s just the way they told me was, ‘You need to sit down.’ I’m like. ‘What happened?’ First of all, I thought that one of my members was injured. I was like, ‘Oh, my God something happened, right?’ And they told me. I was like, ‘Oh, Hell, no, there’s no way. There’s no way.’ Because, we, during that time, clearly, [immediate past San Bernardino Police Officers Association President Jon] Plummer and I were not in charge. And something happened: that. You know that. It was the guys, the people that were in charge at that time. And that is not the way we do business – ever since Plummer and I took over. While Plummer’s not in charge anymore, I am. We said we were different, right? And when I heard that, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna burn down the house right now, because that is not okay, one hundred percent, you know, and I immediately removed the endorsement of Jim Penman, canceled the forum and all that stuff, because it’s not okay. It’s not. It’s not what Plummer and I created. It’s not.”
Loera told Ortiz, “I wanted to have a conversation with you, because we’re paying, obviously, we’re paying for the mistakes of our forefathers.”
The San Bernardino Police Officers Association president then told Ortiz that she should pursue pressing criminal charges against Desrochers.
“Do what you got to do with the criminal portion of it, which I highly recommend, because it is a crime doing that,” Loera told Ortiz. “The same way you hold bad people accountable. I get it.”
Two weeks later, On August 29, 2024, Goodman met with Ortiz at the San Bernardino Police Department headquarters. Accompanying her was Scott Beard, one of Ortiz’s major political contributors.
Goodman provided both Ortiz and Beard with a print-out of the audit showing that Desrochers had run Ortiz’s name through the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System database.
Upon showing Ortiz the audit report, Goodman indicated to both Ortiz and Beard that he was seeking to have Desrochers prosecuted by the district attorney’s office for having unlawfully utilized the department’s equipment and informational databases. He indicated that he believed a criminal case could yet be made against Desrochers, even though four years and the timeline within which a crime must be prosecuted, which is specified in the penal code under what is referred to as the stature of limitations, had elapsed.
“The statute of limitations is on the date of discovery [of the crime’s commission], which is why I’m pursuing the charges on Desrochers, because it’s from the date of discovery, not from the date of which he did it, which was back in 2020,” Goodman is heard saying on the audio recording. “So, we just learned about it now. I’m going to submit to the DA now and hopefully, they will file it.”
In 2019, when she was then a resident in the city’s Third Ward, she had run in a special election to fill the vacancy on the city council when the former councilman in the Third Ward, John Valdivia, had been elected mayor in November 2018. She had been unsuccessful in that effort, having lost to Valdivia’s hand-picked successor, Juan Figueroa in the May 2019 special balloting. Ortiz remained an outspoken critic of the Valdivia Administration and of his ally Figueroa. It was widely anticipated that she would challenge Figueroa in 2020. That did not come about, but in 2022, she ran against Valdivia in his reelection effort that year.
It was alleged that Desrochers running of Ortiz’s name through the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System in 2020 was done to obtain information about her criminal history/arrest record/convictions/law enforcement agency contacts that could be used against her in a political context.
Goodman indicated his belief that, measured by both Desrochers’ intent and what the information he obtained was used for, the activity the former Police Officers Association president had engaged in constituted a serious offense.
“It’s a minor crime to just run someone, like, you know: ‘Oh, I’m just curious where this person lives” versus ‘I want information and then I’m going to use this information to hurt this person.’ That’s a whole other level,” Goodman said to Ortizz and Beard on August 29, 2024. “And that’s how I feel about this, and I want to nip this in the bud and, quite frankly, want to make an example of Desrochers, whether he is retired or not, to send a message to anybody else that’s playing these games.”
Goodman told Ortiz and Beard he was in the course of preparing the case to be presented against Desrochers by compiling a report along with the evidence of how he had used the state law enforcement data base for an illegitimate purpose.
“I’m planning on going forward,” Goodman is heard saying. “The DA has already been notified – not the DA but the DA’s office – and they know this is coming and I wanted to preface it with them because of the whole concern about the statute of limitations and I said, ‘Hey, look, I think this is different because we just discovered it’ and they said, ‘Yeah, you might be right and there may actually be some exceptions because there is a lot of new law based on use of technology and use of information from criminal databases.’ So, we’re hoping that they see it that way once it gets there and they see the entirety of the report.”
A little more than two months later, in the November 2024 run-off against Penman, Ortiz registered a relatively convincing 11.5 percent victory to capture the Seventh Ward council position, receiving 3,929 votes or 55.78 percent to Penman’s 3,115 votes or 44.22 percent.
Ortiz was sworn into office in December 2024. Her efforts, carried out quietly in the course of closed-session discussions to convince San Bernardino Mayor Helen Tran and her council colleagues to in some fashion address the police department’s use of law enforcement data bases to interfere in city elections did not result in any publicly disclosed action. By March 2025, the prosecution of Desrochers that Loera encouraged Ortiz to involve herself in and which Goodman had suggested was to be forthcoming had not manifested. On March 25, 2025, Ortiz filed a $2 million claim for damages against City Hall, alleging police illegally searched the CLETS database to determine whether she had a criminal history as part of an effort to sabotage her election.
The accusations created a firestorm. Reflexively, the city categorically denied the accusation. In May 2025, the San Bernardino City Council voted unanimously, 6-to-0, with Ortiz abstaining, to reject her claim. The city doubled down, having Mayor Tran read an official statement condemning the Ortiz’s filing, which was intended to serve as a precursor to a lawsuit. Tran characterized the claim as one that was “frivolous… fraudulent… filed in bad faith… and dishonest,” and which existed as “an attempt to swindle the city of San Bernardino out of $2 million” in taxpayer funds. The city then tripled down, warning Ortiz that she was risking criminal prosecution, as he had filed the claim under the penalty of perjury.”
Caught in between the accusations in Ortiz’s claim and the city’s reflexive denials, Goodman and Loera were forced into the position of having to go along with the city establishment’s emerging extemporaneous narrative. Statements they made or ones attributed to them were contained in city statements that the police department unequivocally denied that its access to local, state and national criminal information data bases had ever been used for political purposes.
It is unclear whether Ortiz approached the district attorney’s office or if the investigation of the matter pertaining to Desrochers Goodman had alluded to during his August 29, 2024 conversation with Ortiz and Beard had been spurred along by events, prompting the district attorney’s office to contact her. At any rate, Ortiz through contact with the district attorney’s office, specifically its investigators Darnel McDermott and Jorge Chavez, was led to conclude that the district attorney’s office was looking into Desrochers’ misuse of the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System. She provided the office with documentation and materials, including access to the recordings she had made of her conversations with Loera and Calvin on August 15, 2024 and Goodman and Beard on August 29. 2024. She made further statements to McDermott and Chavez, believing their focus was on the criminal activity which Goodman and Loera had confirmed Desrochers was engaged in.
On November 5, 2025, Attorney Peter Schlueter filed on Ortiz’s behalf a lawsuit, registered as Case 5:25-cv-03045, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. That lawsuit alleged a member or members of the San Bernardino Police Department had improper accessed the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System to obtain access to her confidential records and had engaged in a conspiracy in doing so and thereafter. The suit sought $2 million in damages.
On January 21, 2026, the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office filed the two Section 632(a) charges against Ortiz.
Seven months and three days later, this Monday, August 24, opening statements were heard in the case, following a set of pretrial motions and jury selection last week.
DiCesare told the jury that Ortiz met with Loera on August 15, 2024, for an hour and 19 minutes at DJ Coffee Shop and again with Goodman on August 29, 2024 in a conference room at San Bernardino Police Headquarters, seeking to familiarize those who are to ascertain Ortiz’s guilt or innocence with settings where the crimes he said occurred took place. At neither meeting, according to DiCesare, did Ortiz say the conversations were being recorded, and she did not ask for the consent of either Goodman or Loera to do so. DiCesare vowed that the jurors would have the opportunity to listen to the recordings, such that “you’ll be able to listen to them and confirm all of this for yourself.” He told the jurors that in listening to the conversations they will hear “nothing about being recorded. You will not hear the word recorded in the recording at all.”
The prosecutor then sought to jump ahead of the defense. Anticipating that Schlueter would assert that Ortiz signaled to Loera that she was recording their conversation shortly after they were seated at a booth in DJ Coffee Shop, DiCesare told the jury that when Ortiz said, “Just so we make sure of everything we say to each other, so that what we talk about, you know what I say and I know what you say,” she was not referring to the cellphone with its audio recording mechanism activated she had in her hand as she set down on the table between them but that she was referring the presence of Councilwoman Calvin, who had just arrived. Loera did not take her statement to be an announcement that she was recording the conversation or that she was asking for his consent, the prosecutor said.
DiCesare said that the audio recording of the conversation with Loera began before Ortiz greeted DiCesare outside the coffee shop and the recorder was still running after Loera departed from the premises. the
Similarly, DiCesare asserted, during Goodman’s “hour-and-a-half-long” meeting with Ortiz on August 29, 2024, “she never said anything about a recording. She never asked whether [Goodman consented to her recording their conversation]. He saw no recorder. He did not consent and he would not have consented.”
Schlueter, in his opening statement, sought to put Ortiz’s meetings with Goodman and Loera into context, but was met with objections from DiCesare as he touched on the issue with regard to the accessing of the database.
Thwarted in his effort to zero in on what the issues were that had led to his client’s meetings with Loera and Goodman, Schlueter took aim at Loera’s assertion that he considered the conversation with Ortiz to be confidential. Loera told the district attorney’s office’s investigators that upon arriving at the coffee shop “he specifically asked for a booth away from other people so they could have a secure conversation.” The recording contradicts that, Schlueter said, and Loera can be heard telling Ortiz that they should sit wherever she preferred. The exchanges between Ortiz and Loera with Calvin there as a witness in a restaurant full of people where they could be overheard could not be considered confidential, such that Loera had no reasonable expectation of privacy, Schlueter said.
During the meeting with Goodman, Schlueter said, Ortiz was there with a third party “to listen to the conversation” as a witness and “she was not taking notes.” Furthermore, he said, Ortiz “Placed the phone between them. The device is clearly recording. Goodman knows what that means.”
Schlueter referenced the ubiquity of recording that takes place in modern society and suggest that when taken together with the consideration that Ortiz was speaking to sworn police officers about criminal activity, he asked. “Was this recording confidential in regards to the law?”
Following the opening arguments, Goodman was called by the prosecution as the first witness.
Goodman, who came to San Bernardino in 2022 when he was hired as police chief, testified that he knew of Ortiz because of her civic and political involvement, but had not been formally introduced to her prior to November of 2023. He testified that he knew Beard as a member of the business community who was involved in local politics and that he had met him previously.
Following Monday’s lunch break and the return of the jury to the courtroom. Goodman returned to the witness stand.
He said he greeted both Ortiz and Beard on the ground floor at police headquarters on August 29, 2024 and went upstairs to a conference room on the second floor to conduct the exchange with them.
“Why did you close the door?” DiCesare asked.
“Because it was a private meeting,” Goodman responded.
He sat at the head of a long conference table in the room with Beard sitting to his right and Ortiz next to Beard, Goodman recollected. He estimated his distance from Ortiz during the meeting as being roughly five feet.
“I could see them both from the angle I was at,” Goodman said. He said that each of them had placed their cell phones on the table.
“Did you expect your actual voice would be recorded?” DiCesare asked Goodman
“No, I did not,” Goodman replied.
“Did she tell you she was recording?” DiCesare asked.
“No, she did not,” Goodman said.
“Did you intend or want that conversation to be confined to the three people in that room?” DiCesare asked.
“Yes,” Goodman said, adding “There was some language I used that I would have changed if I knew it was being recorded.” In the course of the conversation, Goodman said, there were “personal things I was sharing that would be used against me later.”
Goodman said that he was not made aware of the recording’s existence until the district attorney’s office informed him about it roughly a year later, in August 2025.
Goodman testified that he was outraged to learn of the recording. “I think it’s an affront to anybody who ever believes that they’re having a private conversation to be illegally recorded,” the police chief said. Goodman said, adding that the recording was used as a “tool to hurt or to defame people.”
Goodman said that Ortiz had taken advantage of the situation in which she was surreptitiously recording the exchanges to “frame the conversation” and “lead with questions” and “repeatedly manipulating” the subject matter in a way that was “hurtful, quite frankly.”
Goodman also testified that he wanted the DA’s office to pursue a prosecution over the recording and that he wanted to become personally involved in putting handcuffs on Ortiz for what she had done. “Did you ask if you could make the arrest?” DiCesare asked.
“Yes,” said Goodman.
“Why?” DiCesare asked.
“Because I was the one that was victimized and I believed wholeheartedly she should be arrested for that,” Goodman said. .
Thereafter, after DiCesare had the court bailiff distribute transcripts of the recording Ortiz had made of the August 29, 2024 conversation among Goodman, Ortiz and Beard, DiCesare played the recording in the courtroom.
Thereafter, the court was in recess until the following morning.