By Mark Gutglueck
Allegations have surfaced in three civil filings that are progressing toward trial that the senior command within the sheriff’s department has become a den of both lesser qualified, in some cases dishonest and in others criminally negligent officers who have promoted on the basis of their loyalty to Sheriff Shannon Dicus rather than innate competence or acquired skill levels.
As significantly, it is alleged, Dicus and other high-ranking members of the department have actively networked to prevent members of the department or its augmentation teams who have direct knowledge about the improprieties or malfeasance of his professional associates from advancing up the chain of command or to remove them from the department altogether.
Of note is that this latest round of criticism aimed at Dicus and the sheriff’s department originates not with individuals who have been arrested by the department but rather with a sergeant, two lieutenants and a former federal judge who was a longtime volunteer with its search and rescue division.
Shannon Dicus is the current and sixth of Frank Bland’s successors as San Bernardino County sheriff and the political machine Bland created.
To become sheriff in 1954, Bland, who was then the police chief of Needles, had to wage a dynamic political battle to unseat his predecessor, Eugene Mueller, who had been sheriff for a single four-year term. Mueller, likewise, in 1950 had ousted the previous sheriff, Jim Stocker, who had been in office a mere four years after defeating Emmet Shay in 1946. Despite having climbed to the top of the law enforcement heap in San Bernardino County by virtue of willingly entering the political fray and getting elected, Bland thought of himself as a lawman first, and in forming his conception of himself being a politician came in a very distant second place. Upholding the law, Bland felt, and having to head out on the hustings to beg voters for votes for himself was a duty that he considered to be below the dignity of the office of sheriff. Accordingly, with the dawn of 1955 and the start of his maiden term as sheriff, he immediately embarked on the first three of his four primary goals, consisting of living up to his campaign commitments of interrupting the county’s flourishing vice activity by shutting down brothels, gambling houses and pinball parlors where teenagers were spending, by his estimation, too much time instead of doing their homework. He took a more gradual approach with his fourth key goal, which entailed constructing around him, using not only members of the department but those who were the driving forces and power brokers in the various communities around the far flung 20,105-square mile county. Already Needles’ favorite son, he befriended business leaders, agricultural interests and elected officials in the cities of San Bernardino, Redlands, Ontario, Upland, Colton, Barstow, Rialto, Chino, Montclair and Fontana as well as the communities of Victorville, Lake Arrowhead, Alta Loma, Cucamonga, San Antonio Heights, Big Bear and Apple Valley. He convinced the movers and shakers in all those places that he represented both the stability and sensible order they needed to succeed, inducing them to close ranks, one and all, behind him. They pledged, when the time came, to assist in defraying the expense of any campaign he needed to wage to remain as their sheriff. This served in warding off any others who contemplated running against him in 1958. He was then at liberty to disburse from his political war chest, as much of the money that was left over to any other elected officeholders or hopefuls around the county he deemed worthy of holding office. This served to both broaden and deepen his support network. Again and again, as in 1958, no opponents against him emerged in 1962, 1966, 1970 and 1974. That lack of challenge and unbroken control of the sheriff’s office bred both excess and a degree of corruption including accusations that Bland had become enmeshed in the protection of the region’s prostitution trade and diversions of money entrusted to the department for vice and narcotics operations to his own personal use, which led, in 1978, to three candidates challenging him. For the first time, the Bland political machine was put to the test, at which point its true strength was demonstrated. The campaign celebrating Bland as the quintessential lawman dedicated to forthrightly collaring criminals and serving justice overwhelmed press revelations about his reversal from his reformist approach in 1954 to an authority who had become associated with at least some of those he was supposed to be apprehending and the claims of his opponents that he was no longer a righteous upholder of the law. Bland was elected to his seventh four-year term as sheriff, easily outdistancing the other three candidates with 99,820 votes to their combined 84,391.
In 1982, further scandal, such as revelations about impounded vehicles and stolen items recovered by the department being diverted into the possession of department members or ones relating to the use of the red card file to angle for control over politicians and judges, was about to break into the open. One of Bland’s own people, Charles Callahan, a captain with the department, sensed blood in the water and declared his candidacy. The then-69-year-old and increasingly alcoholic Bland opted to retire, looking first to pass the torch to Floyd Jones, a one-time California Highway Patrol commander who had jumped mid-career to the sheriff’s department to accede to the second-in-command position of undersheriff. Jones, however, had a heart condition that made making him sheriff inadvisable. Bland was determined to keep the department, its reputation and its hundreds of thousands of files that included reports of calls for service, notational references to what and whom his deputies had encountered in the field, incident reports raw investigative data notes and/or transcriptions of interviews and interrogations of victims, witnesses, subjects and suspects, as well as investigation reports, documentation and assessments of evidence, physical and otherwise, nder the control of someone who would held him and all he had done during his illustrious law enforcement career in high regard and would respect his legacy. Bland’s second choice for his successor was another member of the department’s command echelon, Floyd Tidwell, who had been with the department since the 1950s and in the 1960s had served as the department’s inspector. Tidwell’s work as inspector, in which post he was provided with multiple intimate glimpses of local governmental operations at various spots around the county, was followed by stints as  a sheriff’s captain in multiple postings around the county and later as a deputy chief  and finally as the assistant sheriff working out of the sheriff’s headquarters in downtown San Bernardino. In the last two positions, he oversaw the detectives in the intelligence division and attached to the sheriff’s command. Tidwell, Bland knew, understood not just how the department functioned but possessed a gravitas and reverence for the sacred mission of protecting the good people of the largest county geographically in the United States from the sociopaths who were preying upon them. He anointed Tidwell with the confidence that the department he had remade in his image would remain intact.
With Bland’s endorsement, and the assistance of his political machine, Tidwell trounced Callahan.
A tradition was thereby established. The incumbent sheriff – at that moment in time the inheritor of the Bland Political Machine – designates his successor. As had been the case with Bland choosing Tidwell in 1982, Tidwell tapped his undersheriff, Dick Williams, to succeed him in 1990. In 1994, Williams passed the mantle along to Undersheriff Gary Penrod. In 2009, while Penrod was yet sheriff after having been reelected thrice, the succession arrangement was given another twist. With between one and two years remaining on his term, Penrod arranged to resign as sheriff, designating Rod Hoops as his chosen successor. While Penrod did not have the authority to determine or appoint his successor, Bland had a generation previously transformed the sheriff into the most powerful political position in the county. It was up to the board of supervisors to determine  who would replace any of the county elected officials who held a countywide position – sheriff, district attorney, assessor/county clerk or treasurer/auditor – by appointment. In 2009, the sitting sheriff announced his intention to leave office early and called for the board of supervisors to appoint his assistant sheriff to replace him, effectively handing the political machine created by Bland and which had been passed to Tidwell, then Williams and then him to Hoops, the members of the board of supervisors, all of whom were political animals themselves who might be severely damaged in their next electoral or re-electoral effort by the opposition of the latest incarnation Bland Political Machine – merely saluted and appointed Hoops. The following year, Hoops, running in the 2010 race for sheriff as an incumbent and with the backing of the sheriff’s political machine, won the race going away, with 67 percent of the vote against two challengers. A little more than two years into his first elected term and with roughly two years remaining on that term, Hoops resigned, recommending Assistant Sheriff John McMahon as his replacement. Without asking for applicants or considering anyone other than McMahon, the board of supervisors designated him as sheriff. Two years later, in the June 2014 election corresponding with that year’s gubernatorial primary election, McMahon, as the incumbent and supported by the successor to the Bland Political Machine, proved victorious with 63 percent of the vote against two challengers. Four years later, in the 2018 election for San Bernardino County sheriff, no one came forward to run against McMahon, just as any potential challengers had shrunk from running against Bland in from 1958 until 1974.
In 2021, McMahon opted to retire with a year-and-a-half of the term he had been elected to in yet remaining, recommending that the county board of supervisors choose his undersheriff, Shannon Dicus, as his replacement. The board complied, making Dicus San Bernardino County’s 36th sheriff.
Since 2021 Dicus has bestrode San Bernardino County like a colossus.
Just as McMahon, Hoops, Penrod, Williams, Tidwell and Bland before him, Dicus, while required to stay within the parameters and guidelines set by the California Commission on Peace Officers Standards and Training, otherwise has virtual autonomy over his department, enjoying, or at least seeming to enjoy, complete discretion in how the department is run, who is running it, who is promoted, who is kept in place, who is demoted, who is relieved of duty and even the timing of retirements.
Despite what many criminals incarcerated in the California prison system or San Bernardino County’s jails and a few of their attorneys maintain, Shannon Dicus has a strong belief in his own rectitude and that the organization he heads is involved in a noble cause – enforcing the law, keeping the peace, collaring the crooked, upholding justice and protecting the community. In his view, he and the department are doing a good job fulfilling that mission. By virtue of having advanced up the chain of command in the sheriff’s department, the board of supervisors having appointed him sheriff and the voters of San Bernardino County having overwhelmingly voted to keep him in place, Dicus believes he is justified in holding onto the power he commands. Having now risen to the top of a very powerful organization, Dicus has structured who mans the organization he commands in large measure on loyalty to himself and his vision for what his organization should be.
Indeed, just as was the case during the department’s Bland era, under Dicus, those members of the department who evince a can-do attitude with regard to the department’s enforcement priorities, acquiesce in the command’s personnel promotional decisions in which Dicus’s friends and personal associates are favored with high-rank, accept without question or protest the command echelon’s authority and conform with the expectation that they support the sheriff and his allies politically are the most likely to advance professionally.
Consequently, a key trait in those Dicus permits to function within the command are those who recognize his organizational goals and then get along with the program, become members of the team and demonstrate no differences or criticism of their colleagues within their colleagues within the department’s management suite.
One of the first manifestations of Dicus’s adherence to the principle of holding himself and his command staff to be beyond reproach consisted of the experience of Sergeant Randall Hansen. In 2021, during the last several months of John McMahon’s tenure as sheriff, Hansen promoted to lieutenant. After Dicus advanced to the sheriff’s position, Hansen made a hostile work environment complaint, the details for which made their way into documentation that reached Dicus’s desk. By 2023, Hansen was busted back to sergeant’s rank. While promotions among the department’s more than 2,000 personnel are often slow in coming, only in the rarest of circumstances are they reversed.
Hansen’s experience is a cautionary tale, one not unlike what happened to Michael Gilley. As was the case with Hansen, Gilley was a sergeant, and in 2020, while working in the department’s main jail, the West Valley Detention Center, he was present during a briefing at which approaching 20 department personnel, both sworn and unsworn, were present. The discussion at one point grew heated and the commander at the jail, Captain Victor Moreno, seized Gilley’s handheld radio and threw it in anger at Lieutenant Jesse Venegas, damaging the device.
At that time, Dicus was the undersheriff. Several members of the department filed complaints regarding what was characterized as Moreno’s unprofessional behavior and the tension and hostile working environment it was creating. Moreno was closely affiliated and aligned with Dicus, and would emerge in 2022 as one of the members of the department most active in fundraising on behalf of Dicus’s election campaign. Upon Dicus’s elevation to sheriff, Moreno was widely perceived as the second most likely candidate for elevation to a deputy chief’s post. Dicus considered the complaints regarding Moreno lodged by the employees at the West Valley Detention Center to be an unacceptable breach of teamwork, in which the department’s officers were expected to comply with orders handed down from above them and essentially ignore the manifestations of a superior officer’s idiosyncrasies. In the same timeframe during which Dicus became sheriff, Gilley departed from department.
The experience of Lieutenant Phill Dupper perhaps offers the most illustrative depiction of Dicus’s disdain for criticism – be it constructive or malicious – of the institution he heads and the personnel he has chosen to manage it.
In 1996, Dupper joined the sheriff’s department, five years after Dicus was hired. By virtue of their age difference and Dicus’s five-year head start in joining the department, Dupper was junior in rank to Dicus throughout their overlapping tenure with the department. Nevertheless, Dicus and Dupper grew acquainted with one another shortly after Dupper began as a deputy and grew close, given that both were on a relatively fast track of advancement and were of like mind with regard to their high regard for the department and its work. They established a routine of meeting for breakfast once or twice a month. Dupper grew accustomed to communicating to Dicus, and Dicus appeared to appreciate hearing, his concerns about issues that cropped up which he believed represented problems or challenges ongoing issues that should be redressed before they became problematic.
In January 2017, Dupper was promoted to lieutenant and assigned to the department’s information services division, which includes the central records, information technology and dispatch units. In 2018, Dicus was selected as undersheriff by then-sheriff McMahon. Also in 2018, Sarkis Ohanessian was promoted to captain and assigned to oversee the information services division, thereby becoming Dupper’s direct supervisor. Early on in his interaction with Ohannessian, Dupper became concerned about what he perceived as Ohanneessian cutting corners and engaging in activities Dupper considered improper or unethical. Dupper challenged Ohanessian directly with regard to some of his actions and then went directly to Undersheriff Shannon Dicus to express his concerns.
One such issue was a deal in late 2018 that Ohanessian was attempting to orchestrate with AT&T to replace Verizon as the provider of the mobile data computers used by sheriff’s deputies throughout the county. Dupper and his information technology staff pushed back on the AT&T deal directly to Ohannessian and higher executives, believing, and stating, the only reason the deal was entertained was due to AT&T’s donations in support of the annual San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Rodeo event.
On September 9, 2019, Ohanessian made a presentation to the command, echelon, suggesting the department adopt Motorola Vault as the department’s digital evidence storage and retrieval system. The executives signed off on it without having been informed or understanding that a formal bidding process had not been utilized to arrive at that conclusion. Ohanessian took his approval to the county’s bureau of administration where it was reviewed by the county purchasing division. The purchase was disallowed on the grounds that the vendor and the product in question had not been subject to a competitive bid. Undeterred, Ohanessian, yet determined to award the contract to Motorola, formed what was essentially a fraudulent committee consisting of the department’s information technology employees to “evaluate” the responses to a request for proposals, instructing the committee members to select and recommend Motorola Vault, thereby bypassing or, indeed, violating the terms of the bid process the county utilizes in selecting vendors. When Dupper spoke up about this situation, Ohanessian left him off the bid evaluation committee.
Dupper had further confrontations with Ohannessian regarding the department’s contacts, interactions and arrangements with other vendors and potential vendors, in particular ones that skirted county policy, state regulations and/or sound practice. In June 2020, Ohanessian forwarded an email to Dupper with a link to sheriff’s department data and a product originating with the company, Agiline. Dupper responded and said although what was being offered or proposed appeared interesting, he did not recall doing anything to authorize the company to examine department data nor did he know of any official contract with them. Dupper referenced state Criminal Justice Information Services requirements that would normally be in effect during the contractual process, intimating that Ohannessian allowed a non-backgrounded, non-approved information technology vendor into the information technology unit and provided it with access data to prepare statistics. Captain Ohanessian acknowledged in an email response that he had made a mistake.
In early June 2020, complaints were made in the records division about Deputy Chief Horace Boatwright continually being present in a female records employee’s office, during which time the door remained closed for extended periods. Records manager Sarah Garcez, who received the complaints from her employees and witnessed the activity herself, took the matter up with Dupper, who reported the complaints to Ohannessian, who said he spoke to Assistant Sheriff Lana Tomlin, Boatwright’s supervisor. According to Ohanessian, Tomlin told Boatwright to stay out of the records division, as his line of responsibility within the department did not extend there. Boatwright later promoted to undersheriff upon Dicus becoming sheriff, in which position he was, along with Dicus, responsible for overseeing promotions and transfers for the entire department.
In July 2020, Ohanessian informed Dupper the department had fallen far behind in the required reporting of statistics to the California Department of Justice. Dupper had been having challenges with the records division employee, the employee who had been involved with Boatwright, in the production of those statistics. The employee, since the issue of her extended and improper workplace meetings with Boatwright had been broached, had been increasingly challenging for Dupper, Garcez and many others in the information services division, including Ohanessian, to manage. Shortly thereafter, Dupper met with the department’s so-called “Inform Transition Team,” a group of deputies and a sheriff’s training specialist in this case relating to records keep, as to why the Department of Justice reporting was being delayed. The team told him they believed the statistics reporting was being intentionally delayed by the employee in question. Dupper emailed that information to Ohanessian, who responded by telling Dupper to treat everything with “white gloves,” conveying all involved needed to watch out because of the relationship between that employee and Boatwright.
During the summer of 2020, Dupper shared with Dicus his frustration with Ohannessian not disclosing everything to executives related to activity in information services division and the determination by the Inform team with regard to a newly-acquired records management system that had come on line the previous year in which difficulties with the software had manifested along with conflicts involving the information systems own requirements and internal processes, exacerbated by employee performance issues. The Inform Transition Team had been told by Ohannessian to not share the problems found with departmental higher-ups because, he told Dicus, Ohannessian did not want “bad” news getting to the executives, including both of the department’s then-assistant sheriffs, Lana Tomlin and Steve Higgins. As a result, the situation relating to the records management system was growing chaotic, Dupper told Dicus.
In early June 2020, several dispatch division supervisors approached Captain Ohanessian alleging a hostile work environment created by dispatch division administrator Kim Turner. Ohanessian tasked Dupper to assist him in interviewing several dispatch supervisors and the two dispatch managers answerable to Turner. At the conclusion of the interviews, Ohanessian directed Dupper to summarize the findings, which Dupper did in an email that noted elements of concern with Turner’s behavior, which were creating a liability. Several supervisors mentioned demeaning and hostile comments, stress Turner had generated, time taken off by other employees because of her, favoritism and other specific failures in leadership. Ohanessian acknowledged Dupper’s email was “on point” and said he forwarded the information up the chain of command. Despite Dupper’s efforts, he later reported, the issues relating to Turner’s disruptions in the dispatch division persisted. Rumors emerged that the matter was being “swept under the rug” because Turner assisted Dicus in writing his master’s thesis. A few years later, after Dupper was no longer in the information services division and neither the past nor more recently emerging complaints pertaining to Turner were addressed forcing an administrative inquiry, she left the dispatch division administrator position.
Dicus, as the undersheriff, had come to perceive Dupper’s repeated and continuous reference to problems and inadequate supervisorial/leadership responses to those problems as an indication that Dupper was unsuited for a leadership role in the organization or unable to fit in as a team player. In August 2020, shortly after Dupper had sent comprehensive and significant evidence of and emails regarding issues in the information services division to department administration, including Dicus, Dupper was abruptly transferred out of the information services division to shift work at the West Valley Detention Center. Dupper had made no such change-of-assignment request. Unbeknownst to him, it was Dicus who had ordered, essentially unilaterally on his authority as undersheriff pertaining to personnel utilization, that he be moved to the department’s main jail. To his inquiries, Dupper was told by department executives they thought he wanted to be placed there. Dupper, who at that time was in the upper third among lieutenants in the department in terms of seniority, was shocked, as jail duty is normally an assignment given to deputies newly arriving to the department or recently promoted sergeants and lieutenants. Rarely are any sworn department personnel who have already worked in a specialized position detailed to the jail, unless they have engaged in action that landed them in trouble or for which they were disciplined.
Dupper was given a week to wrap up his three-and-a-half years at the information services division to report for shift work. On the same transfer list to be sent to the jail was another lieutenant whose professional conduct had placed his law enforcement career in significant jeopardy and who was facing discipline, which resulted, ultimately, in his being demoted back to deputy. Word around the department was that Dupper was being punished for speaking up.
After the transfer list was announced, Dupper was contacted by several members of the sheriff’s executive staff, including Sheriff McMahon. Dupper informed McMahon that despite multiple members of his executive staff believing he wanted to be transferred to the jail, that was not the case. McMahon apologized to Dupper for the confusion, saying he was not sure of the reason Dupper was sent to the West Valley Detention Center, but did not rescind the transfer order.
From the outset of his time at the West Valley Detention Center, Dupper had a testy relationship with Captain Victor Moreno, then the commanding officer at the jail in Rancho Cucamonga. At that time, the department was under a federally-issued consent decree that it redress conditions deemed dangerous to inmates at the West Valley Detention Center. Upon Dupper showing up to his new duty station and introducing himself to his senior officer, Moreno told him he was dismayed with Dupper being assigned to him, indicating he believed Dupper was in some kind of trouble with the department generally or the department’s top command, and that the general impression those within the department’s command echelon had was that Dupper lacked discretion in that he could not keep his mouth shut with regard to things those with any sense in the organization would rather keep a lid on. “We have a lot going on here and I don’t need someone like you,” Moreno said.
Moreno also informed Dupper that given his new assignment at the jail, he would no longer be able to serve on the Loma Linda City Council, to which he had been elected in 2014 and reelected in 2018 and 2022, and that Dupper would further need to resign his position as an adjunct college professor. That night, Dupper emailed Moreno, giving him a description of what his off-duty activities entailed, indicating he had been engaged in them for several years while employed with the sheriff’s department. Moreno’s single-word email response to Dupper was “No.” Dupper forwarded the email chain to Undersheriff Dicus.
While at the jail, Dupper, a lieutenant, was instructed by Moreno to report to a sergeant and two probationary lieutenants who had only recently been promoted from the rank of sergeant.
Dupper, unaware that he had been transferred to the jail on Dicus’s orders because Dicus had misgivings about Dupper’s propensity to explicitly inform the senior administrators in the department about the overall significance and minutiae of problems in the divisions where he worked and the shortcomings in the professionalism of his colleagues, relayed to Dicus his concerns about what he was witnessing at the jail. These extended to a multitude of issues, all of which represented potential liability on the part of the department and the county, including the cover-up of a Fentanyl-related inmate death, sexual harassment of female deputies, and unprofessional communication and activity on the part of management staff.
In February 2021, Dupper, yet unaware that Undersheriff Dicus was responsible for his transfer to the West Valley Detention Center or that Moreno was a Dicus ally within the sheriff’s department hierarchy, met with Dicus at an offsite location, where he informed Dicus he believed he was being subjected to a hostile work environment.
Shortly thereafter, an internal affairs investigation by the department’s professional standards division was initiated, one in which Dupper was interviewed. Dupper was never, however, informed of the investigation’s outcome. As that investigation was commenced, around March 2021, Dupper was moved to another jail, the Glen Helen Rehabilitation Center. While at Glen Helen, Dupper was given an annual performance evaluation, in which he was scored lower than in previous years, with the notation that he was discontented about being transferred to the jail, and he was passed over for promotion.
In May 2021, it was revealed internally within the department that Sheriff McMahon intended to retire prior to the expiration of his term in 2022 and McMahon made a formal public announcement to that effect the following month. The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors opened applications for the position of Sheriff as part of the process to appoint someone to finish out McMahon’s term, although indications are that the sheriff’s succession was predetermined by an understanding that the supervisors would acquiesce in selecting McMahon’s recommendation. Dupper applied for the position along with Cliff Harris, a former deputy sheriff in both San Bernardino and Riverside counties. Within the application’s supplemental questions, Dupper asserted one of his motivations for seeking office consisted of the department’s lack of internal procedural justice and his goal or plan for how he would address it, were he to be appointed sheriff. During the board of supervisors’ public meeting at which the candidates presented themselves and were subject to questions from the board, Dupper said, “The department acts like a good ol’ boys club where personal relationships matter more than qualifications or efficacy. In law enforcement, sometime we are very close-minded.”
Dupper said the department’s personnel were “looking for guidance. They’re looking for leadership and sometimes were not giving that to them, and I think we can do better. I believe our people are good people, but they need direction and we need to set clear directions and everybody needs to follow them. The chief complaint that I get from a lot of our employees is that they believe executives are held to a different standard than they are, and that breeds internal distrust of the organization. I believe that we are way lacking in our total organizational structure. I personally struggle as to whether the office of the sheriff is fully aware of how things have progressed, and I’m not sure. I think John McMahon is a good man, but I’m not sure how much of this stuff he is aware of and chose to overlook.”
When then-Supervisor Janice Rutherford asked Dupper whether he was “alleging that current leadership of the sheriff lies to members of the department,” he responded, “Yes.”
Dupper told the supervisors, “I believe you should establish an oversight board or committee to look into the organization. As the five most powerful elected officials in the county, that unfortunately falls on your shoulders. I think its needed and I think its time. We’re in a world where accountability is paramount.”
On July 17, 2021, Dicus was appointed sheriff.
During Dicus’s time as sheriff, Dupper’s career has stalled out. Despite what he contends is his suitability for promotion to captain and beyond, he has remained in the rank of lieutenant.
On August 9, 2021, Dupper met with Dicus, Assistant Sheriff Sam Fisk and Deputy Chief Chris Fisher. In the meeting, Dupper laid out a timeline of issues from his work in the information services division, West Valley Detention Center and Glen Helen Rehabilitation Center. In his response, Dicus made clear that he considered Dupper to be “selfish” and that he was “lucky” to have been promoted as far as he had been. He further stated that Dupper could not “get along” with the captains he worked for within the information services division and at the West Valley Detention Center and that he had “made a lot of people angry” with what he had told the board of supervisors about the department. At that point, Dicus disclosed that he had intentionally reassigned Dupper to the jail.
In March 2022, Dupper was transferred to his current assignment at the Highland Sheriff’s Station.
Dupper, who has been eligible to promote to Captain since January 2019, has consistently been passed over for promotion. While Dupper has been in the rank of lieutenant, at least 57 lieutenants have been promoted to captain, most of those were made directly while Dicus has been sheriff. Of those 57, five were promoted to captain had more time on as a lieutenant than Dupper. The remaining 52 lieutenants promoted to captain during that timeframe had spent an equal or less amount of time as lieutenant than Dupper. Currently, there are 28 captain positions in the department. Several of those promoted to captain while Dupper was eligible for promotion to captain have either been promoted again or have retired from the department.
During Dicus’s tenure as sheriff, the number of elevated-rank and command positions in the department have increased substantially. In 2019, under Sheriff McMahon, there was a single undersheriff, two assistant sheriffs and six deputy chiefs. In 2023, the year after Dicus, running as the incumbent, was elected sheriff with 74.27 percent of the vote, the number of deputy chief positions had jumped to eight. At present, there is still one undersheriff, assisted by three assistant sheriffs and 11 deputy chiefs.
While Dupper has remained at lieutenant rank, a number of the issues he raised – or attempted to raise – with senior administration exacerbated themselves into major problems or scandals.
In 2023, Russian mobsters, working from Eastern Europe, hacked the sheriff’s department’s computer system, taking control of data storage and retrieval capabilities and communications capabilities. The cyberattack utilized ransomware that could not be disinfected from the operating system without the application of an unlocking algorithm. Efforts to salvage the system were unsuccessful. The department’s options were limited to either giving in to those who had hijacked the system and complying with their demands or the complete abandonment of its computers together with their hardware and software and the substitution of another system and comprehensive replacement of the stationary and mobile computing devices used by the department’s deputies, higher-ranking officers and support personnel. Ultimately, the department chose the former course, paying a $1.1 million ransom, $588,148 of which was covered by the county’s insurance carrier. It was belatedly acknowledged that cybersecurity precautions Dupper and other members of the information services division had been advocating but which Ohanessian had countermanded would have likely prevented the interruption from occurring.
In response to mounting complaints from other department employees at the West Valley Detention Center, Captain Moreno was transferred to the coroner’s division, where he was entrusted with managing operations there. While in that post, he entered into what was described as “an inappropriate extramarital relationship” with Deputy Coroner Investigator Rebecca London. That relationship apparently ended badly. London later reported that she was receiving threatening/harassing phone calls late at night from individuals acting on behalf of Captain Moreno. In late 2024, Moreno was transferred out of the coroner’s division to oversee the Fontana Sheriff’s Station. That transfer was made, department sources report, because senior department personnel learned of the deteriorating circumstance in the coroner’s office that had come about because of the situation involving Moreno and London. Nevertheless, Moreno and others maintained that he remained in the good graces of the department’s top commanders and was on track to be promoted to deputy chief upon the next vacation of an assistant sheriff position, which would involve a deputy chief being elevated to that spot, creating a corresponding vacancy among the deputy chief roster.
On January 5, 2025, Deputy London died by her own hand, having committed suicide, it was widely reported, as a consequence of the circumstance involving Moreno. London’s death investigation was conducted by the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.
At that point, the scandal could no longer be contained, and an ad hoc internal departmental panel was formed to look into the matter. After the delivery of a report and a hearing of the panel which ended in a recommendation that Moreno be terminated, Dicus overruled that finding. Instead, Moreno voluntarily retired.
In August 2024, Dupper filed an unfair employment/whistleblower lawsuit suit against San Bernardino County, under California Labor Code §1102.5, alleging he was being retaliated against.
Dupper’s experience is paralleled by that of Stephen Miller.
Miller is an attorney and former federal judge, who from January 1998 to February 2005 served as a part-time United States magistrate judge in the Central District of California.
Miller left the federal bench upon being appointed, in January 2005, by then-California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to one of three regional senior assistant inspector general positions to assist the California Inspector General in monitoring federal court orders that grew out of the settlement of a lawsuit involving the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The inspector general and his support network of attorneys and investigators were tasked with the primary duties of overseeing and monitoring peace officer misconduct investigations and discipline in the areas of the so-called blue code of silence, peace officer honesty and integrity, and the use of lethal force.
Miller was a volunteer member of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue Team.
A major feature of the search and rescue team is its access to sheriff’s department aircraft, which are of tremendous utility in carrying out assignments in the varied geographical expanse of San Bernardino County, which includes 18,697 square miles of desert, the vast majority of the San Bernardino Mountains and the San Gorgonio Wilderness – including 11,503-foot elevation San Gorgonio Peak, 11,287-foot elevation Iron Mountain, 11,205-foot elevation Jepsen Peak, 11,010-foot elevation Bighorn Mountain, 10,871 foot elevation Anderson Peak, 10,821-foot elevation Charlton Peak, 10,760-foot elevation Doubletop Mountain, 10,680-foot elevation Shields Peak 10,649-foot elevation San Bernardino Peak, 10,288-foot elevation Grinnell Mountain and 10,178-foot elevation Lake Peak, 9,954-foot elevation Sugarloaf Mountain 8,767-foot elevation Black Peak, 7,276-foot elevation Little Bear Mountain and 6,771 Big Bear Mountain and 5,737-foot elevation Pinnacles Peak near Lake Arrowhead – and the eastern portion of the San Gabriel Mountains with its 10,588-foot elevation Mt. San Antonio, 8,859-foot elevation Cucamonga Peak, 8,696-foot elevation Ontario Peak and 8,441-foot elevation Bighorn Peak.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department Aviation Unit operates 18 aircraft, including 13 helicopters and five fixed wing planes. These include six Airbus H125 helicopters, oneEurocopter AS350 B3 helicopter, three Bell UH-1H medium helicopters, a single Bell 212 medium helicopter and two Subaru Bell 412EPX high-performance utility helicopters (added in 2022, along with two Mahindra Air Van airplanes and three Beechcraft King Air airplanes.
Miller’s participation on the search and rescue team put him close contact with the department’s aviation unit. As a consequence, he became aware of multiple incidents which caused him and others concern. These included:
• Sergeant Dan Futscher, one of the department’s helicopter pilots, violated federal regulations, the pilot operating handbook and station policy by failing to conduct a proper preflight inspection before the start-up of an Airbus H125 helicopter, whereupon, a wrench left on the rotor head was flung from the helicopter’s rotor blades, the wrench was cut in half and parts of the wrench flew proximate to at least three mechanics, any of whom could have been killed.
• A sergeant within the aviation division told department personnel who were aware of what occurred during that particular Airbus H125 start-up that it was not necessary to prepare a safety report.
• A failure by Corporal Edward Leon, another department pilot, to conduct a proper preflight inspection, which resulted in an unlatched cowling during a flight carrying rescue team members who were engaging in airborne night hoist training. Had the unsecured cowling advanced into the rotor system during training or flight, the entire crew could have been killed or catastrophically injured.
• Leon attempted to have his subordinates remain silent and say nothing about the unlatched cowling.
• Sergeant Jon Anderson directed Leon not to complete or file a safety report with regard to the unsecured cowling.
• The incident relating to the unlatched cowling was not logged in the aircraft flight log, and an aviation division safety officer did not learn about it and mechanics did not conduct a precautionary inspection relating to it until 30 days after the occurrence.
• When a safety officer, after being directed to do so by a lieutenant, called Sergeant Jon Anderson, who was the senior officer on call the night of the incident involving the unsecured cowling, to ask about the absence of a safety report, Anderson dressed the safety officer down, saying, “I am a sergeant and I made the decision.” Shortly after this first phone conversation, Anderson called the safety officer and repeated, “I am a sergeant. You don’t call me on my day off and question a sergeant.”
• After the safety officer sought to conduct a review of the incident involving the unsecured cowling, Leon suggested to other personnel within the aviation division that the safety officer was being “a rat” for proceeding with the inquiry.
• Sergeant Jon Anderson told aviation division personnel it was not necessary to prepare a safety report pertaining to the unsecured cowling.
• Sergeant Anderson failed on one occasion to manage, monitor and oversee an MD500 helicopter’s engine start that resulted in a “hot start” and complete destruction of the helicopter’s engine at a cost of approximately $100,000.
• No investigation of the circumstances relating to the destruction of the MD500 helicopter engine and Anderson’s alleged negligence in allowing it to occur was carried out, nor any report relating to it was written.
• No discipline relating to the engine destruction was meted out.
• Sergeant Anderson was receiving flight instruction or training from a sheriff’s department civilian flight instructor in a sheriff’s department or Inland Regional Narcotics Enforcement Team airplane.
• A corporal assigned to the sheriff’s department’s aviation unit who is a helicopter pilot, airplane pilot and flight instructor refused to provide Anderson with airplane flight instruction because he believed doing so would be an inappropriate use of sheriff’s department or Inland Regional Narcotics Enforcement Team aircraft.
• Sgt. Leon, having recently been promoted to sergeant, violated Emergency Operations Division Policy 3.15.0 by allowing the captain overseeing the Colorado River Sheriff’s Station and a jail deputy, neither of whom are licensed pilots, to manipulate the flight controls, i.e., fly the helicopter, while the flight officer(s) were seated in the rear of the aircraft.
• Sergeant Anderson rear-ended another vehicle while driving a sheriff’s “takehome” vehicle on his day off, during which his operation/driving of the vehicle was not authorized.
• Anderson was not disciplined for his unauthorized use or damage to the vehicle as a result of the collision, in which he was found to have been at fault.
Miller learned that a rationale, at least in part, for withholding the reports of the incidents in question was so, he would subsequently suggest in a court filing, Leon, Futscher and Anderson “could have a clean record for promotion.”
Miller’s former role as one of three assistant senior assistant inspector generals overseeing the federal court orders relating to the monitoring of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sensitized him to efforts by law enforcement agencies to engage in a code of silence, cover-ups, attempted cover-ups, characterizing employees as disloyal for insisting on reporting errors or misconduct by their colleagues and retaliating against them for doing so, failing to conduct internal investigations or otherwise carrying out ones that were superficial, inadequate or shams, while meting out inconsistent discipline. Such inconsistent discipline was manifest, he saw, in the way in which roughly a month-and-a-half after Sergeant Futscher’s life-threatening preflight inspection failure, Futscher wrote up a flight officer for a lack of attention to detail when the flight officer allowed a hangar door to contact a rotor blade that resulted in no damage.
Sergeant Mike Gilley, who had been assigned to the aviation unit, on April 20, 2021 submitted by email directly to Sheriff McMahon, Undersheriff Dicus, Assistant Sheriff Fisk, and Deputy Chief Robert O’Brine a report/complaint alleging safety procedure shortcomings.
Miller shared Gilley’s concern about the several incidents relating to the department’s helicopters and the failures to properly log reports pertaining to them. Moreover, Miller concurred with Gilley that those up the chain of command should be kept abreast of what was happening within the department’s divisions and it was his perception that the department’s administration was being deprived of information with regard to the fashion in which lower level officers and those members of the department they directly oversaw were not being properly monitored or held accountable.
Miller knew of Gilley’s report to McMahon, Dicus, Fisk, and O’Brine. When, after three months elapsed and no response or report regarding the complaint had been forthcoming, Miller went outside the chain of command by hand delivering a written complaint dated July 22, 2021 directly to the sheriff’s department’s internal affairs division administrative sergeant, which raised the issues in Gilley’s April 22 email.
On August 9, 2021, Miller had an encounter with Anderson in which the sergeant chastised him for submitting a written safety report and sought to dissuade him from raising safety issues in written report submissions in the future.
When, after what Miller considered a decent interval, the complaint he had filed on July 22, 2021 did not result in any report, resolution or tangible reaction, Miller again went outside the chain of command and beyond the confines of the sheriff’s department and hand delivered a complaint dated December 16, 2021 directly to the office of compliance and ethics within the San Bernardino County Human Resources Department. In that complaint, Miller raised the issues he had previously delved into with the sheriff’s department’s internal affairs division, while broadening it to include what he referenced as “failures by Sheriff Dicus and his subordinates to complete an objective, thorough and timely investigation of the July 22, 2021 misconduct complaint,” extending to “a failure to interview, or even attempting to interview, the petitioner [i.e., Miller] as the complaining party” and “failing to interview witnesses and subjects of investigation.”
Subsequently, when the issues he had raised in his July 22, 2021 and December 16, 2021 complaints were not dealt with in what he considered to be a timely or forthright manner, Miller on February 16, 2022 lodged a complaint with the San Bernardino County auditor-controller and the office of compliance and ethics within the San Bernardino County Human Resources Department.
After the county auditor-controller’s office, its fraud, waste and abuse hotline, the county human resources department and its office of compliance and ethics failed to communicate with him regarding his February 15, 2022 complaint, Miller on July 18, 2022, submitted yet another written complaint of retaliation and wasteful spending with the county auditor-controller’s office and to the county human resources department and its office of compliance and ethics.
The December 16, 2021, February 15, 2022 and July 18, 2022 complaints, in addition to referencing the previously raised issues relating to hazards, lack of compliance with safety protocols and lack of accountability within the sheriff’s department, extended to the failure of both the sheriff’s department and the county itself to engage in a meaningful examination, or come to a resolution, of the issues raised in his previous complaints, as well as what Miller termed “retaliation,” he was experiencing as a result of filing the safety reports and complaints.
By the summer of 2022, the dismay with Miller over his persistence in raising issues relating to conditions within the search and rescue/aviation division, the comportment of department personnel and his propensity for filing compounding complaints no longer confined itself to the sheriff’s department. The auditor-controller’s office, its fraud, waste and abuse hotline, the county human resources department and its office of compliance and ethics made no response to Miller with regard to his July 18, 2022 complaint, nor did any of those entities interview him as a complaining party and victim in response to that filing. Rather, according to a lawsuit Miller subsequently filed, “the decision was made to wait a short time and then terminate the petitioner [i.e., Miller] from his reserve deputy sheriff and volunteer air medic position in retaliation for making repeated complaints of
misconduct, safety violations and wasteful spending.”
On October 11, 2022, Miller was provided with a September 30, 2022 interoffice memo from Assistant Sheriff Sam Fisk stating there were “no findings” of any violation of county policy or misconduct after an investigation by the department’s internal affairs division with regard to the July 22, 2021 complaint he had filed.
The county was as noncommittal as the sheriff’s department in reaction to Miller’s complaints.
On February 13, 2023 Human Resources Department Employee Relations Division Chief Eric Guerra sent a letter to the auditor-controller fraud, waste and abuse hotline regarding the internal investigations the complaints Miller had filed on February 15, 2022 and July 18, 2022. Guerra’s letter informed and represented to the auditor-controller that after the sheriff’s department’s internal affairs division investigation turned up “no findings” of any violations of county policy or misconduct.
On March 30, 2023, Miller submitted or mailed a written misconduct complaint to the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors chairman, vice chairman and the county’s chief executive officer. In that complaint, Miller reiterated all of his safety concerns relating to the sheriff’s aviation division. He further asserted in the complaint that Sheriff McMahon and/or Sheriff Dicus failed to properly adjudicate his July 22, 2021 complaint, that the sheriff, undersheriff, an assistant sheriff, and a deputy chief, after receiving notice of serious misconduct, failed to investigate and initiate disciplinary action and that despite whatever investigation was or was not conducted did not come to a determination that the factual allegations contained in the complaint were untrue. The complaint further alleged that Guerra’s February 13, 2023 letter was a highly unethical attempt to conceal and cover up peace officer misconduct in the sheriff’s department. Guerra’s action was further intended, Miller contended, to conceal the failure by senior sheriff’s department managers to properly adjudicate misconduct allegations in compliance with sheriff’s department policies and procedures adopted pursuant to Penal Code section 832.5(a), which requires that law enforcement agencies carry out investigations of misdeeds by sworn peace officers. Miller also maintained that Guerra’s action prevented the auditor-controller’s division committed to rooting out fraud, waste and abuse from conducting any further investigation or inquiry into misconduct, safety violations and wasteful spending at the sheriff’s aviation unit and that it misled and defrauded the county’s auditor-controller’s office into believing there was no merit to the complaints of misconduct, safety violations, wasteful spending and retaliation.”
Before Miller was terminated as a reserve sheriff’s deputy and a medic volunteer with the sheriff’s department’s search and rescue division, during an encounter with Leon during which the subject of the unlatched cowling came up, the pilot acknowledged he should have been disciplined with regard to the incident.
Futscher was promoted to lieutenant, whereupon he became the manager of the aviation unit.
Miller, after seeking for four years to have the department address the safety issues he first raised in 2021 and for more than three years to have county officials fully examine what he believes is the sheriff’s department command’s unwillingness to hold its employees accountable, on September 22, 2025 filed a petition with the San Bernardino Superior Court for a writ of mandamus in which San Bernardino County and the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors are named as respondents. In his suit, Miller is requesting that the court find that the county and the board of supervisors “failed to investigate, adjudicate, and retain [a] misconduct complaint, failed to provide [a] notice of disposition and to compel respondents to investigate,
properly adjudicate and retain [a] misconduct complaint [and] provide [a] notice of disposition.” The lawsuit, in which Miller is representing himself, requests that the issues and matters the suit encompassed be referred to a grand jury, the California Attorney General’s Office and the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training.
In his filing, Miller makes clear he did not make the first complaint to sheriff’s department higher-ups with regard to safety issues within the sheriff’s department’s aviation division, as the omplaint filed by Sergeant Mike Gilley on April 21, 2021 predated all of Miller’s. It is Miller’s contention that complaints made against law enforcement agencies in general or law enforcement personnel cannot be resolved with a “no finding” or “no findings” pronouncement. Rather, according to Miller, an internal affairs investigation should reach a determination of, variously, either sustained, not sustained, unfounded, exonerated or frivolous.
By not adjudicating Gilley’s complaint and providing no notice of disposition with regard to it as well as by making no determination with regard to his complaint, Miller asserted in his lawsuit, Sheriffs McMahon and Dicus and their command staffs shirked their duty to get to the bottom of credible accusations of misfeasance on the part of members of the sheriff’s department.
“Sheriff McMahon, Sheriff Dicus and the sheriff’s department breached their nondiscretionary, ministerial and mandatory duty to conduct an investigation sufficient to determine whether misconduct allegations should be sustained, not sustained, unfounded, exonerated, or frivolous in response to an April 20, 2021 complaint involving the sheriff’s department aviation unit,” the lawsuit states. The sheriff’s department similarly breached its duty when it failed to make a sustained, not sustained, unfounded, exonerated, or frivolous finding with regard to Miller’s July 22, 2021 complaint, according to the suit. Furthermore, the county’s human resources department and the office of compliance and ethics and Sheriff Dicus breached their duty when they failed to conduct investigations adequate to reach an accurate conclusion with regard to Miller’s December 16, 2021, February 15, 2022, and July 18, 2022, complaints regarding the sheriff’s department aviation unit. Futhermore, according to Miller, the auditor-controller’s office, its fraud, waste and abuse hotline employees and Sheriff Dicus breached their duty to conduct investigations sufficient to determine the validity of misconduct allegations regarding the sheriff’s department aviation unit contained in Miller’s February 15, 2022 and July 18, 2022 complaints. The suit also alleges San Bernardino County and the board of supervisors breached their duty to conduct adequate investigations into the matters outlined in Miller’s March 30, 2023 complaint.
The county, the board of supervisors, the auditor-controller, the county department of human resources and the sheriff’s department all undermined the California Public Records Act and the San Bernardino County’s Sunshine Ordinance by denying access to records that are subject to production in response to California Public Records Act requests when Miller filed such requests relating to the investigations touching on the sheriff’s department’s aviation unit, according to the suit.
“The Petitioner seeks a writ of mandamus requiring San Bernardino County and the board of supervisors to complete an investigation of the March 30, 2023 complaint allegations in full and complete compliance with Penal Code section 832.5 and sheriffs department procedures adopted and published pursuant to Penal Code section 832.5(a)(1),” the lawsuit states.
Miller’s suit contains 19 causes of action and runs to 137 pages.
Miller is also representing Gilley in a lawsuit he filed against San Bernardino County, the board of supervisors, the sheriff’s department, the auditor-controller’s office, Dicus, Auditor/Controller/Treasurer/Tax Collector Ensen Mason and former San Bernardino County Chief Executive Officer Leonard Gonzalez.
In his lawsuit, Dupper is represented by Oshea Orchid and Rahul Sethi of the Val Verde-based Sethi Orchid Miner LLP law firm.
Dupper’s suit alleges that despite being eligible for promotion to captain for six years, achieving consistently high-scores in the objective evaluations of his suitability for advancement to the rank of captain and the endorsements of many or most of the officers at command levels in the department, he has been passed over for promotion because, according to Orchid and Sethi, he “reported violations of the law.”
Orchid, in taking Dicus’s deposition in preparation for going to trial in Dupper’s case, obtained what is perhaps the most succinct response to the issues brought forth by Dupper, Gilley and Miller. He and his department are, Dicus fully believes, dedicated to upholding the law and protecting the citizens of San Bernardino County from those who would prey upon them. As such, he and the sheriffs who have served San Bernardino County before him have recruited talented and dedicated law enforcement professionals into the department, he believes, and he is empowered and is at liberty to elevate and promote those who in his judgment will best carry out their assignments in the ways that are consistent with his vision for the department and the values he personally embodies, which is his right as the elected sheriff of San Bernardino County. It is his choice to elevate those who are doers who get with the program and execute well and without reservation the orders they are given, and are willing to set aside any reservations they have, if indeed they have them, in order to be valued members of the team. He is not obliged, Dicus believes, to put up with naysayers who are unwilling or unable to get along with the other members of the team or who can’t follow the lead of those who have risen to positions of authority within its command structure.
Dicus, to whom was passed the torch once gripped by Frank Bland three and four generations ago and held by a succession of five dedicated lawmen thereafter, has now become the embodiment of the law, at least within the expansive confines of San Bernardino County, and, as such, need not put up with those who question the application of authority, most particularly his own.