By Mark Gutglueck
The trial of San Bernardino County City Councilwoman Treasure Ortiz began in earnest on Monday morning and ran into immediately intractable complication as the prosecution’s case from the outset has been reliant on evidence implicating a law enforcement officer the district attorney’s office deliberately excised from the underlying case.
The rulings by the judge overseeing the case accommodating the prosecution’s effort to keep the action of the law enforcement officer in question 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 became so awkward and disjointed by judge-attorney sidebar interruptions that jury distraction had become a major concern of the judge.
By late Thursday afternoon, 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 and who had not completed her testimony, former San Bernardino City Councilwoman Kimberly Calvin, coming back into the courtroom, Department S-18, located on the sixth floor of the 11-story San Bernardino Justice Center to conclude her 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 was one originally angled at former San Bernardino Police Department Detective Steve Desrochers rather than Ortiz, who was considered a reporting witness in the matter at the outset, 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 use of police department facilities and assets made audio recordings of her conversations with San Bernardino Police Chief Darren Goodman and San Bernardino Police Sergeant Jose Loera, the president of the San Bernardino Police Officers Association, without first obtaining their permission to do so, a violation of Penal Code Section ?????. The district attorney’s office now maintains that Ortiz victimized Goodman and Loera. 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 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.
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 Desrochers, who was at that point retired from the department. In stead, 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 run off 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 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 Deaprtment 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,
Goodman indicated his belief that, measured by both Desrochers’ intent and what the information he obtained was used for, the offense the former Police Officers Association president had engaged in constituted a serious offense.
“It’s a minor crime to just run someone you 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. “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, capturing 3,929 votes or 55.78 percent to Penman’s 3,115 votes or 44.22 percent.
The following month, with the installation of the three new members of the council, Ortiz among them, Mayor Tran was hoping to form a consensus on the council that would allow her to log more achievements in the second two years of her first mayoral term that would serve to convince the city’s voters to grant her a second term. Initially, there was not just a show of but actual bonhomie on the council dais that created the perception that Tran’s hoped-for formula of granting each of the council members an opportunity to bring back to their districts go-ahead on projects or programs to benefit their constituents while creating an atmosphere of cooperation that would facilitate her achieving broader objectives for the city as a whole.
At the public level, it is unknown whether Ortiz in closed-session discussions sought to convince her colleagues to in some fashion address the police department’s interference in the Seventh Ward election or if in making such a request she dwelt on the police department’s opposition to some of their electoral efforts, including bankrolling and orchestrating campaigns against Shorett and Ibarra, which likewise involved some underhanded tactics.
By March, 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 the city, the police department and the police union along with several named individuals, alleging members of the police department 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.
In those opening remarks, 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 toook 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 shoprestaurant 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 exhanges 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 Beranrdino 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.
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 toook 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 shoprestaurant 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 exhanges 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 Beranrdino 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.
DiCesare had the court bailiff distribute transcripts of the recording Ortiz had made of the August 29, 2024 conversation among Goodman, Ortiz and Beard, whereupon he played the recording in the courtroom.
Thereafter, the court was in recess until the following morning.
With the resumption of DiCesare’s direct examination of Goodman on Tuesday, there was another seemingly minor manifestation of the complication besetting the trial as a consequence of the limitation on the testimony relating to the context within which the alleged crimes occurred when the DiCesare was compelled to ask about the investigation into Desrochers and its outcome, which was aimed at both discrediting Ortiz by undercutting the basis for her recording of Goodman and Loera and establishing, from the prosecution’s perspective, that there were no loose ends remaining from the underlying case.
Goodman’s testimony was that the investigation into Desrochers’ activity had not been completed or even initiated in earnest at the time of Ortiz’s meeting with Loera and himself in August of 2024, which clashed somewhat with the statements Goodman and Loera made on the August 29, 2024 and the August 15, 2024 recordings. Goodman testified that upon the conclusion of the investigation, which was undertaken and completed by Detective Myra Doner, there had been no prosecution and no internal discipline was meted out.
DiCesare also asked whether he and Loera had filed lawsuits of their own against the City of San Bernardino. Goodman acknowledged they both had and that his was based on the mistreatment he had received at the hands of Ortiz, a high-ranking city official.
In his cross-examination of Goodman, much of Schlueter’s focus was on the August 29, 2024 meeting involving the police chief, his client and Beard, but he encountered extremely rough sledding as he sought to give the jurors an understanding of the issues that were being discussed during that meeting, as DiCesare peppered Judge Rodriguez with constant objections with regard to the area Schlueter was getting into or approaching with his questions. While DiCesare’s objections were made with the general intent of keeping the subject of Desrochers’ accessing of the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System and the use of the data extrapolated from the system against Ortiz in her 2024 city council campaign and Judge Rodriquez sustained the lion’s share of those objections, Schlueter remained persistent in seeking to elicit from the police chief what his exchanges with the defendant, which had begun in 2023 and consisted of phone and text messages in addition to the August 29, 2024 meeting, entailed. Schlueter, often pausing for several seconds or as long as a half minute or more when a question he asked was disallowed, took different angles in his approach to the subject or substituted a seemingly unrelated question to then make a circuitous return to the issue, sometimes succeeding and other times encountering further objections.
In a minority of cases which yet proved to be significant, Judge Rodriguez was inconsistent with regard to what she deemed irrelevant or beyond the scope of permissible inquiry. Thus, Schlueter succeeded in extracting from Goodman that when he met Ortiz in person at a restaurant for the first time in November 2023, “It’s possible” the use of the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System by members of his department for political purposes had been discussed and that the investigation of the misuse of CLETS by members of the San Bernardino Police Department was assigned to Detective Myra Donner as of, or after, August 2024.
Goodman said he had not socialized with Ortiz before or after the meetings at issue in her prosecution. When Schlueter attempted to delve into how Goodman, when Ortiz had initially sought to have him explore the reports she had about members’ of the department misusing the data bases available to the department put her off and “told her that you could only look back three years into CLETS,” DiCesare objected to the question on the grounds of its relevance and Judge Rodriquez sustained the objection. Schlueter’s question as to whether Goodman had attempted to dissuade Ortiz from pushing for an investigation of the crossover between police department personnel’s access to privileged information available to law enforcement agencies and their political activity, Judge Rodriquez, in reaction to DiCesare’s objection, shut off that avenue of inquiry. Schlueter double-clutched and then transitioned into questions about whether Beard also expressed concern about improper political activity by members of the department and had been pressuring Goodman and the police department’s command echelon to investigate those reports and whether Beard had threatened to have the sheriff’s department launch an investigation into the matter. DiCesare’s objection and Judge Rodriguez’s ruling sustaining it, did not dead-end the subject for Schlueter, who did not give up on seeking to illustrate to the jury the extraordinary sensitivity the department’s higher ups, culminating in Goodman as police chief, had with regard to the CLETS access issue. The defense attorney did this by directly asking what the police chief what he had told Loera. When that line of questioning provoked objections that were sustained, Schlueter asked Goodman if as police chief he had supervisorial authority over the police union. Goodman responded that the police union existed as an independent entity, Schlueter used that as the basis for suggesting that Loera had been designated to speak with Ortiz on August 15, 2024 to have him speak as a representative of the union and in his own words lay responsibility for the misuse of the CLETS data at the feet of Desrochers and the past union leadership and distance the current union leadership, the department and the department’s current hierarchy, including Goodman, from what had happened. That litany of questions was met with a corresponding litany of objections which were sustained.
Schlueter brought up that at his meeting with Ortiz and Beard, he had provided them with a print-out of the audit of the running of Ortiz’s name through CLETS, an extraordinary gesture, given the confidentiality of the system.
DiCesare’s sustained objections succeeded in keeping Schlueter from getting from Goodman what the police chief’s objective was in having Loera meet with Ortiz. Schlueter then asked whether Loera’s meeting with Ortiz had resolved the question of whether the department had been officially involved in the misuse of the law enforcement data bases. Questions posed to Goodman about what his communication with Loera after the meeting with Ortiz extended to and if that communication indicated the problems relating to Ortiz’s knowledge about the misuse of CLETS had been diffused and whether Loera’s report relating to Ortiz having been placated by the meeting comported with text messages and communications the chief had with Ortiz were not answered due to sustained objection.
When Schlueter asked Goodman if he had asked Dr. Ortiz what occurred during the meeting with Loera, DiCesare’s objection was overruled.
“I may have,” Goodman responded.
When Schlueter asked Goodman if Ortiz had responded that Loera had apologized for the department’s misuse of the law enforcement data bank against her, DiCesera objected and Judge Rodriquez sustained it.
“What was purpose, then, of you meeting with Dr. Ortiz?” Schlueter asked.
“The purpose of my meeting on August 29 was to show her the single entry on the audit I had received from the DOJ [Department of Justice],” Goodman said. “What I had at the time didn’t reflect the entry I had in August.” Goodman’s reference to August meant earlier that month and the prior month, July 2024, at which time Ortiz had been pestering him about her contention that someone in the department had used one of the law enforcement data bases available to it to obtain information about her that had surfaced in Penman’s electioneering material or independent expenditure committee mailings attacking her. On at least one occasion in July 2024 and as late as August 7, 2024, Goodman had told there was no documentation to establish that was the case. On August 8, 2024, however, Goodman contacted Ortiz, verbally informing her of an audit by the California Department of Justice that he had requested which confirmed her name was accessed.
Schlueter asked Goodman about the circumstances that led to the August 29, 2015 meeting.
Picking up on Goodman’s previous statement that the meeting was called for him to show Ortiz the read-out showing that she had been run through CLETS, Schlueter said, “To be fair this was about a politically sensitive matter that was transpiring.” He then asked, “Is that a fair statement?”
“No,” Goodman replied.
“There was an accusation of impropriety leveled at one officer or at least one office, correct?” Schlueter asked.
“That’s correct,” Goodman said.
“It’s fair to say you would not want to be misquoted?” Schlueter asked.
DiCesare objected and Judge Rodriguez sustained the objection.
Schlueter then sought to obtain from Goodman an acknowledgment that audio-recording and video-recording is utilized by law enforcement personnel and agencies in gathering evidence and to ensure the integrity of that evidenc.
“One of the key tools officers have are audio recorders to record conversations?” Schlueter asked.
“Objection, relavance,” DiCesare said.
Sustained,” said Judge Rodriguez.
Schlueter sought to explore whether Goodman had provided Ortiz with the audit print-out, whether he intended to allow her to keep it and whether she took it from the meeting without his permission. DiCesare objected to the question, but Judge Rodriguez overruled the objection.
“I did not give it to her,” Goodman said, adding he had displayed to her and Beard what was otherwise considered to be a confidential and sensitive document “to show her I was being honest and forthright. There was no intention for her to take it. This was in a secure area,” he said, meaning the locked conference room on the second floor of police headquarters where the meeting was taking place.
Schlueter explored with Goodman the placement and locations of the cellphones of all three participants in the August 29, 2024 meeting.
Schlueter in his questioning, which provoked objections from DiCesera, suggested that Goodman recently, within the last three months, told investigators with the district attorney’s office something different with regard to the positioning of Ortiz’s phone on the conference table than what he told those investigators in August 2025. When Goodman responded, DiCesera moved to have his response stricken from the court record.
“At any time during the August 2025 interview, did you describe where Dr. Ortiz’s phone was?”
Schlueter asked.
“I believe I did,” said Goodman.
“So, when did she place the phone on the table?” Schlueter asked.
“I think we all put our phones on the table when we sat down,” Goodman said. “If your’re asking me the exact time, I don’t know what time it happened.”
Schlueter pressed Goodman on whether Ortiz had place her phone face down.
“I think her phone was sitting right in front of her,” Goodman said.
Goodman at one point asserted that Ortiz was five feet from him and that Beard was between him and Ortiz.
“Cell phones are also recording devices,” Schlueter said. “You were certainly aware that they can be used as recording devices?”
“Yes,” Goodman said.
After reiterating that the cellphones of all three participants in the conversation had their cellphones on the table, Schlueter referenced Goodman’s testimony under direct examination by DiCesare that he did not want the August 29, 2024 conversation to be recorded.
“How does that fit in with being transparent?” Schlueter asked.
DiCesare objected to the question on relevancy grounds, to which Judge Rodriguez responded, Sustained, argumentative, as well.”
Schlueter redoubled his efforts.
“One of the issues, something you wanted to convey, certainly, to Dr. Ortiz was the police department wanted to be transparent about any wrongdoing, correct?”
“Correct,” Goodman said.
“How does not wanting something recorded further the appearance of the department being transparent?” Schlueter asked.
“Objection, argumentative,” DiCesare interjected.
“Sustained,” said Judge Rodriguez.
“You’ve been named in a lawsuit filed by Dr Ortiz,” Schlueter said. “Did you see any benefits to her that she had this recording of you?” Schlueter asked.
“Objection,” DiCesare said.
“Sustained,” ruled Judge Rodriguez.
“That lawsuit deals with the same issues you discussed with her on August 29?” Schlueter asked.
When no objection was raised, Goodman responded, “Yes.”
“You are currently denying that Detective Desrochers unlawfully used the CLET System,” Schlueter stated. “Is that correct?”
No objection followed.
“My position is when we discovered this from Ms. Ortiz, we only had her information and the results of the audit.”
“Did Detective Desrochers do anything wrong?” Schlueter asked.
“He absolutely did not,” Goodman responded.
Schlueter then sought to contrast Goodman’s statement with what he had been heard saying on the recording of the August 29, 2024 conversation.
“During your conversation with Dr. Ortiz, you spoke about prosecuting Detective Desrochers even though he was retired…” Schlueter began.
“Objection, relevance,” DiCesare expostulated.
“Sustained,” said Judge Rodriguez.
“Would it be fair to say you made statements on August 29, regardless of what you [now believe occurred] that would lead Ms. Ortiz to believe Detective Desrochers had…” Schlueter began.
“Objection, court order,” DiCesare spoke over him.
Judge Rodriguez sustained the objection.
At that point, Schlueter went for broke, trying to place before the jury the rationale for the action Ortiz took for which she is now criminally charged, cutting to the very heart of why she made the recordings – to be able to demonstrate that the police department and its members would say one thing and later deny saying it.
Schlueter, accepting arguendo the premise that the department’s internal investigation into Desrochers had not begun until after Goodman’s August 29, 2024 meeting with Ortiz and Beard, asked Goodman if he had ever informed Ortiz that the department concluded Desrochers had done nothing unlawful.
That question fetched an objection, which was sustained.
Schlueter asked, “Did you ever contact her to make sure that Dr. Ortiz didn’t misunderstand that conversation?”
Judge Reodriguez sustained the objection.
“If i understand this correctly,” Schlueter said, “you wanted to be the person to arrest Dr. Ortiz, correct”
“Yes,” said Goodman.
“Put handcuffs on her?”
“Yes.”
“Because she recorded you?”
“Yes.”
“You encourage all of your officers to record contacts with people?” Schlueter asked.
“Yes,” said Goodman.
Schlueter asked Goodman why.
“We do that because it’s lawful,” Goodman said, noting that law enforcement officers are empowered under California Penal Code Section 633 to use recording devices in the everyday comportment of their duty.
“The reason is because they want to memorialize what occurred, right?” Schlueter asked.
“Yes,” said Goodman.
Schlueter noted that the converse does not apply and it is unlawful for civilians or regular citizens to surreptitiously record police officers without their permission.
“In this case you did not expect Dr. Ortiz to do the same?”
“No,” Goodman said.
“You did not expect her to be able to prove what was said in that conversation?” Schlueter half-stated, half-asked.
“I don’t expect to be recorded in a private conversation in a private office,” Goodman said. “It is not lawful for someone to surreptitiously record you without your permission.”
“You were there as police chief,” Schlueter stated.
“Are you asking if I alright with being recorded?” Goodman asked.
“Usually you do not enter into a discussion with individuals about police misconduct,” Schlueter stated, before inquiring to make sure that Goodman understood Ortiz was reporting police misconduct.
“We had not started the investigation,” Goodman insisted. “I had merely done an audit of our CLET System.
“At any point in that conversation, did you make it clear that an investigation had not begun and your findings were just preliminary?” Schlueter asked.
Goodman gave indication that the law enforcement data bases had a record of what terminal within the department had been used to make the access to them on any particular occasion and that the department had the means to determine who had used a particular terminal. He said it was pretty clear in August 2024 that an investigation had to take place.
Schlueter asked Goodman if in his conversation with Ortiz he had “named the detective you suspected of running CLETS?” DiCesare objected and the judge sustained the objection.
Schlueter dispensed with getting Goodman to acknowledge that during the August 29, 2024 conversation he had identified Desrochers as the primary suspect in the unauthorized use of CLETS and asked, “If this was preliminary on your part, why would you name the officer?”
“The officer was named because she provided me with that,” Goodman said. Goodman explained that the department’s inquiry into the accessing of the data base for information on Ortiz came back negative but that after she re-approached him about the matter. “She knew someone must have ran [sic] it,” Goodman said. “I was adamant, because we went back over two years. Then she told me who it was. It was a detective. I I told her, ‘why didn’t you tell me who did it?’ Then, she went on and told me this person, this officer did it for political purposes. That absolutely gave me the ability to focus on an individual.”
When was that conversation when she named the individual?” Schlueter asked.
“That conversation happened in late July or early August of 2024,” Goodman said.
Having made a breakthrough in illustrating how Ortiz had been met with denial after denial of department wrongdoing over a roughly nine-month period before finding someone in the department who confirmed what she suspected or knew all along, Schlueter sought to escalate that into an illustration of why making a reliable record of what members of the department were telling her was imperative. That tack, however, was shut down by DiCesare and Judge Rodriguez.
“The second you knew that Ortiz was subjected to a CLETS run…” Schlueter began.
“Objection,” DiCesare said.
“Sustained,” ruled Judge Rodriguez.
“You had the option of finding out if she had been the object of [a law enforcement data base inquiry] when she she reported that to you in November 2023, correct?” Schlueter asked Goodman.
Judge Rodriguez sustained DiCesare’s objection to the question.
Schlueter than referenced what Goodman had said at the August 29 meeting and which was caught on the recording say he was “going to pursue criminal charges on Desrochers.”
DiCesare objected to the question and Judge Rodriguez sustained it.
Goodman was thereafter subjected to a short round of re-examination by DiCesare, who made an effort to disabuse the jury of some of the notions Schlueter had endeavored to inculcate in the jury, followed by a briefer cross-examination by Schlueter. Goodman was excused from the witness stand, subject to recall by either side. Judge Rodriguez, however, made clear later in statements outside the presence of the jury that with Goodman having been diverted from his daily function as police chief over the course of more than a day, she would not sustain a motion for him to be recalled as a witness without a substantial showing of proof.
At that point, the trial had devolved into what over the next two days would come to resemble an absurdist ballet in which most of the performers – DiCesare and the witnesses for the prosecution – danced around the primary topic that had been the subject at hand when Ortiz met with the police chief and police union president, while Schluetter sometimes met and sometimes did not meet Judge Rodriguez’s expectations and recurrent admonitions not to stray into the area circumscribed by the court as forbidden territory.
While trials typically feature occasional objections by lawyers from either side followed by a slight pause during which the judge makes a determination to overrule or sustain it, which in turn disturbs the organic rhythm of the question and answer process, those interruptions are relatively infrequent and generally do not break the focus of the jury on the issues at hand. In the Ortiz case, however, beginning with the defenses opening statement and during the defense’s cross examination of the prosecution witnesses, the constant imposition of objections, disrupting the flow of speech in Schlueter’s opening statement or in the case of his questioning of the witnesses, the delay in or outright nullification of a response in the aftermath of the frequently sustained objections began to have a telling effect on the jurors, whose faces by mid-afternoon Tuesday were registering obvious frustration.
All three of the prosecution witnesses – Goodman, who testified Monday and Tuesday, Loera, whose testimony took place on Tuesday and Wednesday and District Attorney Office Investigator Darnel McDermott, who testified on Thursday – relatively quickly adapted to the flow of interruptions during Schlueter’s questioning by engaging in what came across as an unnatural pause after most of his questions to ensure that DiCesare had an opportunity to object and so as to not utter a response that DiCesare would have to then request Judge Rodriquez to strike from the record.
Another effect from the constant objections, both sustained and overruled, together with the constant stops and starts as the trial progressed was a surfeit of questions, which even though suspended by a sustained objection and therefore left unanswered, create impressions and suggestions that persist with at least some jurors, who typically over the course of a trial cannot catalog with absolute accuracy which objections were sustained and which were not.
Word throughout the courthouse and nine-to-16-square-block area surrounding it extending to San Bernardino County’s and the City of San Bernardino’s governmental centers was that the prosecution of Ortiz, who over the last eight years has surfaced as a primary critic of and dissenter from the municipal, county, governmental and business establishments and who has vied for Third District San Bernardino County supervisor, mayor of San Bernardino and two positions, one successfully, on the San Bernardino City Council, has been given an extremely high priority by District Attorney Jason Anderson, who is intent on maintaining reciprocal support between his office, all other law enforcement agencies, municipalities and governmental entities in the county. The assigning of DiCesare, whose normal assignments with the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office going back a decade-and-a-half consist primarily if not exclusively of prosecuting murder, attempted murder, extortion, gang violence and other serious felony cases, to prosecute two misdemeanor charges is an indication of the intensity with which obtaining a conviction against Ortiz is being pursued. That carried over into the manner in which the case was maneuvered into the courtroom of Judge Rodriguez, who had been a leading prosecutor with the district attorney’s office and was elected to the bench in June 2022 with virtually universal law enforcement support. Rodriquez acceded to virtually every motion in limine brought by the prosecution prior to trial, limiting what evidence is to be deemed admissible and what evidence is to be excluded as well as what topics the attorneys could explore in questioning witnesses and eliciting their testimony. These limitations serve as the parameters of the trial itself. Rodriguez’s rulings adhere to the principle that the substance of the conversations that Ortiz had with the two individuals she is alleged to have victimized, Goodman and Loera, are immaterial and irrelevant to whether she violated Penal Code Section 632 by recording those conversations without Goodman’s or Loera’s consent. The effect of those rulings matched the objective, shared by District Attorney Anderson, the City of San Bernardino, the San Bernardino Police Department, members of both the San Bernardino Police Department and the San Bernardino Police Association, the balance of the San Bernardino City Council other than Ortiz and the San Bernardino Mayor, not to mention Goodman and Loera, of preventing the details of the underlying criminal investigation pertaining to the unauthorized use of the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, from being given widespread public exhibition. The in limine motions Judge Rodriguez’s rulings granted were further intended to restrict the contextualization with regard to Ortiz’s actions in having recorded her conversations with Goodman and Loera, intensifying the focus on the consideration that she had made the recordings. Minus Ortiz’s ability to demonstrate that Goodman and Loera were explicitly informed that she was recording them, her conviction on the Penal Code Section 632 violations was virtually assured, Anderson and DiCesare calculated.
As the trial has progressed, however, Rodriguez’s reduction of the issue to be decided by the jury to one in which they are to be kept more or less in the dark about what Goodman and Loera were discussing with the Ortiz so they can simply make a call as to whether Ortiz engaged in an act of electronic eavesdropping, pure and simple, has resulted in a disjointed narrative that while highly challenging to the defense has presented problems for DiChesare as well. So unnatural and uncommon are the rules of litigation set up for this particular trial that on occasion, most particularly when he was questioning Goodman or Loera, DiCesare caught himself out in the midst of formulating a question which referenced the details it was the goal of everyone on his side of the equation – the district attorney’s office, the City of San Bernardino, the police department and most importantly, Goodman, Loera and Desrochers – to keep out of the public record. In some cases, DiCesare did not catch himself in time and put on the record a question or statement that provided a detailed glimpse of the issues that Ortiz had been seeking to trace out or have the police department trace out for her when she dialogued with Goodman and Loera.
In the later stages of Tuesday afternoon, Loera was put on the witness stand and DiCesare began his direct examination of the sergeant and union president.
The prosecutor led Loera through a description of what led up to his one-hour-and-19-minute meeting with Ortiz and Calvin at the DJ Coffee Shop on August 15, 2024, the general ambiance of the premises and the overall circumstances.
DiCesare elicited Loera’s testimony that Ortiz had neither informed him that she was recording the conversation nor obtained his consent for her to do so.
Tuesday’s testimony concluded around 4 p.m.
Wednesday morning, Loera returned to the witness stand.
DiCesare asked Loera’s about the claim he had filed against the City of San Bernardino in which he alleged that Ortiz’s actions and statements about him were defamatory and had created a hostile work environment. Loera acknowledged having filed the claim but in response to DiCesare said it had no impact on his testimony.
Under cross-examination by Schlueter, Loera said that in his capacity as a police sergeant and as union president he attended a lot of city events, including city council meetings, where Ortiz was also in attendance.
Schlueter asked Loera if he knew about the allegations Ortiz had been making with regard to the misuse of the law enforcement data bases before meeting with Ortiz. Loera said he had learned about the matter from Goodman on August 14, 2024, the day before his meeting with Ortiz.
Schlueter obtained from Loera his acknowledgment that as the union president, he was not answerable to Goodman as the chief of police, and that Goodman is not a member of the police officers’ union.
Schlueter’s questions to Loera about whether the police department’s administration was investigating or taking corrective action against one of his union’s members were not met with answers when DiCesare objected to them and Judge Rodriguez sustained the objections.
Schlueter attempted but did not establish in questioning Loera that he had been complying with the police chief’s order or directive to meet with Ortiz.
Loera did acknowledge that “The chief set up that meeting for me.”
Judge Rodriguez overruled DiCesare’s objection to Schlueter’s inquiry as to why he had met with Ortiz and what his goal or intent in doing so was.
“I am the head of my department’s officers’ association,” Loera said. “My job at the present is to protect the reputation of my organization.”
“And did you do that during your conversation?” Schlueter asked.
Schlueter’s questions that followed in which he sought to determine if Loera had made a choice to speak frankly about Desrochers in order to preserve the good name of his union, the department and its officers were rendered unanswered by sustained objections.
Schlueter sought to lure Loera, who had worked in undercover roles as an officer, into agreeing that recording statements is a productive means of collecting evidence but did not get far with that line of questioning.
“You know how to collect evidence?” Schlueter asked.
“Yes,” said Loera.
“You know how important it is to collect evidence?” Schlueter asked.
“Yes,” Loera responded. “It is very important.”
“She was collecting evidence about what could have been police misconduct,” Schlueter asked.
DiCesare’s objection was sustained.
“Did you want to prevent Ms. Ortiz from collecting evidence?” Schlueter asked.
DiCesare’s objection was sustained.
Did you have a motive not to allow her to record the conversation?” Schlueter asked.
“Objection,” DiCesare bellowed.
“Sustained,” said Judge Rodriguez.
“There was basically a single subject that was to be discussed between you and Ms. Ortiz?” Schlueter asked.
“Yes,” said Loera.
“Can you tell us what that subject was?” Schlueter asked.
“It was a discussion of the involvement of one of my former board members in an unlawful criminal act,” Loera said.
“The POA [the San Bernardino Police Officers Association] had endorsed her opposition?” Schlueter asked.
DiCesare’s objection to the question was sustained.
“You wanted to be transparent with Dr. Ortiz?” Schlueter asked.
“Yes,” said Loera.
“But you did not want her to record the conversation?” Schlueter asked.
“Yes,” Loera said.
“Did you disclose that to Dr Ortiz?” Schlueter asked.
“I did not,” Loera said.
“Did you ask her at any time if you were being recorded?” Schlueter asked.
“Objection,” DiCesare said.
“Overruled,” said Judge Rodriguez.
“I did not,” Loera responded.
“You didn’t ell Ms. Ortiz that Ms. Calvin could not listen in?” Schlueter asked.
“I did not,” said Loera.
“You were already seated when Ms. Calvin arrived?” Schlueter asked.
“Correct,” said Loera.
Schlueter thereafter sought to explore with Loera the setting within the confines of the table where Loera, Ortiz and Calvin were seated and the section of the coffee shop they were in. Schlueter also pressed Loera on what he he done to refresh his memory of the event that took place more than two years previously, whether he had listened to the recording and had read the report by the district attorney’s office investigators relating to the charges filed against Ortiz. Schlueter explored with Loera his recollection of Ortiz had placed the phone used to record their conversation on the table between them. “She did not tell you orally that she was recording?” Schlueter asked.
“Correct,” said Loera.
Schlueter then explored with Loera his statement to district attorney’s office investigators McDermott and Chavez made in the summer of 2025 about telling the hostess at the coffee shop “I want to go sit in a corner pretty much away from everybody else” where he could have some degree of isolation for a private conversation. Loera, somewhat cagily, said he did not understand the question.
Schlueter then sought to play the recording of the August 15, 2024 encounter between Ortiz and Loera, starting from their meeting in the parking lot and moving through until they were seated at the table and after Calvin arrived.
In doing so, Schlueter sought to use an equalizer that would confine what was audible to the 70-to-290 megahertz range, within which male and female human voices normally fall, thus eliminating most of the sound clutter other than the conversation involving Loera, Ortiz and Calvin. In playing the recording on his laptop and amplifying it through the microphones on the attorneys’ station and the courtroom’s sound system, however, the recording sounded decidedly different from the recording that had been played on Monday, which caused Judge Rodriguez to call for the audio to be brought to a halt. DiCesera made an objection to the use of the equalizer. There followed some exchange between the attorneys and the judge with regard to the unsuitability of the recording as it had been played through the equalizer, with a mild hint that Judge Rodriguez had the perception that Schlueter had tried to pull a fast one.
Schlueter dropped using what he had hoped would be a clarified version of the recording, settling on using the recording that had been submitted as a prosecution exhibit. Schlueter’s intent had been to dampen the extraneous noise in the seconds that followed Ortiz’s statement, which could be heard clearly, that being, “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.”
Less audible and obscured by the ambient sound is Loera saying, “I’m in.”
This buttresses Schlueter’s contention that Ortiz informed Loera of she was recording the conversation and obtained his consent to do so.
In their testimony, both Police Chief Goodman and Sergeant Loera stated that the audio tape of the meetings presented as exhibits by the prosecution and played in court on Monday and Tuesday were fair and accurate representations of what was said by the parties present at the meetings on August 15, 2024 and August 29, 2024.
Schlueter sought to explore with the court whether it would permit the preparation of a refined or enhanced recording of the August 15, 2024 meeting that would allow those listening to it to discern statements by Loera, Ortiz or Calvin that are difficult to make out on the exhibit put forth by the prosecution.
“Audios can be cleaned to get rid of background noise,” Schlueter told the court. When DiCesare objected to the concept of substituting another recording of the August 15, 2024 meeting for the one already deemed an exhibit and heard by the jury or augmenting that recording with an enhanced version, Judge Rodriguez sternly responded, “Move on.”
Later in the afternoon, at 2:46 p.m., while the jury was on a break and not present in the courtroom, Judge Rodriguez, from her position on the bench, in an open exchange with the lawyers gave discourse to the tension and mounting frustration that had been building over Schlueter’s persistence in trying to widen the evidence and testimony being presented to the jury.
“I have made rulings and you are not abiding by them,” Rodriguez said, her penetrating gaze focused directly at Schlueter. “I do not have to allow you to  ask questions that are beyond the ruling of this court.” Judge Rodriguez said that Schlueter had evinced a “repeated pattern” of straying into topics deemed off limits for litigation in the case. Schlueter took the upbraiding the judge was giving him as an opportunity to push again for “a better copy” of the audio recording of the August 15 meeting.
“That topic is closed to all discussion,” Judge Rodriguez’s voice fairly boomed. “That is not coming into evidence.”
While Rodriguez came across as focused upon what she saw as Schlueter’s attempt to expose and re-expose the jurors to the issues being discussed in Ortiz’s conversations with Goodman and Loera,   Schlueter’s intent was to make certain that the members of the jury had an opportunity to hear what he contends was Loera’s reaction to Ortiz’s utterance –  “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” – as she displayed the face of her phone with the recording app engaged.
Judge Rodriguez was dismissive of Schlueter’s suggestion that the recording that was marked as an exhibit, logged in as evidence and provided to the jury was not up to the task of demonstrating Ortiz’s innocence if it indeed constitutes such proof.
“The copy they [i.e., the district attorney’s office received] received came from your client,” Judge Rodriguez said.
Schlueter was not just creating a spectacle that led to nowhere during testimony before the jury, Judge Rodriguez said, but was taking up the court’s and the prosecutor’s time in what she characterized as unnecessary discussions outside the presence of the jury.
“We spent ad nauseum on particular topics, 35 minutes, because you wanted to be heard on the same issues we already discussed,” Judge Rodriguez said. “I ruled on and sustained four objections [on that issue when it was raised before the jury]. In judge’s chambers I had to remind you you are violating court orders. I have allowed you more  than the opportunity to be heard. We had days of in limine motions where I allowed you to be heard.”
She said that Schlueter was leading the witnesses into discussion of issues and facts that were “not relevant. The court has made rulings and you have violated them. If I have to start admonishing you before the jury, I will. You can disagree with me as much as you like but that does not give the right as an officer of the court to violated the rulings that I have made.”
After the jury returned and Loera was once again on the witness stand, Schlueter questioned the union president with regard to Ortiz’s verbalization that could be clearly heard on the recording – “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.”
Loera said Ortiz was not holding her phone when she said that. According to Loera, Ortiz put her phone down shortly after or immediately upon their having seated themselves. He indicated the phone was “to her right but it wasn’t between us.” Loera said he had placed his phone to his right side.
“You remember this from two years ago?” Schlueter asked.
“I do,” Loera responded.
Noting that some highly controversial and potentially damaging issues had been discussed during the meeting Loera had with Ortiz and Calvin, Schlueter asked him, “Did you do anything to protect yourself and the POA from being misquoted?”
“I should have brought my own recorder,” Loera quipped.
Schlueter questioned Loera with regard to those who were dining in DJ Coffee shop proximate to him, Ortiz and Calvin and might have overheard or been able to overhear parts of their conversation. Loera acknowledged that the server at the coffee shop came up to their table multiple times.  Schlueter asked Loera if he would know if anyone was listening to him, he said, “Not behind me.”
When Schlueter sought to slip in a question to Loera about his statement made during that conversation that the San Bernardino Police Officers Association and its members were police officers were “paying for the mistakes of our forefathers ” slightly botching it to make a reference to “sins of our forefathers,” it went nowhere. Judge Rodriguez sustained DiCesare’s objection.
Schluter then took up a statement Loera made during DiCheare’s direct examination, in which he dwelled upon how Ortiz’s recording of the conversation without his consent had violated his privacy rights. That call had touched off a brief exchange among Loera, Ortiz and Calvin about raising children. In this way, Loera had suggested, Ortiz’s recording had  intruded into his family life.
“Your daughter called but you did not take the call,” Schlueter said, and Loera acknowledged that he had responded to his daughter by text.
Schlueter asked Loera if at any time during the meeting he told Ortiz or Calvin “you wanted to keep this conversation betwee them and them alone?”
“I did not,” Loera said.
When Schlueter was able to get Loera to admit that “Ms. Calvin is an extremely outspoken individual” and moved beyond that to get him to say that she would be likely to go public with anything he disclosed during the conversation, Judge Rodriquez sustained DiCesare’s objection to that line of inquiry.
Nevertheless, Schlueter did manage to wring from Loera that he at the very least suspected that Ortiz would disclose anything he told her.
“I thought eventually it would get out,” he said.
Loera’s testimony wrapped up late Wednesday afternoon, and he was dismissed as a witness, subject to recall.
Thursday morning, DiCesare called Darnel McDermott, a district attorney’s office investigator who had been assigned with his office colleague, Jorge Chavez, to investigate Ortiz’s allegations that members of the San Bernardino Police Department had used their access to local, state and federal law enforcement data bases for political purposes, to the witness stand.
McDermott disclosed in his testimony that in May 2025 Ortiz emailed a complaint to the district attorney’s office relating to information she had been provided the previous year by Goodman and Loera pertaining to former San Bernardino Police Detective Steven Desrochers having accessed the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, managed by the California Attorney General’s Office which merges information in its possession with that contained in the data bases of the California Department of Motor Vehicles and law enforcement agencies throughout the state, to  obtain information relating to her. By 2019, Ortiz had emerged as one of then-San Bernardino Mayor John Valdivia’s primary political antagonists, when she ran against Juan Figueroa in a special election to fill the city’s Third Ward council post, a position Valdivia had vacated after he was elected mayor in 2018. Valdivia was supported by the San Bernardino Police Officers Association as was Figueroa, who was Valdivia’s choice to succeed him. Over the next two years, Ortiz grew into an even more committed and vituperative Opponent to Valdivia, and she opposed him in the 2022 mayoral contest.
When McDermott and Chavez failed to get any traction or make meaningful progress on the investigation of Desrochers, Ortiz on August 13, 2025 provided the district attorney’s office with a flash drive that contained copies of the recordings she had made of the conversation among her, Loera and Calvin on August 15, 2024 and the conversation she had with Goodman and Beard on August 29, 2024.
McDermott began as a law enforcement officer with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department in 2014, where he served as a deputy until 2022, and hired on as an investigator with the district attorney’s office in 2023. Chavez began with the district attorney’s office as an investigator the same year.
Upon examining the contents of the flash drive and listening to the recordings, McDermott and Chavez heard no overt verbal disclosure by Ortiz that she was recording the conversations and they heard no consent to being recorded given by Goodman, Beard, Loera or Calvin. By August 18, 2025, McDermott’s and Chavez’s investigation had morphed from an investigation into improper use of governmental/law enforcement agency assets, equipment and authority by a law enforcement officer against a civilian/citizen into an investigation of Ortiz having violated California Penal Code Section 632 and victimizing two sworn police officers.
The investigation into Desrochers’ action, which Goodman in August 2024 said he had ordered up at the district attorney’s office, had languished for a full year, and was terminated a month later. Within five days of having received the recordings from Ortiz, which she considered probative of the case against Desrochers but which were perceived differently by those to whom they had been entrusted, the district attorney’s office had identified her as a primary suspect against whom it was ready to move with alacrity. Indeed, the following day, August 19, 2025, McDermott and Chavez interviewed Ortiz. While they did not inform her that she had now become a target of their investigation rather than a witness/victim, they did tell her they were recording their exchange with her. The subject they delved into was the recordings Ortiz made of her exchanges with Goodman and Loera. with both city police officers.
Thursday morning, DiCesare played the interview turned interrogation that McDermott had recorded on August 19, 2025. In that exchange and her responses, Ortiz stated that her meetings with Goodman and Loera had been “on the record,” with everyone knowing that to be the case.
Unbeknownst to Ortiz at the time, McDermott and Chavez were securing statements from Goodman and Loera that they had not known their conversation with Ortiz were being recorded and that Ortiz had not asked them for permission to record their verbal exchanges.
This constituted a prima facie Penal Code Section 632 violation according to the district attorney’s office, which at that point had lost, assuming it had ever had any, enthusiasm for pursuing a criminal case against, Desrochers, a now-retired law enforcement professional. In October 2025, McDermott, Chavez and the district attorney’s office in general officially closed out the investigation of Desrochers’ misuse of the law enforcement data bases, making a conclusion that Ortiz’s accusations in that regard were “unfounded.”
In response to DiCesare’s direct examination, McDermott said he took photos of Ortiz’s cellphone, extending to determining what the screen displaying different apps looked like and what the screen looked like when an app was selected and what the screen looked like when an app was actuated.
Under DiCesare’s guidance, McDermott described photos he had taken of the section of DJ Coffee shop in which Leora, Ortiz and Calvin had met, some of which had electronically inserted measurements to show the width of the aisle and dimensions of the tables. According to McDermott, the depth, i.e., the length of the section of the coffee shop where they met was 16 feet and one inch. The width of the aisle between the tables on either side of the section was 4 feet and 8 inches, McDermott said.
In his cross-examination of McDermott, Schlueter sought from the investigator what he had concentrated on with regard to his client’s recording of the police chief and sergeant, in particular the placement of the three phones on the tables when they met, most particularly Ortiz’s.
Schlueter’s question of McDermott elicited that while he had listened to the entirety of the recording of the conversation among Ortiz, Loera and Calvin before he interviewed Loera, he had not listened to the entirety of the conversation with Goodman before he interviewed the police chief.
Schlueter’s questioning also brought out that while McDermott recorded his single interview with Loera and his first interview with Goodman, when he returned to interview Goodman a second time, in particular about the placement of Ortiz’s phone during their August 29, 2024 meeting, that interview was not recorded.
Schlueter asked McDermott if during his interview with Loera he had asked if the police sergeant where he was looking when Ortiz uttered “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.”
“No,” McDermott said.
“Why not, Schlueter asked.
“I didn’t think of the question at that time,” McDermott responded.
After McDermott stepped down as a witness and some exchanges among the attorney’s with regard to exhibits and evidence, the prosecution rested.
Called by Schlueter as the first defense witness was Scott Beard.