By Mark Gutglueck
Bert Swift, an iconic member of San Bernardino County’s legal community whose ordeal resulted in a giant stride toward independence of the local judiciary, has died.
Swift retired from the bench in 2008, more than a decade after prosecutors tried and failed to bring him to heel by seeking his removal from office so they might then use that as a warning to other judges they felt were not accommodating enough to law enforcement. He continued to serve as a judge sitting on assignment for more than a dozen years after his retirement.
Born in 1940, Swift joined the Navy when he got out of high school, and he managed to land a berth in that service’s prestigious Navy Amphibious Scout and Radar School, becoming one of the first members of the Navy Seals when they became the U.S. navy’s primary special operational force in 1962.
Swift eventually moved into law enforcement after he left the military, going to work for the Palms Springs Police Department. He attended Western States College of Law, passing the bar in June 1977. He did not, as was common with lawyers who had previously worked in law enforcement, become a prosecutor with a district attorney’s office. Rather, he practiced primarily in the area of personal injury law and in criminal defense.
In 1989, he replaced Judge Richard Crouter as the Municipal Court judge in the Joshua Tree Judicial District. Crouter was an unabashedly pro-law enforcement jurist, one who could be counted upon to extend every courtesy and then some to Morongo Valley’s peace officers, those being San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department deputies and detectives, as well as their supervising sergeants, lieutenants captains and deputy chiefs. Crouter was equally proud of his established reputation for never denying a motion made by a member of the prosecutor’s office, of which he had been a member before his elevation to the bench. Crouter was the municipal court judge in Yucca Valley from 1983 until 1989. Shortly after he took on that assignment, a sign had been posted inside the Joshua Tree jail that said, “You’re in Crouter Country now, Boy!” The sign was meant as a warning to inmates that they had little or no prospect of acquittal upon being criminally charged at the Joshua Tree Court and should anticipate the maximum sentence applicable to the crime being alleged upon what was to be an inevitable conviction.
The court system in San Bernardino County, a position in which Judge Swift had come to inhabit, for more than a century was one that was inordinately inhospitable to criminal defendants. As a strict matter of course, those arrested and charged with violating the law in San Bernardino County were traditionally presumed guilty and it was incumbent upon them to prove their innocence, quite often without the assistance of an attorney. Much of the public credited law enforcement officers with moral rectitude and were willing to grant them wide latitude in upholding the standards of civility and the law. Prosecutors were seen as the equally virtuous adjuncts to the police departments and sheriff’s department, whose assertions deserved the status of fact. Those who had been arrested and the criminally accused were considered to merit the disapprobation of society and whatever punishment was to be meted out to them. The vast majority of those arrested in San Bernardino County admitted their guilt and capitulated without a trial. Of those who went to trial, only a minute fraction were vindicated, which was as it should be, the overwhelming majority of the county’s decent, law-abiding populace, from which the court system’s jury pool was drawn, thought. As overwhelmingly lopsided in favor of the upholders of the law as the court system was in its urban areas of San Bernardino, Colton, Redlands and Ontario, the legal playing field was tilted even more in favor of the prosecution in the desert region at its Barstow, Needles, Victorville and Joshua Tree courthouses.
Lowell Lathrop, the San Bernardino County’s district attorney first elected in 1950 who served six terms before retiring in 1974, in the run-up to his reelection in 1958 gave an illustration of how excessively heavy-handed and brutal enforcement of the law was in San Bernardino County. In a speech before the Victorville Chamber of Commerce in 1958, Lathrop lamented that a series of rulings by both the California Supreme Court and U.S. Supreme Court had deprived his office and the county’s law enforcement agencies of the tools they had come to rely upon for making arrests, obtaining evidence, and gaining convictions. Explaining why it was growing increasingly difficult to keep criminals off the streets of San Bernardino County, Lathrop told those assembled at that day’s luncheon that sheriff’s department deputies could no longer pistol whip suspects to obtain a confession from them as they did in the past and that if they persisted in using that technique, the confessions obtained in that manner would be deemed inadmissible in court.
Lathrop was yet district attorney 12 years later when a group of reformers consisting of three of the county’s judges, some members of the grand jury and a handful of common citizens coalesced in an effort to restrain the rampant abuse of inmates in the county’s jails.
Raymond Pryke, was the foreman of the Grand Jury that had been impaneled in 1970. Pryke had taken on the grand jury foreman assignment at the instigation of Judge Joseph Katz, who was then the presiding judge of the San Bernardino County Superior Court, only on the condition that he be permitted to do something that would be, Pryke insisted, “meaningful.” With Katz’s pledge of support, Pryke, in conjunction with the grand jury foreman pro tem, Jim Mealey, who had been the trainmaster at one of the county’s railroad yards, to have the grand jury look into the running of the county’s jails. Pryke and Mealey took it upon themselves on one occasion to go to the Glen Helen Detention Center at midnight, virtually unannounced.
The facility was overseen by a sheriff’s department inspector, a rank used by the sheriff’s department at that time. The Glen Helen inspector served in a capacity tantamount to being the warden of a prison. After using their grand jury credential to get past the main gate and into the compound, Pryke and Mealey were delayed and made to wait outside the housing facilities of the detention center while the sheriff’s department inspector overseeing the facility was awakened from what was presumably a sound sleep and summoned. Upon the inspector reaching them, they went inside with him and informed him of who they were, declaring their intention to inspect the jail. The inspector, putting his hand to his lips, pointed to where there was a microphone in the room. He took them outside and told them that Sheriff Frank Bland knew they were there and was on his way, indicating that he would very likely lose his job if he showed them too much. The inspector took them inside and they began a tour of the facility. Before Bland arrived, they encountered prisoners who were being kept in cages.
Upon Bland showing up, Pryke and Mealey referenced the authorization they had been given by Judge Katz to inspect the facility. Bland, reluctantly, escorted them on a tour of the detention center, including Glen Helen’s infamous “hole,” its isolation ward. Bland, using his own key, opened each door to the separate sequestered and fully darkened cells. The occupants were bade to emerge, whereupon Pryke and Mealey explained to each inmate that they were with the grand jury and wanted to know how they were being treated. With the imperious sheriff of San Bernardino County glowering at each of the prisoners, Pryke and Mealey were given answers of varying degrees of candor. One of the prisoners in the hole told Pryke and Mealey, “Every three days they let you out and they beat you up and claim you attacked a deputy and then they throw you back in.” Pryke’s and Mealey’s conclusion, based on what they had seen, was that even measured against what were the lax standards relating to the conditions of confinement of that era, many of the prisoners in the county’s detention facilities were being barbarically treated.
Bland reacted virulently, suggesting that Pryke and Mealey and even Katz had ulterior motives. He had detectives with the department’s intelligence division and those attached to the department’s command echelon initiate investigations of all three.
When the grand jury’s report came out in November 1970, Bland had an immediate, and predictably negative, reaction.
“The grand jury just doesn’t know what it’s talking about,” he told the board of supervisors.
In private conversations with those he considered to be more sympathetic to law enforcement, Bland expressed himself somewhat differently, acknowledging that jails were unpleasant places and that the experience of jail and prison was intended to make a lasting impression on those consigned to them. Whatever experience those in jail underwent, Bland maintained, was a consequence of their own criminal acts.
Within a short span of time, his department produced a written response to the grand jury report that was intended to mollify his department’s critics. “The [grand jury] report is an incredible collection of half truths and misstatements. It was obviously prepared by people who, out of idealism, inexperience, and ignorance, have not obtained all the facts.“
Bland dismissed suggestions that those jailed were subjected to mistreatment, by either their keepers or other inmates. “Inmates classified to serve their time in maximum security are considered to be escape risks due to their past history of escaping, or the fact that they are facing a major prosecution in this county or elsewhere, due to the fact that they are addicted to the use of narcotics or dangerous drugs and will go to every means to sustain their habit, or they are homosexuals and must be isolated from the other inmates for their own protection and to prevent the occurrence of criminal sex acts.”
Nevertheless, evidence of Bland’s contempt for efforts to interfere with his employment of a harsh incarceration regime crept into the response, with an assertion that his approach was one that found favor with the public at large.
“The people throughout the United States are extremely dissatisfied with the present judicial system thinking only of the rights of the defendant and failing to consider the protection of society against the criminals,” he propounded.
Shortly after Bland succeeded in riding that storm out, more onerous clouds appeared.
Less than a year later, the sodomizing of prisoners in San Bernardino County’s jails was a front and center issue. Whereas before Bland had been able to retreat into the protection his status as county sheriff afforded him as well as the knowledge that the district attorney, Lathrop, had his back, this time two personages in the form of county municipal court judges threw their weight behind the grand jury’s reform effort. Judges John Lawrence and Roy Chapman turned information over to the grand jury indicating that prisoners, young prisoners in particular, had been subject to sexual abuse while in the custody of the sheriff’s department. While Lawrence’s and Chapman’s action had taken place on the down low and outside the view of the public, in early October 1971 Lawrence turned it into a public issue when he reduced sentences for two 18-year-old offenders to five days to be served in a rehabilitation center rather than send them to jail where he said they could be subjected to homosexual attack. Bland went ballistic, calling for the removal of Lawrence unless the judge could provide evidence to support his assertion about homosexual rape taking place in the county’s jails. Lawrence, Bland told the board of supervisors, was justifying his propensity for sentencing leniency “by saying the jails are unsafe for criminals.”
Faced with an exposition of a policy Bland might not be able to publicly defend, he asserted “All young people placed in the county jails are kept separate from known homosexuals or hardened criminals.”
Nevertheless, throughout the remainder of Bland’s tenure as sheriff and beyond, an unwritten rule in San Bernardino County was that unruly prisoners in the custody of the sheriff’s department and particularly ones who threaten deputies, their wives or their families with retribution, as well as those individuals arrested for threatening or overzealously questioning public officials were placed into confinement among the jail’s known homosexual inhabitants for what was referred to as “attitude adjustment.”
Pryke, to protect himself from investigative and enforcement action by the sheriff’s department and prosecution by the district attorney’s office, purchased and published five newspapers throughout the county.
Not quite two decades after the jailhouse abuse reform effort that Katz, Lawrence, Chapman, Pryke and Mealey involved themselves in, Bert Swift was elevated to the municipal court. The mechanics of law enforcement and incarceration were only slightly less brutal and the ethos of administering justice in San Bernardino County hardly any less perverse than two decades earlier. Judges were yet expected to rubberstamp every request for arrest or search warrants, grant without question every motion made by prosecutors, and side with the prosecution over the defense on any substantive issue of contention between them.
It had been assumed that Swift, with his background as a police officer, would fit in with the program. It soon became apparent, however, that Swift was not going to simply go along with the status quo. Sheriff’s deputies and detectives who sought search warrants were chastened to find that he actually read the affidavits they presented to him when they applied for the warrants, and that he would put them through their paces if he detected some anomaly in their paperwork or presentation. Occasionally, they were obliged to fortify their presentation with further information or materials before Swift would agree to a warrant’s issuance. He did not default to the highest bail amount during inmate bond hearings or at arraignments. He did not simply ignore or dismiss defense motions. Where he deemed them to have merit, Swift indulged defense discovery motions in the face of prosecutorial opposition. He denied at times prosecutorial motions in situations where the defense raised legally meaningful and factually substantial grounds, and he was disinclined to mete out harsh or lengthy sentences to defendants whose crimes or circumstances did not, in his analysis, match the representations or recommendation of the prosecution. One of the most difficult elements of being a judge, Swift said, consisted of “trying to find the right punishment to fit the crime.”
When Judge Patrick Morris, then the county court system’s presiding judge, floated the concept of a drug court at the county’s central courthouse in the county seat, Swift advocated that such a model in which those arrested on narcotic violations were diverted, at least on their first offenses, into treatment rather than incarceration be given a go in the Morongo Basin. Indeed, Swift went one better, calling for and then seeing implemented a mental health and drug treatment court in which treatment was considered as a first option in cases involving addiction or mental illness. Of that accomplishment, Swift said, “It’s probably the most successful judicial endeavor I have been involved in as a judge.”
Others disagreed. Prosecutors and law enforcement professionals were at best skeptical and more often downright dismissive of such approaches. They considered compassion when dealing with lawbreakers to be weakness or naiveté.
Prosecutors often used statistics to define their success. Artfully, the county district attorney would claim a “conviction rate” of 95 percent or greater. To the vast majority of the public this implied that the county’s prosecutors won more than 19 of every 20 cases that went to trial. In reality, however, very few criminal cases, statistically, go to trial. In actuality, less than five percent of criminal cases are heard by a jury or a judge in what is called a no-jury bench trial. More than 95 per cent of cases are resolved either through a straightaway guilty plea or through a plea bargain arranged by the prosecution and the defense, in most cases with some of the charges being dropped or reduced and the sentencing imposed generally on the other side of the maximum that could be applied as part of the inducement for the defendant to enter the plea. A ploy used by prosecutors often includes hitting a defendant with as many criminal charges as possible during arraignment, what is referred to in legal parlance as “overcharging.” This practice, which sometimes involves alleging crimes or elements of crimes that prosecutors actually know cannot, or are unlikely to, be proven, puts a defendant at a sharp disadvantage both psychologically and practically, as conviction on a string of crimes could conceivably result in a potential sentence of decades or more upon conviction, conditional upon the sentencing discretion of the judge hearing the case.
Judge Swift was not as indulgent as other judges in San Bernardino County of prosecutors’ use of overcharging. His tendency to read everything placed before him and question the basis of the rulings he was being requested to make, to say nothing of his rulings and findings against the prosecution, rubbed prosecutors the wrong way, in no little part because he threatened by doing so their vaunted 97 percent, 98 percent and 99 percent conviction rate claims. To them, it was as if Judge Swift really didn’t understand what he was doing; he was too dense to understand who the good guys were and who the bad guys were. As a judge, Swift was wrongheadedly seeking to assist criminals rather than punish them, or so it came across to them.
He just wasn’t all that bright, they concluded. Within the district attorney’s office he was given the nickname ‘Notso,” as in “not so swift.”
There arose a movement within the prosecutor’s office to do something about the problem Swift represented. In California, judges must stand for election or reelection every six years. The district attorney’s office’s deputy prosecutors resolved that come 1994, they would run a judicial candidate more philosophically and temperamentally suited to them. Some lined up as part of an effort to see Crouter returned to the bench. Others thought that Deputy District Attorney Gordon Isen, who worked out of the Joshua Tree branch of the district attorney’s office and had substantial experience appearing before Judge Swift, would make a stronger candidate.
In 1993, an opportunity presented itself for the district attorney’s office to use the same underhanded approach it sometimes used in getting convictions against criminal defendants against Swift along with the other judge then working out of the Joshua Tree Courthouse, James McGuire.
At that point, the Municipal Court and the Superior Court had not yet been merged in San Bernardino County. Judge Swift was the Municipal Court judge in Morongo Valley and Judge McGuire was the Superior Court judge in the same jurisdiction. McGuire was almost, though not quite, as unpopular with the legal and law enforcement establishment as Swift. Judge McGuire was a poorly closeted homosexual who previously had a private practice in Fontana. He had sought to mask his homosexuality by means of an elaborate but ineffectual shroud of deception which involved hiring a female acquaintance to accompany him to public events to serve as his “drape,” posing as his “significant other” while he was in actuality living with the man who would eventually become his husband in Palm Springs. McGuire early in his legal career had embraced liberalism and was widely seen as a “bleeding heart” type. Later, however, in seeking to advance himself within the confines of San Bernardino County’s legal community, he adopted an outward show of conservative leanings, having registered as a Republican and going out of his way to make a display of supporting the GOP position on high profile issues or in selected cases vociferously advocating for so-called right-wing causes. McGuire’s ruse had convinced Governor George Deukmejian, a die-hard pro-law enforcement chief executive and death penalty supporter, to appoint him to the Superior Court in 1989. Locally, nonetheless, those who knew Judge McGuire saw through him, and many establishment figures in San Bernardino County, including some in the district attorney’s office, resented him for his success in landing a position on the bench by subterfuge and despised him for his sexual orientation and his feeble effort to disguise it.
In February 1993, Swift married Diane Fox, who had four children by a previous marriage. They maintained two homes, the home Swift had previously lived in and one owned by Fox on Quail Springs Road in Joshua Tree. They divided their time between the two homes.
In 1993, the National Park Service, led by Ranger Todd Swain and Ranger Marion Damiano-Nittoli, was conducting an investigation into the theft and trafficking of
Native American artifacts from the Joshua Tree National Monument. Removal of such artifacts from public lands is illegal under federal law. A principal focus in the investigation was Warren Churchwell of Desert Hot Springs. While Swain was acting in an undercover capacity and tracing those who had contact with Churchwell in the possible trafficking of artifacts, he came into contact, in the fall of 1993, with Tony Soares, a craftsman experienced in creating reproductions of Native American artifacts. Soares, then 23, was the son of Diane Fox Swift and stepson of Bert Swift, who regularly stayed at the Quail Springs Road home in Joshua Tree on the two to three days per week he was not residing at his home in Palm Springs. Soares, who welcomed Swain into the Quail Springs Road home, showed him an olla, a ceramic pot fashioned by Native American tribesman presumably a century or more previously, which he acknowledged purchasing from Churchwell. Without being aware that Swain was a federal agent, Soares said he suspected it had been illegally taken from the Joshua Tree National Monument and he intended to return it to federal authorities overseeing the monument after restoring it. Soares also showed Swain two manos, ancient Native American grinding stones, and a metate, an ancient Native American mortar, he said he had found in the desert by Kelso, a town near but not within the federal jurisdiction of the East Mohave National Scenic Area.
In furtherance of their investigation, Swain and Damiano-Nittoli intended to carry out a series of searches under the authority of the federal court. Over a period of more than two months, however, the United States Attorney was unable to devote the time necessary to complete affidavits for federal warrants and so Swain and Damiano-Nittoli obtained warrants from a Riverside County court to search Churchwell’s home and a gallery in Palms Springs where Native American artifacts were displayed. They then went, on December 16, 1993, to the Joshua Tree Courthouse complex, where they met with Deputy District Attorney Ray Pyle, the supervising deputy district attorney in the Morongo Valley Office of the San Bernardino County District Attorney. Pyle read the warrant application for Soares’s residence, specifying the objects to be seized as the manos, the metate, the olla and items showing the ownership of the premises, and approved it. Pyle escorted the rangers to Swift’s courtroom and told the judge the rangers had a search warrant they wanted signed. Upon Pyle leaving, Judge Swift went into his chambers with the rangers and, after inquiring why they were seeking the warrant through the state court system rather than in a federal court and satisfying himself that he had jurisdiction on the matter under state law, began to read the affidavit for the warrant. Upon encountering Soares’s name and the address of the premises to be searched in the second paragraph of the affidavit, he read no further. He told Swain and Damiano-Nittoli that Soares was his stepson and that the property to be searched was his own residence. The rangers inquired as to Soares’s whereabouts. Judge Swift indicated he did not know and then, in the rangers’ presence, telephoned Dianne Fox Swift at her place of employment, asking where her children were. She responded as to where she believed Soares was. He relayed what he had learned to the rangers and then took them to Judge McGuire’s chambers. Judge Swift handed the warrant application to Judge McGuire and told him that he could not review it nor issue the warrant because it involved one of his homes and his stepson. Judge Swift remained present during the rangers’ interaction with Judge McGuire. He later maintained he had done so to allay any concerns that he would inform Soares about the impending search and avoid the appearance of impropriety if the search were to be conducted and concluded without the artifacts being recovered. Upon Judge McGuire finishing his reading of the warrant affidavit a discussion of the situation with the rangers ensued in which Judge McGuire referenced the urgency of conducting the search because the proposed search of Soares’s residence had been disclosed to Soares’s stepfather. When Judge McGuire inquired whether they could serve the Quail Springs Road residence search warrant that evening, the rangers said they could not because they did not have the manpower. Judge McGuire asked if they would be amenable to a consent search and asked the rangers if they wanted to have the district attorney’s office advise them. They responded positively to that suggestion and Judge McGuire dispatched his bailiff to summon Pyle.
Pyle had left for the day and Deputy District Attorney Linda Root instead responded to McGuire’s chambers. When she arrived, Judge McGuire, with input from Swain, explained the situation. Judge Swift indicated that he would cooperate in a consent search, and represented that his wife and stepson would also consent at his behest. Root at that point said she was on Richard Crouter’s campaign committee for the upcoming June election effort against Judge Swift for his position on the municipal court bench. She offered an assurance to Judge Swift that despite her advocacy of Crouter’s candidacy, she would maintain confidentiality concerning the matter. Judge McGuire inquired at least twice in Root’s presence if the rangers wanted to confer privately with Root. They declined. Swain asked about the legality of a consent search. Root explained the scope of parental capacity to consent, noting that an issue of voluntariness could arise concerning a consent by Fox or Soares. Judge McGuire inquired about the location of the manos, metate and olla, upon which it was determined the items were in common use areas or in plain view from common use areas of the dwelling. From these considerations Root concluded that there was no issue of voluntariness as to Fox and Soares because Judge Swift’s consent would suffice. She advised the rangers that in those circumstances a consent search would sustain any evidence admissibility challenges.
To Judge McGuire’s question as to whether they wanted to proceed with the consent search or instead carry out a warrant search, as he found the affidavit sufficient upon which to issue a warrant, Swain and Damiano-Nittoli elected to proceed with a consent search that evening. Swain obtained a consent to search form from his vehicle, which Judge Swift signed. Before the rangers and Judge Swift left his chambers, Judge McGuire gave the rangers a card with his home telephone number and assured them that he would be available to issue the warrant over the telephone if they developed any misgivings about the consent to search or any problems manifested during the consent search.
Judge Swift then drove from the courthouse parking lot, with Swain and Damiano-Nittoli following behind him, to the Quail Springs Road residence, some 10 minutes from the courthouse. Judge Swift led them into the house. Neither Soares nor Fox were home. Based upon two earlier visits to the home while he was working in an undercover capacity, Swain knew where the items sought were located. All the artifacts were where Swain had said they were during the chambers discussion, clearly visible from the living room. The door was open from the living room to Soares’s bedroom, where the olla was located on the top of a dresser. The items were seized.
The next day, December 17, 1993, searches of the Churchwell residence and the gallery were conducted. Churchwell was arrested. Swain filed reports with the Riverside County District Attorney, requesting the filing of criminal charges against Churchwell. Such a complaint was issued in January 1994 and in June 1994 Churchwell pleaded guilty to felony counts leveled against him. On the day following the Riverside search, December 18, 1993, Soares in response to a telephone request appeared voluntarily at the Palm Springs Police Department to be interviewed by Swain. Swain determined that a case for prosecution could not be made with respect to the grinding stones and mortar. His superiors were disinclined to prosecute Soares with respect to possession of the olla. Three months passed without a report pertaining to the search of the Quail Springs Road residence being submitted to the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office.
Sergeant Gregory Benge, a narcotics officer with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s office and an active supporter of the candidacy of Deputy District Attorney Gordon Isen for election to the municipal court post held by Judge Swift, made an inquiry with the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office into the matter, at which point the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office issued a report dated March 27, 1994 in which a criminal filing against Tony Soares was declined. Following the solicitation by Benge, the rangers, in response to a request by Pyle, submitted a report on the events in chambers and the search that took place on December 16, 1993 to Pyle. Following receipt of that report, which was essentially a dry recitation of facts, Pyle specifically requested a “subjective” report on the chambers conference, stating that such a narrative was “necessary for a proper evaluation of the case against Tony Soares.” In response, Damiano-Nittoli filed a second report. On April 28, 1994, with the judicial election fast approaching, Pyle sent the reports to San Bernardino County District Attorney Dennis Kottmeier. Accompanying the reports was a note. It stated, “Please call when you’ve finished your review. Naturally, Gordon Isen would like to use this somehow in his campaign. Should we release info? If not, can it be leaked?” Pyle provided copies of the ranger’s reports to Crouter, as well. Pyle with glee told Crouter that revelation of their version of the incident would in all likelihood lead to Judge Swift losing the election.
On May 3, 1994, Pyle issued a rejection letter concerning the filing of charges against Soares. In the letter he asserted that the primary reason for rejecting the case was that the search was improper because Judge Swift could not consent to a search of the Quail Springs Road residence.
Pyle had creatively opened a pathway by which both Isen and Crouter had a basis in insinuation if not in fact to assert that Swift had used his position as a judge to derail a criminal prosecution, which was used in the election campaign against Swift. Despite the attack, Swift was reelected to the bench in the 1994 election.
The matter would not end there, however. The 1994 electoral cycle would result in two changes at the top of San Bernardino County law enforcement. Gary Penrod, who was the heir to the Bland political machine that had been in place since Bland was first elected in 1954 and which was instrumental in each of his successive reelections in 1958, 1962, 1966, 1970, 1974, 1978 and which was handed off to Bland’s endorsed successor Floyd Tidwell in 1982 and then by Tidwell to Richard Williams in 1990, was elected sheriff in the 1994 June Primary. Williams’ made a decision to take a comfortable retirement that year, and he endorsed Penrod, who cruised to an easy victory. In the district attorney’s office that year, Dennis Stout, the mayor of Rancho Cucamonga who had been a deputy prosecutor with San Bernardino County since 1977, had moved to challenge then-District Attorney Dennis Kottmeier, who had been the county’s top prosecutor since 1982. Kottmeier opted out of seeking reelection, and Stout defeated then-San Bernardino City Attorney James Penman in that year’s race. Both Penrod and Stout were intent, like all of those who had preceded them, to make a show of how tough on crime they could be. For Penrod, who was the product of a political and law enforcement dynasty that had been around for two generations, doing so was not as challenging as it was for Stout, who had bucked the status quo by wresting the title of district attorney from his incumbent boss, albeit without an actual fight. Still, Stout felt the need to show just how hard-nosed of a crimefighter he was, and ready-made for him was the contretemps surrounding Swift. Swift might have been able to fool the county’s voters into reelecting him, but he was still soft on crime, Stout and his second in command, Assistant District Attorney Dan Lough, figured, and they would achieve instant credibility with all of the county’s upstanding and right-thinking citizens, not to mention all of the district attorney’s office’s deputy prosecutors and the legions of police officers and sheriff’s deputies employed locally, if they could blow the lenient judge out of office. They signaled their willingness to support a move to go around the voters by having the California Commission on Judicial Performance look into what took place in Swift’s chambers and then made its way into Judge McGuire’s chambers on December 16, 1993. With a little luck, they figured, they could get Swift off the bench and maybe even send the limp-wristed McGuire packing as well.
Methodically, a group of individuals from the district attorney’s office, among whom Pyle, Root and Isen were a part, came together to compile separate complaints revolving around essentially the same set of facts. The purveyors of that complaint provided the basis for two “examiners” employed by the Commission on Judicial Performance, Dennis F. Coupe and Jack Coyle of the Commission’s Office of Trial Counsel, to make a case against Swift and McGuire.
Under examination was the judges’ comportment. The commission, based upon that complaint, agreed to direct the matter for official examination, issuing a notice of formal proceedings on February 6, 1996. The complainants, concerned that the commission might make an early conclusion that McGuire’s action had not reached in any way a level of impropriety worth consideration and on that basis might reject the entire complaint against Swift and McGuire, chose to file the complaints separately. It was, after all, Swift more than McGuire who was out of step with the county’s law enforcement establishment.
The commission in determining the matter was worth considering consolidated the complaints, turning the matter over to a panel of three “special masters,” chosen on May 7, 1996 from a list of legal experts submitted to the commission by the California Supreme Court. The three three special masters selected were Justice Coleman A. Blease, Judge James H. Chang and Judge Irma J. Brown. Blease, Chang and Brown took evidence in the matter and formulated a report to the commission, which consisted of William A. Masterson, Lois Haight, and Vincent McGraw, who were judges; Patrick M. Kelly and Robert C. Bonner, who were attorneys; and citizen members Christopher J. Felix, Ophelia Basgal, Eleanor Johns, David Malcolm, Harriet C. Salarno and Pearl West.
The gist of the complaint against Swift was that he engaged in willful misconduct in office, conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice that brought the judicial office into disrepute, improper action, and dereliction of duty within the meaning of Article VI, Section 18 of the California Constitution providing for the removal, censure, or public or private admonishment of a judge by violating the California Code of Judicial Ethics Canon 2A when he called his wife to determine the whereabouts of his stepson and that he had engaged in misconduct by remaining in Judge McGuire’s chambers after he brought Swain and Damiano-Nittoli there. The complaint targeting Swift further held that while he was in McGuire’s chambers he had engaged in additional misconduct by advocating a consent search of the Quail Springs Road premises. According to the complaint against Judge McGuire, he had shed discredit upon himself and the judicial office of which he was a member by improperly failing to sign a warrant authorizing a search of the Quail Springs Road property while the rangers were present in his chambers.
Judge Swift was represented in the formal proceedings by Thomas C. Brayton and Jones Mahoney, Brayton & Soll of Claremont. Judge McGuire was represented by Thomas R. Hudson of Ontario.
The process of examination ultimately did far more damage to the accusers than to the accused. In particular, when the administration of the district attorney’s office, by that time consisting of Lough and Stout, was called upon to produce the communications that had taken place between the prosecutors at the Joshua Tree office and the administration under Kottmeier in the 1993 and 1994 timeframe, it did not withhold materials that demonstrated the baldly political motivation of several of the prosecutors. At the forefront among the prosecutors based in Joshua Tree pushing for action against Swift primarily but also with regard to McGuire was Pyle, the head of the Joshua Tree prosecution office. Pyle, it appears, assumed that the senior administration of the district attorney’s office in San Bernardino would expurgate and selectively produce the documents relating to communications back and forth within the district attorney’s office that extended to Swift and the contemplated prosecution of Soares before it provided those communications to the Commission on Judicial Performance. As some of that communication reflected poorly on Kottmeier, Stout and Lowe, who had a political antipathy toward Kottmeier, made a calculated decision to pass it along to the Commission on Judicial Performance. Meanwhile, Pyle, believing the district attorney’s office’s administration would not provide as evidence anything that might make the prosecutor’s office look bad, figured he could make certain assertions, ones that were not factually correct, confident that documentation to disprove what he was saying was not in the possession of the Commission on Judicial Performance.
In his communication with Kottmeier in 1994, Pyle openly stated that Isen wanted to utilize information contained in Swain’s and Damiano-Nittoli’s reports in the judicial campaign. In his communications with Swain and Damiano-Nittoli, he asked them to produce a “subjective” report, meaning one that used starker language suggesting that Soares had broken the law and which left out nuances that suggested he perhaps did not have criminal intent and was going to return the olla to the federal government upon completing its restoration. Pyle was also hoping Swain and Damiano-Nittoli would make a stronger case that Swift had sought to shield Soares from prosecution. In his statements to the Commission on Judicial Performance, Pyle outright denied requesting such a “subjective” report. The commission, however, had copies of the request to contradict that. Moreover, during hearings the special masters conducted, Pyle maintained he had not provided to the Isen and Crouter campaign teams the materials relating to the Churchwell case and by extension the information relating to Soares, including the rangers’ interaction with Swift in his chambers and in McGuire’s chambers. There was testimony and evidence that controverted that. When questioned under oath, Crouter said that Pyle had provided him with the reports generated by the rangers.
The report on the special masters’ examination of and findings regarding the complaints against Swift and McGuire generated by the Commission on Judicial Performance dated February 11, 1997 and titled Inquiry Concerning Judges Swift & McGuire states “Pyle provided copies of the ranger’s reports to Crouter, another candidate in the election. Pyle enthusiastically told Crouter that revelation of their version of the incident would probably defeat Judge Swift. The commission notes that this finding directly contradicts Pyle’s testimony that he did not provide the materials to anyone. The commission does not find Pyle to be credible.”
The Inquiry Concerning Judges Swift & McGuire document states, “The examiners contend that the telephone call by Judge Swift to his wife violated canon 2A of the California Code of Judicial Ethics which adjures the avoidance of the appearance of impropriety. They argue the telephone call created the appearance that Judge Swift had a conflicting personal interest in the case. As a causal matter, the telephone call did not create the appearance that Judge Swift had a conflicting personal interest in the case. He already had disclosed and declared an actual personal interest conflict and announced that he could not act as the magistrate because of the conflict.”
The Inquiry Concerning Judges Swift & McGuire document states, “The examiners contend that remaining in Judge McGuire’s chambers created an appearance of impropriety prohibited by canon 2A and that he was using his ‘influence’ as a judge to obtain ‘confidential’ information about his stepson’s case, conduct prohibited by canon 2B.6. Canon 2B provides in pertinent part: ‘(1) A judge shall not allow family, social, political, or other relationships to influence the judge’s judicial conduct or judgment . . . . [¶] (2) A judge shall not lend the prestige of judicial office to advance the pecuniary or personal interests of the judge or others . . . .’ Judge Swift had a sound reason for remaining in Judge McGuire’s chambers that arguably advanced an important public interest, viz., promoting confidence in the integrity of the judiciary. Through no fault of his own, Judge Swift was placed in a dilemma because a potential charge of appearance of impropriety attended either alternative course of action available. Judge Swift cannot be charged with impropriety because he chose between them, absent a showing that the course of action he selected is clearly less preferable, i.e., more likely to undermine public confidence in the judiciary.”
The Inquiry Concerning Judges Swift & McGuire document states, “The examiners also contend that Judge Swift committed misconduct in Judge McGuire’s chambers by advocating a consent search, notwithstanding his ‘conflict of interest.’ The examiners argue that this created an appearance of impropriety. The special masters found, and the commission concurs, that Judge Swift did not engage in such advocacy. The examiners argue that advocating a consent search is improper because it is a use of nonpublic information for a purpose unrelated to his judicial duties in violation of canon 3B(11). However, the use, if any, of nonpublic information here is related to Judge Swift’s judicial duties, i.e., to the prevention of the potential discredit to the judiciary if the planned searches were conducted fruitlessly after he had the opportunity to alert his stepson or other family members about the impending search. Canon 3B(11) is as follows: ‘A judge shall not disclose or use, for any purpose unrelated to judicial duties, nonpublic information acquired in a judicial capacity.’ The examiners argue that advocating a consent search was improper because it created ‘admissibility issues’ as to the evidence obtained. The rangers were represented by an experienced prosecutor who advised them concerning such issues. The examiners contend that by remaining in Judge McGuire’s chambers Judge Swift violated Code of Civil Procedure section 170.3, subdivision (a)(1) which provides: ‘Whenever a judge determines himself or herself to be disqualified, the judge . . . shall not further participate in the proceeding . . . .’ In their view, the word ‘participation’ should be construed broadly. The prohibition on participation, however, pertains to participation as a judge, i.e., as a judicial decision maker. If a judge discerns a personal interest in a controversy and determines he is disqualified, he could nonetheless ‘participate’ in some other capacity in appropriate circumstances, e.g., intervene in the proceeding as a litigant or testify as a witness. The evidence was clear and convincing that Judge McGuire had assumed the role of decision maker, and that any participation by Judge Swift thereafter was nonjudicial.”
According to the commission, Judge Swift “did not commit misconduct in the Superior Court judge’s chambers by advocating a consent search of the property or by remaining in the Superior Court judge’s chambers.” The commission further found that “even if Judge McGuire should have signed the search warrant while the rangers were present, we are unable to conclude, in light of the unusual facts confronting Judge McGuire, that his failure to do so constitutes misconduct. His mistake, if any, was at most legal error. The commission accepts the special masters’ conclusion that these proceedings should be dismissed.”
The effort to discredit Judge Swift and wound Judge McGuire failed. Moreover, the episode brought out the lengths the prosecutor’s office was willing to go to, including making outright false claims and then backing those claims with the perjured testimony of a supervising deputy prosecutor, in the effort to remove Swift from the bench. Rather than bringing the judges and the bench into disrepute, the matter shed discredit on the prosecutor’s office, turning a spotlight on the degree to which the district attorney’s office had come to expect that its prosecutors’ assertions were to be credited by the courts as fact. To not only Judge Swift and Judge McGuire but to all of the county’s other judges, the case proved a meaningful and resounding lesson in the principle of judicial independence.
Judge Swift was once asked how it was that he had the strength and will to stand up to the long arm of the law and resist the tendency of police and prosecutors to trample on the rights of the citizens they arrest and prosecute. Swift said that as a Navy Seal, he had involved himself in surreptitious missions affixing trackers on Soviet naval vessels and the ships of other potentially hostile powers as their crews unsuspectingly pulled into some port of call and that he had just as intrepidly placed listening devices on undersea communication lines used by the United States’ Cold War foes. That involved a certain degree of risk, he said, and if he had been caught, he knew that things would not have gone well for him. He said he figured that if he was willing to stand up to the enemies of America’s values abroad as a young man, it would be no more difficult as an older man to stand up to those who were acting against what America is all about at home, and he would have had a hard time forgiving himself if he did not.
Judge Swift is survived by his wife, Dianne Swift, daughters Lynn Swift and Tanya Fox, sons Tony Soares, Brad Soares, Ash Fox, and Jason Sexton. Judge Swift had 11 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

Walter Bratton, the homegrown kid who went on to shatter the color line at the Ontario Fire Department and then innovated to create the first video ministry for, and become the longest serving deacon at, Ontario Mt. Zion Church, has died.
A paradoxically quiet drum-beating member of the Ontario business and social community, Bratton lost the use of his voice three years ago as the consequence of his bout with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. That disease ultimately took his life but did not arrest his intensity nor diminish his dignity.
Born on November 3, 1951 in Rock Hill, South Carolina, he moved with his parents, James Lawrence and Elvenia Steele Bratton, and his one sister who had been born at that point to California when he was four years old. The Bratton family settled in Ontario, becoming parishioners at Mt. Zion Baptist Church, and James established a sole proprietorship janitorial business, JL Bratton & Company.
Walter attended Grove Elementary, Euclid Elementary and De Anza Junior High.
As a teen, he worked with his father, assisting him several hours a week as he made his rounds at the various Ontario industrial and commercial institutions where JL Bratton & Company had contracts, including with General Electric, Ontario Airport, the Koll Company, Berry Construction and other smaller businesses. This assistance allowed his father to expand his operation beyond Ontario to pick up more lucrative contracts, including major construction site clean ups such as the construction then ongoing at UC Irvine. The father and son also moonlighted as sky caps at the Ontario Airport Terminal. With the money he earned, Walter long before reaching the age of majority purchased his first motorcycle, car and drum set.
Walter had begun high school in 1966, attending 9th grade at Chaffey High School while the building of Ontario High School was completed. In September 1967, Walter was one of the roughly 650-member maiden student body, consisting of freshman, sophomores and juniors but no seniors, to attend Ontario High School, the campus for which was on Francis Street, much closer to the Bratton home than Chaffey. At Ontario High, he played varsity football as a running back with the Jaguars under Coach Doug Brooks, and varsity baseball for Tom McFadden. After his sophomore year in 1967-68, his junior year in 1968-69, he graduated with the Class of 1970.
Walter attended Chaffey College where he continued to play football, and earned his associate of arts degree. He thereafter resolved to become a licensed commercial pilot, and was taking flight lessons at Cable Airport in Upland and aviation classes at Chino Airport. When he was accepted at DeVry University in Phoenix, Arizona, he left California to attend classes there. He worked toward and received his degree in electronics at DeVry, simultaneously working with United Parcel Service. It was at UPS that he met his future wife, Marilyn Chase.
In 1974, Walter returned to Ontario. His father had striven to cultivate a position of standing within the Ontario community by enlisting JL Bratton & Company in the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, becoming a member of the United Way board of directors and involving himself in supporting the city council candidacy of Paul Treadway and the mayoral candidacy of Paul Snider. Tuned in to what was happening at the civic level, James Bratton heard that the Ontario Fire Department was hiring a new firefighter, and he insisted that Walter go to Ontario City Hall and fill out an application for the position. Walter was accepted as a candidate in training, and on February 2, 1975, after graduating from the city’s fire academy, became the first black firefighter hired by the Ontario Fire Department. Later that same year, his girlfriend Marilyn moved from Phoenix to Ontario.
Walter and Marilyn married in 1979. They had six children: Marlon, Marcus, Walter, Aaron, Marlindy & Ashley.
In 1986, Walter was the second Bratton selected to serve on the Greater Ontario Leadership Development Program, known by its acronym GOLD, initiated through the Ontario Chamber of Commerce. Later, Walter served with his sister on the steering committee for the GOLD Program.
Walter was prompted to learn to ski by several of his firefighting colleagues. He became an avid skier and imparted the skill to his children, and then later, snowboarding as well. In turn, his sons taught him how to play golf.
Like his father, Walter was both versatile and energetic in his business endeavors. He managed residential property that his parents owned around Ontario for over 40 years. In other business ventures, he was a “silent partner” in his sisters’ janitorial company, his sisters’ hair replacement salon in Hollywood and his wife’s wig & hair extension business in Ontario.
Walter’s greatest genius may have been his ability to balance his work life with his family obligations. Walter and Marilyn would take their brood on family vacations meant to create elaborate learning environments and lasting memories. Major holidays in the Bratton household were all about his family and his blessings. Throughout the years, his kids’ admiration for him made Father’s Day another Christmas and his birthday practically a National Holiday.
On August 14, 1988 Walter was promoted, becoming the first African-American fire captain for the City of Ontario. A few years later, he passed the test for promotion to battalion chief, but a battalion chief vacancy never came open before his exam results expired.
Walter donated and volunteered his many talents, skills, and finances for the benefit of Mt. Zion Church of Ontario, and its extended community. Walter had accepted Jesus Christ as his personal lord and savior at a young age and was baptized by Pastor Robert Young. His Christian faith was core to his identity and his active membership in the Mt. Zion Congregation was a visible manifestation of that. Walter was introduced to the Bill Gothard Institute in Basic Life Principles Seminar through the Ontario Fire Department in 1977. Over the next 21 years, he repeatedly coordinated large group attendance to the seminar for his Mt. Zion Church family. He became a team teacher in the Evangelism Movement, endeavoring to win as many souls to Christ as possible before his time on earth ran out. He played the drums for the Mt. Zion senior choir under Pastor Alvin J. Carter. With Marilyn, he started the first video ministry at Mt. Zion under Dr. Brian Kennedy. Walter taught Sunday School, served on the trustee board, and had the honor of being the longest serving deacon at Mt. Zion Church of Ontario.
On December 23, 2006, 41 days shy of 32 years with the Ontario Fire Department, Captain Walter G. Bratton retired, taking his “last ride” with full salute and honor from his Fire Station Six engine crew. After retirement, Walter voluntarily served another 15 years as a chaplain for the Ontario Fire Department.
During “retirement” Walter earned his commercial driver’s license in order to work for his son Marcus’s trucking company driving diesel trucks.
Walter loved to play the game of dominoes and engage in the interests of others. Walter especially adored all conversations around current events and debating politics. After their kids were grown, Walter and Marilyn became inveterate cruise line travelers.
Walter was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 2018. It is believed, though not empirically established, that his ALS had resulted from toxic exposure he experienced while serving as a firefighter with the City of Ontario. Five other Ontario firemen who were on the department during the era he was there have passed away while suffering with ALS.
The amyotrophic lateral sclerosis took his voice and limited his mobility, but not his will or sense of humor or ability to communicate in writing. He strove to remain active. His children arranged last year for a family cruise to Ensenada in Baja California for his 70th and last earthly birthday. Walter expressed his joy and thankfulness for the quality time with his family by writing a note which read: “This was my best birthday ever.”
Before his passing, Walter’s children established the Captain Walter G. Bratton Foundation. As a spiritual leader, visionary, and emergency first responder with a heart of gold, Walter himself picked his foundation’s logo and mission of giving back to local families and youth in need in the Ontario community he served.
Floyd Clark, Ontario’s first African-American fire chief and now retired, told the Sentinel, “I first met Walter in July of 1986.  On that day, Walter was wearing his work uniform, which consisted of a powder blue shirt. What stood out to me was that Walter wore a little cross on the upper right hand side of his uniform. I had just gotten out of the military, and only chaplains were allowed to wear the cross on their work uniforms. So, I asked Walter if he was one of the chaplains for the department. Walter told me he was not a chaplain for the department, but he simply loved Jesus and that this was his way of letting anyone he came in contact with know that he was a man of faith. With my military background, I thought it was great that the department would allow him to wear the cross on his uniform in order to express his faith. Later, I came to learn that the department hadn’t really allowed personnel to wear the cross on their work uniform, but it was more about the way Walter interpreted his freedom, even while in uniform. I thought I loved this country and had demonstrated that by serving eight years in the United States Air Force as a firefighter. I would learn that no one on the Ontario Fire Department loved this country more than Walter Bratton. There is no doubt in my mind that out of love for country and staunch respect for the Constitution, it is safe to say that Walter was a man of law and a respecter of persons. As a firefighter, Walter was given the opportunity to do what he loved most, and that was the service of others. When one thinks of humility, dedication and service we could look at Walter to see how that is done.”
Clark said that Bratton had invited him to attend Mt Zion Baptist Church in Ontario.
“I, too, became a member and remain until this day,” said Clark. “He had a way of making you feel comfortable and welcome not because of who you were but because of who he was. As a humble servant of his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, I can hear him encouraging someone today to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Sometime during my first year on the department Walter introduced me to another group called Firefighters for Christ. This is a group that take service to the next level. While having this unique opportunity to serve, it’s more than just having a job. We learned that we needed to do all that we can to help others. Being given the chance to respond to people when they dialed 911 because something has gone wrong in their lives sometimes opens a door to show real care and concern for our fellow man.”
Clark said, “Speaking of doors, I would be remiss if I didn’t thank Walter Bratton for the doors that he opened for me as a firefighter. His laughter, keen sense of humor and overall ability to change the tone of the environment made him a person that made people feel comfortable when around him. As an environment changer, he helped those 24-hour shift days pass by. He’d look up, smile, and say, ‘Didn’t we have fun at work today?’”
Clark said, “I know that it was a joy and honor for Walter to serve the citizens of the City of Ontario. He would always show reverence and respect to any and everyone he would come in contact with. He wore his uniform proudly and when he was promoted to captain everyone knew that it was a glorious time for the Bratton name. Walter was respected in this community. It wasn’t just about him but the legacy that he was creating. His time in history will be treasured by firefighters because he embodied the true meaning of service. His time and service has given us as a community a standard to strive for. As a brother in Christ, one who had clearly decided to enter the narrow gate and walked along the narrow path that is not popular today, he carried on by attempting to walk through the doors that he has opened along the path of service. Thanks to Walter, the door is open and the path is clear. With this history in mind how will we answer the 911 call?”
Captain Walter Green Bratton passed away in Ontario on February 13, 2022. He was preceded in death by his infant son Tyrone, parents James Lawrence and Elvenia Bratton, his in-laws Albert (A.C.) and Laverne Livingston Chase, grandparents, and a host of aunts and uncles.
Walter is survived by his wife of 42 years, Marilyn Bratton; and his four sons: Marlon Bratton and his wife Dolly of Eastvale; Marcus Bratton and his wife Catherine of Ontario; Walter Albert Bratton and his wife Eva of Eastvale; Aaron Bratton, Esquire, of Ontario; and his two daughters: Marlindy Douglas and her husband Rama of Pasadena; Ashley Jerry and her husband Justin of Rialto; his niece/quasi-daughter, Dr. Cherina Betters of Highland; sisters: Geraldine Watson,  Barbara Bratton, and Brenda Orea and her husband Charlie of Rancho Cucamonga; grandchildren: Marcus Bratton Jr. and his wife Julia, Elijah Bratton, Jasmine Jackson, Joseph Bratton, Caleigh Bratton, Kaleb Bratton, Kaden Bratton, Ezra Douglas, Isaiah Douglas, Ariah Jerry, Alana Jerry, and Amara Douglas and aunts Mamie Bratton of New York, Mary Bratton of, Bloomington, California and Tewanee Bratton of Georgia. Special acknowledgment is given to those who had the honor to call him Dad: Andy Perez; and Granddad: Jordan Jerry. and a host of special cousins, in-laws, nieces, nephews, church family and friends.

Chino is beset with a lingering contamination issue on its eastern end north of the former agricultural preserve, it was publicly revealed last week in a roundabout fashion.
The city is going to construct, at a cost of $2,625,835.22, a transmission water pipeline to a treatment facility.
The project is necessitated by the presence of trichloropropane in the water table below the area lying generally in the vicinity of the intersection of Cypress Avenue and Walnut Avenue.
It is suspected that the trichloropropane contamination resulted from the chemical’s use in agricultural operations on nearby properties.
Also known as allyl trichloride, glycerol trichlorohydrin, and trichlorohydrin, 1,2,3-Trichloropropane is a chlorinated derivative of propylene. A colorless liquid, it is used as a solvent and in other specialty applications, including as a paint or varnish remover, a cleaning agent and for degreasing. With a sweet but strong odor, it evaporates very quickly, and small amounts of the substance will dissolve in water. Known as TCP, 1,2,3-Trichloropropane is recognized in California as a cancer-causing agent. Furthermore, short term exposure to TCP can cause throat and eye irritation and can affect muscle coordination and concentration. Long-term exposure can affect body weight and kidney function. Prior to 1980, farming operations in the United States commonly made use of chloropropane-containing soil fumigants for use as pesticides and wormicides. 1,2,3-TCP was a minor component in a popular soil fumigant marketed under the name D-D that was used in the cultivation of various crops, including citrus fruits, pineapples, soy beans, cotton, tomatoes, and potatoes. D-D was first available commercially in 1943, but is no longer available in the United States. Fumigants applied today use far less 1,2,3-TCP, only 0.17 percent by weight, according to one source available to the Sentinel.
1,2,3-Trichloropropane has been present in the local water supply for decades. It became an issue when the State of California lowered its acceptable contamination level for 1,2,3-TCP to five parts per trillion. Samplings from the City of Chino’s various wells showed that Well 11, which supplied groundwater that was pumped into the city’s water distribution system, had a contaminant level exceeding the maximum. The city shuttered Well 11.
Last week, the city council voted to approve a contract with MCC Equipment Rental Inc. of Yucaipa to construct a 16-inch raw water transmission pipeline that will run from the intersection of Cyress Avenue and Chino Avenue north to Walnut Avenue, jog right or east to San Antonio Avenue and then continue north on San Antonio Avenue to meet up with an existing 18-inch raw water pipe near the alley at Aster Court, roughly two blocks north of Walnut Avenue. The existing 18-inch pipeline will whisk the water to the Eastside Water Treatment Facility in Ontario.
In addition to constructing the pipeline from Well 11 to the existing pipeline near the Aster Court alley, MCC Equipment Rental Inc is to complete backfill, repaving, and street repair for streets affected by the construction for the said price of $2,625,835.22. MCC Equipment Rental Inc was the low bidder on the project among 15 companies that made applications to do the work. The closest bid to MCC’s was one for $2,727,777 by E.J. Meyer Company. The highest bid was $4,956,361 by James W Fowler Co.
Chino is beset with contamination issues.
The Regional Water Quality Board has long been working with the City of Chino and the County of San Bernardino over the contamination of ground water beneath Chino Airport. The Regional Water Quality Board has issued multiple clean-up and abatement orders pertaining to both the removal of drums of napalm buried on the airport grounds as well as solvents and aviation fuel that has migrated into the water table.
Other contamination issues exist in the area, including excessively brackish groundwater in the south end of the Chino Basin brought about by nitrates and dissolved solids from agricultural and diary operations there. As a consequence, the cities of Chino, Chino Hills, Norco [in Riverside County] and Ontario, along with the Inland Empire Utilities Agency, the Jurupa Community Services District, the Santa Ana River Water Company and the Western Municipal Water District formed the Chino Basin Desalter Authority as a Joint Powers Authority to operate the Chino I and II Desalter facilities to purify groundwater extracted from the lower Chino Basin.
-Mark Gutglueck

In an effort to contain or at least downplay a cacophony of reports about graft and corruption at Fontana City Hall as the 2022 election season approaches, Fontana Mayor Acquanetta Warren this week moved to poach Chino’s city manager.
Fontana lured Matt Ballantyne, who has been at the helm of relatively sedate and well-run 91,403-population Chino for a decade, to head up the municipal operations at the 217,237-population scandal-plagued former steel town by offering him what looks to be a nearly $100,000 escalation in his total annual compensation that will but him beyond the half of a million dollar range annually.
In taking on the assignment, Ballantyne is playing for far higher stakes than he has heretofore while assuming a substantial degree of risk he would not have encountered if he had remained in Chino.
Over the years, Fontana city managers have courted an uncommon degree of controversy. While some prospered, others involved themselves in circumstances that so poisoned their reputations that even the comfortable retirements they were eventually were able to slip into were no solace for having been publicly vilified or delivered to the confines of an asylum.
Jack Ratelle, who was Fontana’s city manager from 1973 to 1987, looted the city seven ways from Sunday, orchestrating arrangements by which the city and its taxpayers paid out approaching half of a billion dollars to cover the cost of infrastructure and both on-and-off-site improvements to allow development to proceed. Ratelle laundered the kickbacks he received – estimated at no more than $2 million – through a credit line set up for him at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. He was fired after 14 years on the job but escaped being prosecuted based on the amount of compromising information he had accumulated on the city’s then current and former political leaders and high ranking members of the police department. There followed an effort at reform by Ratelle’s successor, the dynamic John O’Sullivan, who was ultimately undone by the overwhelming financial burden that Ratelle had saddled the city with and the lingering conflicting interests the city and some of its political leadership had become involved in under Ratelle. O’Sullivan left Fontana a broken man after less than four years. There followed relatively short tenures of city managers Russ Carlson and Jay Corey, who like O’Sullivan, were unable to map the city out of its deepening fiscal crisis brought on by massive debt. It was Greg Devereaux, Fontana city manager from 1994 to 1997, who structured a financial recovery plan that hinged itself on substantial growth by intense development of properties in the city’s redevelopment areas that were previously encumbered by the corruption-encrusted arrangements of Ratelle and the development/redevelopment director, Neil Stone, Ratelle had employed. Devereaux went on to an even more illustrious governmental management career with the City of Ontario and thereafter the County of San Bernardino. Still, before he left Fontana, Devereaux had put in place a municipal operations strategy so comprehensive and well-devised that Ken Hunt, who followed in Devereaux’s wake in Fontana, needed to merely execute upon that game plan for the next two decades to have a spectacular run as city manager as the city grew exponentially, until today it is neck and neck, population-wise, with the county seat, the City of San Bernardino, as the county’s largest municipality. Hunt became by 2019, the third-highest paid city manager in California
Fontana, nevertheless, remained steeped in governmental and political corruption, and part of what had made Hunt the envy of others in the city management game was the way in which he had enabled Acquanetta Warren, the city’s mayor since 2010, to carry out her depredations. Warren has thrived in the pay-to-play ethos of Fontana politics, in which developers, just as in the Ratelle era, have traded political donations to the city’s elected leadership along with under-the-table or otherwise hidden payments to city officials for project approval and occasional waivers of expectations or requirements that they bear the cost of the infrastructure accompanying their subdivisions, shopping centers, complexes or buildings.
It is reported that in the late spring of 2019, Hunt told Warren he would no longer abide or ignore the bribetaking he had come to recognize she was engaged in. Warren just prior to that ultimatum had roundly and widely praised the management job Hunt was doing and, after having secured his services the previous year with a three-year contract, was angling to lock Hunt in as city manager through 2026 by inducing him into signing an even more lucrative 5-year contract in 2021. Upon Hunt confronting Warren over the payoffs she was accepting for approving projects and city contracts, however, Warren made a 180-degree U-turn, and quickly arranged for Hunt’s departure as city manager. In doing so, she conferred upon him a $1,127,378.45 severance package that paid him $978,000 in 2020 to keep him on the city payroll, despite the consideration that he was doing no work and was actually banned from City Hall. Warren carried this off while maintaining that Hunt was leaving of his own volition. Under Hunt’s contract, he was not due any severance if he was fired with cause or if he quit. A provision of the severance package was a confidentiality clause. In this way Warren purchased, using taxpayer money, Hunt’s silence with regard to the bribes she had been receiving.
The originators of money Hunt characterized as bribes paid to the mayor included Intex Properties, David Wiener and Brad Chapman, the Sentinel has been informed.
In the immediate aftermath of Hunt’s leaving, Warren brought Michael Milhiser, who had previously served as the city manager in Montclair, Ontario, Upland, and Adelanto, in as interim city manager. Thereafter, Warren and the city council in February 2020 hired Dana Point City Manager Mark Denny to begin as Fontana city manager in April 2020. Denny, a sophisticated political operator who in 1996, while working for then-California Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle, was charged by the Orange County District Attorney and subsequently convicted of engaging in election fraud, hit the ground running in Fontana. He lasted 18 months, living in an atmosphere rife with political skulduggery and quid pro quos. In September 2021, however, something so unnerved him that he abruptly resigned to take a position in the private sector in Orange County. Shannon Yauchzee, a civil engineer who formerly was the city manager of Baldwin Park and who had been with Willdan Engineering and was the public works director with the City of West Covina from 1996 to 2014, came in to replace Denny on an interim basis. At this point, Yauchzee’s course with Fontana has run.
Ballantyne comes into Fontana with open eyes, knowing he will have to co-exist with a mayor who is on the take. Prior to going to work in Chino, he was the city manager of San Marino from 2006 to 2012. A UCLA graduate, Ballantyne is sophisticated enough to know what is expected of him in Fontana, where the city council is dominated by Warren. Warren’s ruling coalition consists of Councilman John Robert, Councilman Pete Garcia and Councilman Phil Cothran Jr. The dissident on the council is Jesse Sandoval, who does not have sufficient political muscle to counteract the direction Warren has set for the city. Both Garcia and Roberts are dependent upon Warren, who has $170,127.05 in her political war chest at present after handing around $56,412.87 to her various allies from her campaign fund last year. Phil Cothran Jr, the scion of Phil Cothran Sr, a wealthy insurance dealer, landowner and current chairman of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee, is closely aligned with Warren through his father. Young Cothran was groomed by Warren as a successful city council candidate in 2018.
Warren is confident that she has nothing to fear from San Bernardino County District Attorney Jason Anderson, who is knowledgeable about her bribetaking but disinclined to prosecute her on those grounds because of mutual political affiliations and shared campaign donors.
Warren is not insulated, however, from prosecution by the California Attorney General’s Office. Last year, California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a civil action against the City of Fontana over its approval of a warehouse in Southern Fontana. Bonta took issue with the lax environmental safeguards the city adhered to in giving Duke Realty go-ahead to build the warehouse at the confluence of Slover and Oleander avenues. The city allowed the planning commission to utilize one of the least exacting forms of environmental certification there is, a mitigated negative declaration, in granting the project approval. In the lawsuit, Bonta argued that the city’s limited environmental review of the project and its failure to appropriately analyze, disclose, and mitigate the project’s environmental impacts violates the California Environmental Quality Act. Bonta’s investigators have yet to make a close examination of the influence political donations made to Warren have purchased in Fontana. Nor have they yet focused on reports of money other than political donations that have been funneled to Warren, who has been consistently able to get warehouse projects approved, to the point that she has become known, both derisively by her political opponents and admiringly by her supporters, as “Warehouse Warren.” If Bonta’s scrutiny of Fontana’s penchant for warehouse development moves from civil complaints to a concern about criminal influence, Ballantyne may come to regret his decision to leave Chino for Fontana, particularly if he abets Warren in her efforts to facilitate the wholesale conversion of properties to warehousing, while the landowners and developers profiting from those conversions continue their pattern of conveying tens of thousands of dollars to Warren. If even one of those donations can be demonstrated to have been made conditional upon Warren voting to approve a donor’s project, the crucial element to establish in a court of law that bribery took place will exist. Being the city manager to a mayor convicted of bribery would not represent the most impressive credential on Ballantyne’s résumé.
Nevertheless, looking at the numbers involved, it is understandable why Ballantyne agreed to leave Chino for Fontana. In Chino, he was making $294,879.73 in salary, $48,759 in other pay and $68,160 in benefits yearly, for a total annual compensation of $411,798.73.
In Fontana he is to receive a salary of $315,000, benefits of $91,254 and other pay and bonuses of $110,000, giving him an annual compensation of $516,254.
-Mark Gutglueck

Former San Bernardino Fifth Ward City Councilman Henry Nickel has joined with Treasure Ortiz, Helen Tran, James Penman, Mohammad Khan and Gabriel Jaramillo in vying against incumbent John Valdivia for mayor in this year’s San Bernardino municipal contest.
Nickel is the newest addition to the race. It has long been known that Ortiz and Tran will attempt to unseat Valdivia, who has been steeped in controversy since even before he was sworn in as mayor in 2018. Penman, the former city attorney when that position in San Bernardino was an elected one who ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 2005 and 2009 and San Bernardino County District Attorney in 1994, announced he was running for mayor again last August. Khan and Jaramillo are more obscure candidates who nevertheless vow they are in the contest for real.
Less than a month after he was elected mayor in November 2018 and before he acceded to that position, Valdivia was on the premises of an unlicensed marijuana marketing facility just shortly before it was robbed at gunpoint and the principal in the business shot. Reports ensued that Valdivia was there to shake the company down. Captain David Green of the police department conducted what the department maintains is a classified investigation of what had occurred. That report has never been released. Green was subsequently promoted to assistant police chief and is now the acting police chief.
The day Valdivia was sworn in as mayor, December 18, 2018, he initiated an effort to fire then-City Manager Andrea Travis-Miller. He achieved that goal by June 2019. Shortly thereafter, nearly a dozen applicants for commercial cannabis licenses and permits in the city came forward, stating that Valdivia had taken money from them in exchange for assurances that he could facilitate the approval of their marijuana-related operations. There were further reports of Valdivia taking money in exchange for arranging city council approval of city contracts, franchises and development proposals. One by one, a majority of the members of the ruling coalition on the city council that Valdivia considered his allies and whom he called upon to achieve his goals as mayor – Councilwoman Sandra Ibarra, Councilman Ted Sanchez and Nickel – disassociated themselves from him. Thereafter, three women working in the mayor’s office – Mirna Cisneros, Karen Cervantes, Jackie Aboud – and Alissa Payne, one of his appointees to the city’s Arts and Historical Preservation Commission and the San Bernardino Parks, Recreation and Community Services Commission, came forward with allegations that he was making sexual advances toward them. Cisneros and Aboud augmented those claims with allegations about political corruption in which Valdivia took official action in exchange for money. The accusation that Valdivia was taking money in exchange for government action was repeated by Don Smith, who had worked on Valdivia’s campaign for mayor and was subsequently hired by the city to serve as Valdivia’s part time field representative at the city. Matt Brown, who was brought in to serve as Valdivia’s chief of staff in August 2019, supported the charges of the others employed in the mayor’s office. Ultimately, Cisneros, Cervantes, Aboud, Smith and Brown retained attorney Tristan Pelayes and sued Valdivia and the city over their experience in working for Valdivia.
Ortiz has been critical of Valdivia from the outset of his mayoralty and has remained his most vocal opponent.
Tran was San Bernardino’s human resources director. She came in for a round of criticism for failing to prevent or stem Valdivia’s mistreatment of Cisneros, Cervantes Aboud and Smith while she was still employed by the city. She left the city’s employ relatively early after the revelations about Valdivia’s interactions with his staff members. Some have suggested that Tran’s connection to the city administration during this critical span of inaction will doom her mayoral candidacy. Others have said they will withhold judgment to see if she will ultimately utilize the inside information she attained while with the city and utilize her campaign as a forum to engage in a wholesale exposé of the dysfunction at City Hall and the full depth of Valdivia’s depredations.
Penman was long a Valdivia supporter, having been instrumental in Valdivia’s political rise in 2011 when he was elected Third Ward city councilman. He continued to support him, including in Valdivia’s campaign to unseat then-incumbent Mayor Carey Davis in 2018. Some found this curious, given Penman’s representation of himself as a reformist and the indications that were already extant of Valdivia’s willingness to conform his votes as a councilman to the will of those providing him with political donations or other payments. Penman now says that he is disappointed in Valdivia’s comportment as mayor.
Mohammad and Jaramillo are relatively new arrivals on the San Bernardino political scene. Not much is known about them, although some feel there is grounds to believe that Jaramillo is actually a stalking horse for Valdivia. Jaramillo has not leveled any criticism at Valdivia, and instead has made public statements decrying Ortiz as a divisive force in the community, implying that her tirades against Valdivia are unwelcome and uncalled for. Jaramillo’s addition to the field of mayoral candidates, by the calculation of at least some political prognosticators and San Bernardino mayoral race handicappers is a benefit to Valdivia, who has substantial name recognition, the power of incumbency and $318,426.56 in his campaign war chest, which at present is far ahead of the $132,859.53 Tran has committed toward her electoral challenge and the $47,146.72 Penman has in his electioneering fund. The other candidates are well under those totals. Most election analysts concur that the more opponents who run against Valdivia in the June primary race, the better it is for him. They believe that based on his current name recognition and incumbent status, he will need to spend only about one-fifth to one fourth of the amount of money he has in his campaign fund to ensure first or second place in the June race, and thus a berth in the November run-off. He will then be able to utilize the remainder of his money, which at this point would run to more than $200,000 and will by then be far more based on the donations he can anticipate receiving between now and them, to ensure a victory over whoever his opponent is. Conversely, with more and more candidates getting into the contest, for any of the current crop of challengers to ensure so much as a second-place finish in June, he or she will need to spend virtually all of his or her currently available funding, leaving whoever that is at a tremendous disadvantage to Valdivia in the fall.
Nickel in the 2015 to 2018 timeframe while he and Valdivia were both councilmen had evolved into Valdivia’s closest ally on the council. That has now changed. Nickel grew wary of Valdivia as the latter’s megalomania in the role of mayor became apparent and he threw caution to the wind in seeking ever more money, both in the form of political donations, consulting fees and what most people consider to be payoffs.
In his 2020 stand for reelection, Nickel was damaged, on one hand, with some voters for his past association with Valdivia. On the other hand, he reaped little benefit by braking with Valdivia, since Valdivia, who was in a position to do so given his fat campaign fund coffers, offered Nickel no financial assistance in his reelection bid. Nickel was beaten by Ben Reynoso for the Fifth District council post.
“Over the past year, many fellow residents have asked if I would consider running for mayor given my prior six years of experience as an effective collaborative council member,” Nickel told the Sentinel. “I have decided to do so. We are concerned the hard-fought gains made since the city exited bankruptcy in 2017 are now threatened by a return to the bad old days of constant bickering and dysfunction that brought the city to insolvency 10 years ago. We must move forward. We must create a safe, clean and prosperous community for all. We must demand experience, commitment and integrity in the office of mayor. We must bring together our community and city council. We must set aside egos, selfish ambition, greed and petty squabbles. We must deliver results for those who elect us and pay our salaries. If we devote ourselves as a community to these objectives, we will become a truly world class city. This is my promise should the voters decide I am their choice for mayor.”
-Mark Gutglueck

Former San Bernardino Fifth Ward City Councilman Henry Nickel has joined with Treasure Ortiz, Helen Tran, James Penman, Mohammad Khan and Gabriel Jaramillo in vying against incumbent John Valdivia for mayor in this year’s San Bernardino municipal contests.
Nickel is the newest addition to the race. It has long been known that Ortiz and Tran will attempt to unseat Valdivia, who has been steeped in controversy since even before sworn in as mayor in 2018. Penman, the former city attorney when that position in San Bernardino was an elected one who ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 2005 and 2009 and San Bernardino County District Attorney in 1994, announced he was running for mayor again last August. Khan and Jaramillo are more obscure candidates who nevertheless ow they are in the contest for real.
Less than a month after he was elected Mayor in November 2018, Valdivia was on the premises of an unlicensed marijuana marketing facility just shortly before it was robbed at gunpoint and the principal in the business shot. Reports ensued that Valdivia was there to shake the company down. Captain David Green of the police department conducted what the department maintains is a classified investigation of what had occurred. That report has never been released. Green was subsequently promoted to assistant police chief and is now the acting police chief.
The day Valdivia was sworn in as mayor, December 18, 2018, he initiated an effort to fire then-City Manager Andrea Travis-Miller. He achieved that goal by June 2019. Shortly thereafter, nearly a dozen applicants for commercial cannabis licenses and permits in the city came forward, stating that Valdivia had taken money from them in exchange for assurances that he could facilitate the approval of their marijuana-related operations. There were further reports of Valdivia taking money in exchange for arranging city council approval of city contracts, franchises and development proposals. One by one, a majority of the members of the ruling coalition on the city council that Valdivia considered his allies and whom he called upon to achieve his goals as mayor – Councilwoman Sandra Ibarra, Councilman Ted Sanchez and Nickel – disassociated themselves from him. Thereafter, three women working in the mayor’s office – Mirna Cisneros, Karen Cervantes, Jackie Aboud – and Alissa Payne, one of his appointees to the city’s Arts and Historical Preservation Commission and the San Bernardino Parks, Recreation and Community Services Commission, came forward with allegations that he was making sexual advances toward them. Cisneros and Aboud augmented those with allegations about political corruption in which Valdivia took official action in exchange for money. The accusation that Valdivia was taking money in exchange for government action was repeated by Don Smith, who had worked on Valdivia’s campaign for mayor and was subsequently hired by the city to serve as Valdivia’s part time field representative at the city. Matt Brown, who was brought in to serve as Valdivia’s chief of staff in August 2019, supported the charges of the others employed in the mayor’s office. Ultimately, Cisneros, Cervantes, Aboud, Smith and Brown retained attorney Tristan Pelayes and sued Valdivia and the city over their experience in working for Valdivia.
Ortiz has been critical of Valdivia from the outset of his mayoralty, and has remained his most vocal opponent.
Tran was San Bernardino’ human resources director. She came in for a round of criticism for failing to prevent or stem Valdivia’s mistreatment of Cisneros, Cervantes Aboud and Smith while she was still employed by the city. She left the city’s employ relatively early after the revelations about Valdivia’s interactions with his staff members. Some have suggested that Tran’s connection to the city administration during this critical span of inaction will doom her mayoral candidacy. Others have said they will withhold judgment to see if she will ultimately utilize the inside information she attained while with the city and utilize her campaign as a forum to engage in a wholesale expose of the dysfunction at City Hall and the full depth of Valdivia’s depredations.
Penman was long a Valdivia supporter, having been instrumental in Valdivia’s political rise in 2011 when he was elected Third Ward city councilman. He continued to support him, including in Valdivia’s campaign to unseat then-incumbent Mayor Carey Davis in 2018. Some found this curious, given Penman’s representation of himself as a reformist and the indications that were already extant of Valdivia’s willingness to conform his votes as a councilman to the will of those providing him with political donations or other payments. Penman now says that he is disappointed in Valdivia’s comportment as mayor.
Mohammad and Jaramillo are relatively new arrivals on the San Bernardino political scene. Not much is known about them, although some feel there is grounds to believe that Jaramillo is actually a stalking horse for Valdivia. Jarmillo has not leveled any criticism at Valdivia, and instead has made public statement decrying Ortiz as a divisive voice in the community, implying that her tirades against Valdivia are unwelcome and uncalled for. Jaramillo’s addition to the field of mayoral candidates, by the calculation of at least some political prognosticators and San Bernardino mayoral race handicappers is a benefit to Valdivia, who has substantial name recognition, the power of incumbency and $318,426.56 in his campaign war chest, which at present is far ahead of the $132,859.53 Tran has committed toward her electoral challenge and the $47,146.72 Penman has in his electioneering fund. The other candidates are well under those totals. Most election analysts concur that the more opponents that run against Valdivia in the June primary race, the better it is for him. They believe that based on his current name recognition and incumbent status, he will need to spend only about one-fifth to one fourth of the amount of money he has in his campaign fund to ensure first or second place in the June race, and thus a berth in the November run-off. He will then be able to utilize the remainder of his money, which at this point runs to more than $200,000 and will by then be far more based on the donations he can anticipate to receive between now and them, to ensure a victory over whoever his opponent is. In Conversely, with more and more candidates getting into the contest, for any of the current crop of challengers to ensure so much as a second place finish in June, he or she will need to spend virtually all of his or her currently available funding, leaving whoever that is at a tremendous disadvantage to Valdivia in the fall.
Nickel, who in the 2015 to 2018 timeframe, while he and Valdivia were both councilmen, had evolved into Valdivia’s closest ally on the council. That has now changed. Nickel grew wary of Valdivia as the latter’s megalomania in the role of mayor became apparent and he threw caution to the wind in seeking ever more money, both in the form of political donations, consulting fees and what most people consider to be payoffs.
In his 2020 stand for reelection, Nickel was damaged, on one hand, with some voters for his past association with Valdivia. On the other hand, he reaped little benefit by braking with Valdivia, since Valdvia, who was in a position to do so given his fat campaign fund coffers, offered Nickel no financial assistance in his reelection bid. He was beaten by Ben Reynoso for the Fifth District council post.
“Over the past year, many fellow residents have asked if I would consider running for mayor given my prior six years of experience as an effective collaborative council member,” Nickel told the Sentinel. “I have decided to do so. We are concerned the hard -fought gains made since the city exited bankruptcy in 2017 are now threatened by a return to the bad old days of constant bickering and dysfunction that brought the city to insolvency 10 years ago. We must move forward. We must create a safe, clean and prosperous community for all. We must demand experience, commitment and integrity in the office of mayor. We must bring together our community and city council. We must set aside egos, selfish ambition, greed and petty squabbles. We must deliver results for those who elect us and pay our salaries. If we devote ourselves as a community to these objectives, we will become a truly world class city. This is my promise should the voters decide I am their choice for mayor.”

A decade after he was convicted on 14 felony political corruption charges, Bill Postmus has made his way back into the San Bernardino County political game by constructing political money laundering operations which he has put at the disposal of a number of current elected officials, including Supervisors Curt Hagman, Dawn Rowe and Colonel Cook.

By delivering bribes and political donations to a wide cross section of both county and city officials, Postmus has already engineered diversions and springbacks of tens of millions of taxpayer dollars back to the individuals and companies who are making the illicit payments to those politicians. As it stands, the collection of business interests willing to funnel money to the county’s political elite are on a trajectory to reap hundreds of millions of more dollars in mostly no-bid public contracts or as proceeds from businesses which must be given selectively granted licensing or operating permits.

In 1980, when he was nine years old, Bill Postmus’s imagination was captured by the triumph of Ronald Reagan in that year’s presidential election, and the advancement of the conservative cause.

In the 1990s, while he was yet a student studying business administration at Redlands University, he volunteered on the campaigns of local Republican candidates. After college he found work for in the offices of Republican Assemblyman and later State Senator Jim Brulte, Republican Assemblywoman Kathleen Honeycutt, and Republican Assemblyman Keith Olberg. A resident of Phelan, at the age of 25, he co-founded the High Desert Young Republicans.

In 2000, Postmus was elected to the board of supervisors at the age of 29, making him, after Minor Cobb Tuttle in 1862, Norman Taylor in 1855, Robert McCoy in 1861, John C. Turner in 1893 and Gus Skropos in 1985, the sixth youngest county supervisor in San Bernardino County history. Four years later, in 2004, he became the second youngest chairman of the county board of supervisors after John C. Turner in 1895. That year he also became the chairman of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee, a perch from which he had control over the purse strings of the local GOP’s campaign war chest and held tremendous sway in determining who was elected to an overwhelming number of political offices in the county. In 2006 he expended more than $2 million in what yet remains the most expensive political campaign in county history when he successfully challenged the incumbent county assessor, Don Williamson, thereby acceding to the most powerful taxing position in San Bernardino County.
He had been the single most powerful political entity in San Bernardino County during his heyday, a virtual kingmaker. It was by his discretion, in the middle of the first decade of the Third Millennium, that over two dozen state senators, assembly members, mayors and council members had been provided with the clearance to run for the offices they held and the monetary and electioneering support they needed to win the contests that put them there. While Postmus was San Bernardino County’s Republican Party Chairman, four of the county’s five congressman were Republicans, four of the county’s five state senators were Republicans, seven of the county’s nine assembly members were Republicans, four of the county’s five supervisors were Republicans and 19 of the county’s 24 mayors were Republicans. Upon coming into the position of assessor, however, Postmus created two assistant assessor posts where there had previously been one, and then filled both with his political associates, neither of whom had previous experience in real estate or assessing property. Less than two years later, in 2008, even more serious questions had begun to emerge about Postmus’s judgment and basic honesty when it was revealed that he had installed into 13 of the assessor’s highest paying positions his political associates who had no real estate or assessor’s office experience, most of whom were engaged not in carrying out the legitimate function of the assessor’s office but were running political campaigns. Within short order, one of his appointees as assistant assessor, Adam Aleman, was criminally charged and convicted of one count of felony theft, one count of felony destruction, alteration, or falsification of a public document, one felony count of presenting a false claim to a public board or officer, and one felony count of vandalism. His other assistant assessor, Jim Erwin, was charged with eight felony counts of perjury and two felony counts of filing forged or falsified documents, one county of bribing a public official, one count of extortion, one county of embezzlement, one county of misappropriation of public funds and one count of forgery. Three other Postmus political associates who were hired into lucrative positions in the assessor’s office but were performing no work relating to assessing property or factories or assets for taxation purposes were charged, prosecuted and convicted of bilking taxpayers.

In January 2009, when investigators with the district attorney’s office arrived at his Rancho Cucamonga residence with a search warrant to seek evidence of misuse of his authority as assessor, a cache of methamphetamine was found. The following month, Postmus resigned as assessor.

In July 2009, Postmus was charged with four counts of embezzlement by a public officer, two counts of grand theft and one count of perjury pertaining to activities he had engaged in while he was assessor. These charges pertained to accusation he had used the office’s assets and facilities for purposes unrelated to the assessor’s function, and had taken money or reimbursements he was not entitled to.

In February 2010, Postmus was charged with five felonies – criminal conspiracy(Penal Code Section 182) 
- soliciting a bribe (Penal Code Section 86) 
- accepting a bribe as a public official (Penal Code Section 165) 
- engaging in a conflict of interest as a public official (Government Code Section 1090); and misappropriation of public funds (Penal Code Section 424). Those charges related to one of the last votes Postmus cast while he was supervisor and his acceptance of money in the aftermath of that vote from the the entity most directly impacted by his vote. The vote in question, made on November 28, 2006, conferred a $102 million settlement on the Colonies Partners development consortium relating to a lawsuit that company had brought against the county in 2002 over flood control issues at its residential and commercial subdivisions in the northeast quadrant of Upland. Postmus pleaded not guilty to the charges. Over the next 13 months, the original five charges relating to soliciting and receiving a bribe in his official capacity, embezzlement by a public official, conflict of interest by a public official and conspiracy would b augmented by three further charges, including fraud and perjury.

In March 2011, Postmus entered guilty pleas to 14 felony political corruption charges – eight stemming from his time as supervisor and six from his stint as assessor. He further pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor drug charge relating to the methamphetamine found in his home during the January 2009 search of those premises. in search of documents relating to the that had grown out of his 2009 and 2010 arrests, including conspiracy, bribery, misappropriation of public funds, conflict of interest, fraud and perjury, as well as pleading guilty to a single misdemeanor drug charge.

Acknowledged with his guilty pleas was that Postmus, in return for his vote to approve the $102 million settlement with the Colonies Partners in 2006 had sought and then accepted two separate political donations totaling $100,000 from the principals with the Colonies Partners, one of those being a $50,000 check dated June 28, 2007 to the Conservatives for a Republican Majority political action committee and a $50,000 check dated July 5, 2007 to the Inland Empire political action committee on July 5, 2007. The Inland Empire PAC and the Conservatives for a Republican Majority PAC were controlled by Postmus, his business and political associate, John “Dino” DeFazio, and Postmus’s political and personal associate, Adam Aleman.

The month after his guilty plea, Postmus became the tar witness before a grand jury, which in May 2011 returned an indictment against four of Postmus’s alleged co-conspirators with regard to the $102 million payout to the Colonies Partners – Erwin, who had been one of Postmus’s political associates and a Colonies Partners consultant before Postmus appointed him as of his two assistant assessors; Colonies Partners Managing Principal Jeff Burum, who had been instrumental in making donations to the three supervisors, including Postmus, who had approved the $102 million settlement; Postmus’s one-time board colleague and political associate Paul Biane, who as supervisor had provided one of the three crucial votes to approve the $102 million settlement and likewise received a $100,000 donation from the Colonies partners in the aftermath of that settlement; and Mark Kirk, the chief of staff to the third member of the board of supervisors, Gary Ovitt, who had ratified the $102 million settlement with his vote. A few months after his boss, Ovitt, made that vote, the Coloneis Partners cut a $100,000 check to a political action committee Kirk controlled.
Postmus’s sentencing on his convictions was held in abeyance as the trials for seven others caught up in the dual scandals involving the board of supervisors and assessor’s office played out since he was required, as part of his plea deal, to cooperate with the prosecution in testifying against those various defendants, whom he had acknowledged as his co-conspirators.

Pretrial legal sparring and appeals motions relating to several of those charged were delayed by more than six-and-a-half years, with the major trial involving Erwin, Colonies Partners Managing Principal Jeff Burum, Postmus’s one-time board colleague and political associate Paul Biane and Mark Kirk, who was the chief of staff to another of Postmus’s board colleagues and political associate, Gary Ovitt. Aleman, like Postmus, had already been convicted, along with three other of his political associates Postmus had given political patronage generously-remunerated phantom positions in the assessor’s offices to, ones where they did not need to show up – and often did not – to still collect a check paid by the county’s taxpayers.
During the interim from the indictment to the trial, Postmus found himself languishing. His conviction on the public official conflict of interest charge meant that he was banned for life from holding elected public office in California. Still, he longed to get back into the political game.
On April 8, 2013, Postmus sojourned to Cheyenne, Wyoming and registered with the Wyoming secretary of state’s corporate division Mountain States Consulting Group LLC, based in Cheyenne, as a Wyoming domestic limited liability company. Having learned the pitfalls of bribetaking and other forms of graft and corruption, Postmus wields Mountain States Consulting Group as a political money laundering operation.

Through his arrests and ensuing prosecution and conviction, Postmus has gained an implicit and explicit understanding of how the political system works and both the reach and limitations of the prosecutorial arm of the government in making politicians adhere to the law. He has attained a flawless feel for the circular pay-to-play element of control and governance where politicians take in money from those with an interest in the governmental decision-making process, use that money to get into office or stay in office and vote to approve the development projects or the contracts or the franchises of those who have donated that money. He was caught boldly and baldly doing just that. As the owner of Mountain States Consulting Group, he has created a way to for politicians to engage in pay-to-play trade-offs without getting caught and being stigmatized with criminal convictions as he had been. Mountain States Consulting Group takes money originating with individuals or companies with a stake in governmental decisions, launders that money through his company and then provides that cash, either as legitimate political donations or payments in some other form to the politicians making those decisions. Postmus employs Mountain States Consulting Group as a cutout, insulating the recipients of the money – the politicians – from those who are providing the money. When Postmus properly executes on this mission, it protects the politicians from the perception that their votes are being purchased, which has political benefits, while serving to lessen to a considerable extent the possibility that the politicians he is funneling money to will be subject to law enforcement action for engaging in what in the final analysis are quid pro quos, out-and-out bribes or kickbacks. Postmus also utilizes Mountain States Consulting Group to employ politicians or those considered to be up-and-coming in politics with phantom assignments, providing them with a way to hold body and soul together without actually having to work, freeing them up to engage in campaigning or other electioneering activity to advance political standing or careers.
In this way, Postmus managed to remain as a power broker in San Bernardino County political circles.
The trial for Burum, Biane, Erwin and Kirk took place over the course of nine months in 2017, during which Postmus was called as a prosecution witness. Burum, Biane and Kirk were acquitted. Erwin’s jury deadlocked, and was unable to reach a unanimous verdict on the charges against him. The failure of prosecutors to gain convictions against any of the defendants was in some measure considered to be a reflection of Postmus’s lack of credibility brought on by the scandal he had immersed himself in. Following the trial, prosecutors, highly conscious of Postmus’s credibility issue, forsook seeking a conviction against DeFazio on charges of assisting Postmus in laundering the bribe money he had admitted to taking from the Colonies Partners.
While Postmus was yet awaiting sentencing, he moved toward fully re-immersing himself into San Bernardino County politics. He started in Hesperia, a community with which he was intimately familiar. In 2014, he succeeded in getting his longtime political associate, Paul Russ, elected to the city council. In 2016, he strengthened his hold on Hesperia by successfully working, through Mountain States Consulting, in getting another political affiliate, Rebekah Swanson, elected to the city council.
After Hesperia Mayor Russ Blewett died in May 2018, Postmus acted rapidly to promote Brosowske as the appointee to fill the gap on the council Blewett’s passing had created. Indeed, Brosowske gained that appointment and then in November 2018, with the advantage of running as a council incumbent, Brosowske was elected to the council in his own right.
Prior to Postmus’s sentencing by Judge Michael A. Smith, the same judge who had presided over the trial of Burum, Biane, Erwin and Kirk, Postmus and his attorney, Jeffrey Lawrence, sought to withdraw Postmus’s 14 guilty pleas on political corruption charges entered in 2011. Judge Smith denied that motion and ultimately sentenced Postmus to three years in state prison.
Postmus reported to begin his sentence on November 30, 2018.
He was initially incarcerated within the state prison system, but because of so-called prison realignment codified in Assembly Bill 109 and passed by the California Legislature in 2011, he was returned to the custody of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. Because of the non-violent nature of Postmus’s crimes, a positive evaluation of Postmus’s behavior in custody and his expressed attitude, as well as his assertion of having undergone a religious conversion, Sheriff John McMahon released him in August 2019.
Postmus immediately picked up where he had left off. Having established himself as a successful political operative in the 2014, 2016 and 2018 election cycles, he was even more active during the 2020 election.
Most notably, Postmus moved to become a central player in the effort to assist those seeking permits and licensing to engage in the sale of marijuana in San Bernardino County and who were accordingly willing to generously reward the elected officials whose votes are needed to ratify the granting of those commercial cannabis licenses and permits.

In 1996, four years before Postmus was elected to the board of supervisors, California’s voter had passed Proposition 215, the compassionate Use of Marijuana Act, which made marijuana use legal for medicinal purposes by those who obtained a prescription for the drug from a licensed physician San Bernardino County officials, as well as those political and administrative leadership in all 24 of the county’s municipalities refused to allow marijuana dispensaries to be licensed or permitted for the next 16 years. At that point, Needles became the first San Bernardino County city to allow dispensaries to operate within its city limits, followed by Adelanto in 2015. Throughout his time on the board of supervisors, Postmus was at the forefront of those holding the line against cannabis legalization. He derisively dismissed advocates of the availability of marijuana for medical use as “potheads” who were seeking to use the medical applicability of the drug as a ruse to obtain and use it for its intoxicative effect. Legalized availability of marijuana would never happen as long as he was in office, Postmus vowed, because the use of the drug was “immoral.” After the end of his political career, [Needles Adelanto] In 2016, California’s voters passed the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, which legalized marijuana for recreational purposes. Needles and Adelanto, having previously established commercial marijuana-based enterprises, including both dispensaries and cultivation facilities, made a smooth transition to catering to a far larger customer base, cutting their municipal operations in on a substantial flow of revenue based on the taxes and fees to be imposed on marijuana sales, or so they hoped. Meanwhile, San Bernardino’s voters in 2016 had passed a citizen-proposed measure calling for the legalized sale of marijuana within that city’s confines. Barstow sought to get in on the marijuana bonanza as well. In Hesperia, the city council did not buy into the marijuana frenzy whole hog, but its council did agree to allow distributors of the drug to operate their, provided there was adequate security at the businesses, there was no onsite sale of the drug, no signs advertising the drug or product at the delivery warehouses, and the vehicles used no logos or markings and did not display any advertisements for marijuana or cannabis products. Upon the legalization of the substance, Postmus turned on a dime and began representing what is now known as the “Postmus cartel,” a group of cannabis entrepreneurs who have achieved licenses and permits to run cannabis-related businesses in Adelanto by bribing the likes of former Adelanto Mayor Rich Kerr, current Adelanto Mayor GabrielReyes, former Adelanto Councilman John Woodard, former Adelanto Councilman Jermaine Wright, current San Bernardino Mayor John Valdivia and current San Bernardino Councilman Juan Figueroa.

Key to this program was stirring up law enforcement to carry out operations crippling the competition of the cannabis-related businesses that Postmus represents. Behind the scenes, through his connection with former San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon, Assemblyman Thurston “Smitty” Smith, San Bernardino County Supervisor Paul Cook, San Bernardino County Supervisor Curt Hagman and San Bernardino County Supervisor Dawn Rowe, the sheriff’s department has carried out more than a yearlong effort at eradicating “illicit” marijuana growing operations, meaning those cannabis-related operations that are not run by owners investors and operators who are delivering money to the politicians in control of the marijuana business permitting through Postmus. In January 2021, a stepped-up marijuana eradication effort was initiated, the brainchild of former Sheriff McMahon. It was perpetuated by McMahon’s designated successor, Shannon Dicus, and was dubbed Operation Hammer Strike on August 30, 2021 after having been granted by the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors a $million augmentation in the 2021-22 San Bernardino County Budget. Over the course of the six months since August 30 and the first of this month, the sheriff’s Hammer Strike task force served 588 search warrants, seized 668,299 marijuana plants, 111,268.8 pounds of processed marijuana, 203 guns, 30.7 pounds of concentrated marijuana, 92.8 pounds of psilocybin mushrooms, 144 grams of meth and cocaine, and $2,399,595.00 in illegal narcotic sales proceeds. In the process, the department dismantled 15 cannabinol extraction laboratories and 28 electrical bypasses along with 4,124 greenhouses. Unmolested by the sheriff’s Department throughout that time and the eight previous months have been the cultivation operations for the various thriving commercial marijuana enterprises set up by those individuals and entities which retained Postmus to deliver political grease to the county’s elected decision-makers, including members of the board of supervisors, District Attorney Jason Anderson and Dicus, who is now involved in an election campaign to maintain himself in the sheriff’s post that was handed off to him by McMahon and confirmed by a vote of the board of supervisors on[Date]. The thriving marijuana cultivation and sales operations include one in which Postmus is himself involved through his business partnership with John Dino DeFazio. Operation Hammer Strike’s activity consists virtually exclusively of physical operations on the ground involving raids on, in virtually all cases, marijuana cultivation facilities, whether they are in the open, within greenhouses and nurseries, commercial or industrial buildings and residences. The sheriff’s department has, as a part of Operation Hammer Strike, committed no resources to tracking the financial activity accompanying the uptick in cannabis-related marijuana commercial activity in San Bernardino County, which involves the illicit payments made to politicians to grease the way for the marijuana businesses that are thriving to maintain their advantageous position, payoffs to the members of the board of supervisors included as well as political donations to Anderson and Dicus.

San Bernardino County has sponsored new state legislation AB 2728 and SB 1426 that will increase fines for illegal cannabis farming and target the illegal pollution of groundwater by illicit cannabis cultivators. The county is also seeking $10 million in state funding to clean up environmental damage at hundreds of illegal cannabis sites and is strongly backing several related illegal cannabis bills in Sacramento.

“Illegal cannabis farming is devastating the desert communities of San Bernardino County,” said Board of Supervisors Chairman Curt Hagman. “The County is determined to stop this terrible damage to the environment and to protect the lives and property of our residents from lawless criminals.”

While Postmus’s involvement in establishing licensed, permitted and protected marijuana-related enterprises is perhaps the most remarkable element of his political comeback, given his past opposition to marijuana in any form and the extent to which he has compromised the law enforcement institution of the sheriff’s department in doing so, the majority of the clients Postmus’s political activity is advancing are involved in what are essentially routine applications of the government’s authority, primarily approving government contracts, franchises and development projects processed by various governmental entities as the ultimate land use authority within their various jurisdictions.

For many, government is a cash cow. For those who are government employees, their paychecks come from the government. For those who are involved in the development and building industry, the permits, permission and entitlements to build are granted by the government. Those who sell goods or provide services to the government are dependent upon the decision-makers in government to look kindly upon them, to contract with them rather than their competitors to provide those goods or services. There is a special lass of businesses, ones that are given franchises by the government who are dependent upon government officials to make decisions that will allow them to prosper. Franchises are businesses that are given special licenses to operate that are restricted to a select few, such that not just anyone can engage in what they do Franchises are given to some and denied to others. Falling within the franchise category are ambulance operators taxi companies, tow trucks that are on police and fire department rotations, trash haulers and the like.

Ultimately it is elected officials, based upon the guidance and recommendation of the administration or management of the governments structures they head who make decisions to determine which development projects will be allowed and which ones will not, which company will get contracts to deliver goods and provide services and which ones won’t be able to market their wares or talents to the government, which applicants for franchises will be selected and which ones will be rejected.

The six years Postmus spent in office at the head of county government and the two years he headed a primary division of the county government gave him a close-up window on how government operates and its vulnerabilities. At this stage he is using his intimate knowledge of those vulnerabilities to assist those who want to exploit government for their own purposes.

A safeguard built into government in California meant to protect the state and its taxpayers consists of the competitive bidding requirements that apply to public contracts or most public contracts. Generally, when a municipal or county government or an agency or district in California seeks goods or needs work performed or services provided, it engages in a bid process by making what is referred to as a request for proposal or request for qualifications relating to a certain tasks, inviting vendors to submit a bid for a specified item, set of items or product or in the case of services a bid on a specifically outlined service. In most cases, those bids are confidential ones, literally sealed in an envelope that would betray itself as having been opened prior to the official unsealing of the bids. Only bids deemed responsive to or in keeping with the requested service or project description are considered. The lowest responsive bid is awarded the contract.

There is a subset of governmental contracts, however, which are exempt from competitive bid requirements. Among the services Postmus now provides is to “politically wire” things so that those companies intent on gaining these governmental contracts that are exempt from competitive bids can land those contracts. Postmus does this by delivering money provided by his client seeking such a non-bid contract to the politicians who must ultimately approve the contract.

A case in point is that of Alliance Building Solutions, a company owned by Brad Chapman. Alliance Business Solutions has grown over the past 58 years from a relatively small mechanical contractor to a mid-size electrical, mechanical, heating, ventilation and air conditioning company with a specialized sideline in efficientizing buildings and facilities in terms of energy use, including augmenting them with insulation, reducing electricity consumption, installing solar panels on roofs and south-facing and the like. In recent years, Alliance Building Solutions succeeded in obtaining from the cities of Fontana, Rialto and Upland no-bid contracts for such energy efficiency makeovers. An exception to the competitive bid requirement for public agencies and governments in California relates to energy efficiency projects. As long as a public agency or government can demonstrate that the work or service to be provided will result in improved energy efficiency or a reduction in fuel or energy use as well as show that some savings in cost will accrue to the entity contracting for the service, it need not conduct a bidding process but can simply award a contract to a provider of that service.

By hiring Postmus to lobby on his behalf, Chapman made sure that the no-bid contracts that Fontana, Rialto and Upland engaged in to make their facilities more energy efficient went to Alliance Building Solutions rather than any of a multitude of other companies that provide he same service, including ones that would do the work at a lesser cost, in some cases significantly lesser cost.

At present, Postmus is awork seeking to get Fontana to enter into further contracts with Alliance Building Solutions, and he is similarly engaged in lining up no-bid contract work for Allied Building Solutions with the County of San Bernardino.

Key to that effort in Fontana is Postmus coordinating with Mayor Acquanetta Warren, to whose electioneering fund he has already as a conduit to vector tens of thousands of dollars in donations from a variety of donors, as well as with Phil Cothran Sr., the father of Fontana City Councilman Phil Cothran Jr. Phil Cothran Sr., since early 2021, has been the chairman of the San Bernardino Country Republican Central Committee, the position Postmus once held. Phil Cothran Sr. is no stranger to political fundraising, having been involved in Fontana politics for some time, formerly as one of the top three or four campaign donors active in Fontana. In particular, Phil Cothran Sr has been a major patron of Warren, who was appointed to the council in 2002, was elected and then reelected as councilwoman in 2004 and 2008, and elected mayor in 2010. It was with Phil Cothran Sr’s backing that Warren was able to solidify her political grip on the city. As his involvement with the Republican Party has intensified in recent years, Phil Cothran Sr. has become more and more involved in touching others for donations to the causes and the candidates he believes in. Upon becoming chairman of the central committee, he did not hesitate to turn to Postmus for assistance in raising money for the party and the party’s candidates, based in large measure on the historic success Postmus achieved in his fundraising efforts. According to one source with a window on behind-the-scenes developments within the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee, Phil Cothran Sr. has delegated to Postmus and to Dakota Higgins, an elected member of the Republican Central Committee who is also the assistant chief of staff to San Bernardino County First District Supervisor Paul Cook, management of the county central committee’s fundraising efforts.

An element of Postmus’s fundraising success has always been and continues to be his understanding that donors need to be confident that they are getting something in return for their donations if they are going to be generous. Postmus has long recognized donors must have confidence that they are receiving something real in return rather than something insubstantial and intangible such as “access.” In practical terms, that means conveying to the donors that they are buying favorable treatment in the future from the politicians they are donating to, whether that will be approval of their project proposals, approval of their contracts to provide goods or services to the city, county or agency the politician heads or the granting or continuation of a franchise to that donor or his/her company. In this way, donations are considered investments, ones by which pennies can be transubstantiated into veritable fortunes. Postmus is able to easily convince those transacting business locally that it is in their interest to provide $1,000 or $2,000 or $5,000 or $10,000 up front to an officeholder with an assurance that when the time comes, the politician who received that money will vote to approve action that allows an enterprise by which that donor will see a profit in the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars.

A problem is that such exchanges of money for votes are illegal. While under California law a politician can receive a political donation from an individual or entity who has business before an elected board or panel of which that politician is a member and then vote on matters relating to that donor and/or his/her company or undertaking, those donations and receipt of the donations cannot be conditional. That is, a politician cannot commit or promise to take any official action or vote as an official in exchange for a donation. Such an arrangement is a quid pro quo, which in Latin means “this for that.” Engaging in a quid pro quo is tantamount to bribery.

What Postmus has done is to construct for his clients and many of San Bernardino County’s politicians – the bribers and the bribe-takers – what is simultaneously a simple and complex fiction that can be maintained, one that holds that bribery is not occurring. Postmus instructs his client to either make a donation directly to a politician or in the alternative to entrust the money to him so he can filter the money to that politician. Postmus or someone working with him in the same timeframe approaches the politician to explain what it is that the donor wants to achieve and how that goal at some point can be held up or facilitated by a vote by the politician in the future. An understanding is achieved all the way around as to what is to occur. In this way, the donor and the politician may likely never meet or exchange so much as pleasantries and both the donor and the politician can truthfully say, if either or both is ever queried about the relationship between the donation and the vote, that they never met, never spoke and as such could not have concluded between themselves a corrupt and illegal deal.

In Fontana, both Mayor Warren and Phil Cothran Jr. are vying for reelection this year. Warren and Phil Cothran Sr have been the co-architects of young Phil Cothran Jr’s political career. Postmus has through the conveyance of Chapman’s money to various campaign funds – those of Warren, Cothran Jr and the GOP fund controlled by Cothran Sr as the head of the San Bernardino County Republican Party – secured Warren’s and Cothran Jr’s future votes for granting Allied Building Solutions no-bid contracts on further energy efficiency conversions of city facilities which will exclude the consideration of granting those contracts to Allied Building Solutions’ competitors in the industry. This has extended itself to ensuring that Warren’s other two allies on the council – John Roberts and Pete Garcia – will approve the Allied Building Solutions contracts when they are considered by the city council.

Simultaneously, Postmus is seeking to work his magic on behalf of Alliance Building Solutions with the governmental structure in San Bernardino County, where given the sheer size of San Bernardino County – a land area larger than the states of Rhode Island, Delaware,, Connecticut and New Hampshire, combined – the number of county buildings and facilities represent potential contracts worth well in excess of $100 million to the company or companies that can gain contracts to uprate their energy efficiency.

Accordingly, Postmus has already effectively moved to purchase influence with three of the county’s five supervisors – having essentially slipped them into his hip pocket – and is gunning mightily to take ownership of a fourth.

Three of the current members of the board of supervisors – Curt Hagman, Paul Cook and Dawn Rowe – have what is perhaps best described as a schizophrenic relationship with Bill Postmus. Within the political and top-level governmental bubble in which they function that includes their board colleagues, other politicians they consider to be their political allies, their own staffs, the senior administrative/management of the county and their political supporters and the electioneering networks they coordinate with, Hagman, Cook and Rowe make no secret of, indeed seem to be proud of and will even brag about, their closeness to Postmus and the degree to which they seek his advice and adhere to his counsel. Outside that circle, however, they are loathe to acknowledge the interaction they have had and continue to have with him. They are aware of Postmus’s history, his convictions and his reputation for dirty and underhanded politics. Though the scandals he involved himself in occurred more than a decade in the past and much or even all of what they entailed have faded from the collective public consciousness, they understand that open association with him could prove exceedingly difficult, particularly if a committed political opponent comes into possession of too many of the details of that association.

As a consequence, the working out of the intricacies of the arrangements of what Postmus wants accomplished has been entrusted to the support networks around the supervisors and within the senior levels of the county bureaucracy. There are two immediate benefits to the supervisors from this approach. Firstly, it insulates the supervisors from Postmus, perpetuating their ostensible separation from him. Secondly, it makes for a situation in which the action eventually taken to benefit Postmus’s clients is the final outcome of a process during which the supervisors can claim they are merely voting in accordance with a recommendation provided to them by county staff.

Postmus has already engaged in extensive fundraising on behalf of Hagman, Cook and Rowe. And Hagman, Rowe and Cook have tolerated – indeed more than tolerated and in fact in some cases encouraged or required – that the taxpayer-paid employees of their supervisorial offices participate in their political campaigns. This was the case of both Supervisor Hagman’s former chief of staff, the late Mike Spence, and his current chief of staff, Yekaterina Kolcheva. It is equally true of Supervisor Cook’s chief of staff, Tim Itnye, and his deputy chief of staff, Dakota Higgins, both of whom were heavily involved in the campaigns that got Cook reelected to Congress in 2016 and 2018, when they were members of his Congressional staff, as well as elected supervisor in 2020. Supervisor Rowe’s chief of staff, Matt Knox, who was formerly a member of Cook’s Congressional staff along with Rowe, worked on Cook’s Congressional races as well, playing a particularly important part in thwarting Cook’s most aggressive opponent, Tim Donnelly, in 2018. Following Rowe’s appointment to the board of supervisors in 2018, Knox was hired by Rowe to serve as her chief of staff. He then played a major role in running her successful election campaign in 2020 to retain her position as Third District county supervisor.

While the practice of allowing employees working within the governmental offices of elected officials to become heavily involved in those officials’ electoral campaigns is not limited solely to San Bernardino County, it is as widespread there, or more, than anywhere else. In this way, the distinction between government and politics has become utterly blurred, and those who have decried the situation have been marginalized as unrealistic idealists or dismissed entirely as cranks. The seeming ubiquity of political operatives on the staffs of the county’s top tier decision-makers has created a situation in which policy is shaped to benefit those willing to sustain a particular supervisor in office and perpetuate the employment of the staff members in high-paying positions they would be unlikely to achieve in the private sector.

Kolcheva is provided with a salary and pay add-ons of 145,892.46 yearly plus benefits of $52,996.35 for a total annual compensation of 198,888.81. Itnyre earns $133,807.27 in salary and pay add-ons plus 49,313.94 in benefits for a total annual compensation of $183,121.21. Matt Knox’s salary and add-ons are $164,013.89, which together with his benefits of $57,602.95 gives him a total annual compensation of $221,616.84. Higgins is provided with a salary and pay add-ons of $113,061.20 per year plus $41,922.09 for a total annual compensation of $154,983.29. Their salaries and benefits provide the senior staff members of the supervisors with an incentive to keep the supervisors in office, such that they often find it expedient to assist those who are contributing to the political campaigns of their employers to achieve the goals they are pursuing.

Thus, Postmus has found ready allies in Kolcheva, Itnyre and Knox, as well as Higgins, with whom he has a secondary relationship as co-coordinator of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee’s fundraising efforts.

Every bit if not more important to Postmus’s political operations targeting county government in San Bernardino County are the two senior staff members for the county overall, County Chief Executive Officer Leonard Hernandez and County Chief Operating Officer Luther Snoke.

Though both Hernandez and Snoke ostensibly are devoted to running the county and are supposed to be immune from political influences, both are highly attuned to political nuance. Word throughout the county, particularly in certain county departments such as Real Estate and Building and Land Use Services, is that both Hernandez and Snoke know that Postmus has delivered and is continuing to deliver political grease to supervisors Hagman, Rowe and Cook to get their acquiescence with regard to a whole host of projects and contracts that the board has already considered and voted upon as well as upcoming items.

Both Hernandez and Snoke are cognizant of the political money laundering operation Postmus has set up and that the board majority expects of them both that they facilitate the approval of the projects and the awarding of the contracts that Postmus’s clients are pursuing. According to sources within the county, neither Hernandez nor Snoke are recipients of the payoffs being provided to Hagman, Cook and Rowe. Rather, Hernandez and Snoke are playing their parts in the tangle of bribery, money laundering, no-bid contracts, foreordained project approvals, the waiving of requirements, the suspension of codes and regulations and the corruption of the basic functions of county government in order to maintain themselves in their lucrative county positions.

At present, Snoke is provided with a total annual compensation of $383,129.46, consisting of a $225,812.94 salary, additional pay of $29,030.71 and benefits of $128,285.81.

Hernandez’s salary of $378,294.27 when added to his other pay of $40,088.80 plus benefits of $190,542.89 gives him a total annual compensation of $608,925.96.

County employees have told the Sentinel that Hernandez and Snoke risk being fired if they do not facilitate the advancement of Postmus’s clients in their application for project and contract approvals.

Both Hernandez and Snoke declined to respond to a series of questions posed to them by the Sentinel, including whether they were being pressured by the members of the board of supervisors or by Postmus directly to provide recommendations to the board of supervisors that they vote to approve projects by proponents represented by Postmus or award contracts to companies that are employing Postmus as a lobbyist.

County employees have told the Sentinel that both Hernandez and Snoke know that supervisors Hagman, Rowe and Cook are on the take and they are going along with the arrangements to keep a hold on their respective high compensation positions. Hernandez is aware, the Sentinel was told, that Postmus made an arrangement for Supervisor Rowe to get a $1.2 million house in Redlands as a means of securing her cooperation and that a deal has been cut with Supervisor Cook to engineer the election of Itnyre as his successor with Cook’s retirement in 2024.

Reports were that Hernandez and Snoke have met with Postmus directly, at which meetings Postmus instructed them on how to structure future county action to meet with his clients’ expectations.

Among the questions both Hernandez and Snoke declined to answer were ones on whether each of them have had recent interaction with Postmus. The Sentinel on February 3 made requests of the county under the California Public Records Act, seeking Hernandez’s and Snoke’s calendars going back to September 2020, when each moved into their respective positions as county chief executive officer and county chief operating officer, to ascertain if they have been meeting with Postmus. On February 28, the county responded to those requests stating that Hernandez’s and Snoke’s calendars would not be provided as they are “exempt from disclosure under the Public Records Act.”

Snoke is front-ending for Allied Building Solutions, and is preparing to present a series of proposals that the county modernize more than a dozen of its facilities and buildings with energy efficiency conversions, the Sentinel was informed. Even though the county could carry out a competitive bidding process to enlist a contractor to do that work, county employees told the Sentinel, when that proposal is presented, Snoke will utilize the exemption in state law allowing energy efficiency projects to be undertaken without engaging in a competitive bid process, and will deliver a recommendation that the contracts be conferred upon Allied Building Solutions.

One giveaway that both Hernandez and Snoke are coordinating county programs in a way that is favorable toward Postmus and Postmus’s clients consists of the virtual carte blanche that has been provided to Tri-Land at the county’s Land Use Services Department. Tri-Land is a company co-owned by Postmus and his longtime business partner and political associate, John Dino DeFazio.

DeFazio was so emboldened by his association with Postmus and the confidence that Postmus can pull strings improperly at the county that he was attempting to negotiate the fees and charges, which are uniformly set, for obtaining permits to proceed with his projects in the county’s unincorporated areas, according to one statement provided to the Sentinel.

In his effort to profiteer off of the newfound societal tolerance of marijuana in California, Postmus did not limit himself to merely representing would-be cannabis entrepreneurs. He also engaged himself as a silent partner in a marijuana cultivation and marketing enterprise headed by DeFazio. The Postmus/DeFazio marijuana-based company is among those the sheriff’s department has assumed a hands-off approach toward while pursuing the closure of over 800 cultivation operations elsewhere in the county.

Postmus, as the former First District Supervisor, has especial contact and entrée with the current First District supervisor and supervisorial office staff.

Last year Postmus was able to replicate a coup he was able to pull off several years ago as he was seeking to get back into the political game.

In 2014 Postmus had assisted his longtime political associate Paul Russ in his successful effort to get him elected to the Hesperia City Council. Two years later, while Postmus was assisting Rebekah Swanson, another political associate from his past in her ultimately successful run for the city council, Russ, at Postmus’s instigation, ran for First District supervisor. Joining him in the race was another member of the Hesperia City Council, Bill Holland. Perhaps at Postmus’s suggestion, neither Russ nor Holland assailed one another, almost as if they were running in tandem against the incumbent, Robert Lovingood, and two other challengers. During the course of the campaign, Russ and Holland were provided with $19,000 and $16,000, respectively by Wyn Holmes and Randall Friend, the principals in a Newport Beach-based company known as Eagle 55. Eagle 55 at that time was pursuing approval of the first phase of “The Villas,” a senior citizens apartment complex. A specified number of the units were reserved for low-to-moderate, low- and very low-income residents. Holmes and Friend sought clearance to proceed with the project without having to engage in a bidding competition against other builders. Moreover they applied for a virtually interest-free $3.8 million loan to be used toward completing the $13 million project. The Hesperia City Council, including Russ and Holland, that year voted to give the project go-ahead and Holmes and Friend the $3.8 million loan.

Subsequently, the California Fair Political Practices Commission looked into the matter, initially on the basis that the $19,000 and $16,000 donations were violations of the county’s then-$4,200 per donor campaign contribution cap. Ultimately, the California Fair Political Practices Commission took action against Holmes and Friend, imposing fines on them, which they deemed to be part of the price of doing business in San Bernardino County. The FPPC action did not overturn the approval of the first phase of The Villas project, and it was completed.

Last year, Postmus approached Supervisor Cook as well as Itnyre and Higgins, importuning them to work with Holmes and Friend in undertaking and completing phase 2 of The Villas 55+ Senior Community project. Cook, Itnyre and Higgins prevailed upon Hernandez to explore the possibility of the project be carried out under the auspices of the county government, despite the consideration that it is located not within the county’s unincorporated area but within the City of Hesperia. Hernandez handed the assignment of dealing with the project off to Snoke.

 Based upon his relationship with Postmus as a fundraiser, confident, advisor, predecessor in the office of First District supervisor and “friend,” Supervisor Cook assented to use money from the discretionary fund for specific priorities in the First District to initiate the second phase of Eagle 55’s “The Villas” project. On December 14, 2021, Hernandez and Snoke, utilizing a staff report authored by Snoke which was presented by Hernandez to the board of supervisors, facilitated the board of supervisors’ consideration and passage of action approving a $5.5 million affordable housing loan to Eagle Hesperia 55 II, L.P. for the construction of the second phase of “The Villas.” Both Hernandez and Mr. Snoke recommended that the loan be made. The action taken in accordance with their recommendation made it so that no bidding on the project took place and the requirement that Eagle 55 pay prevailing wage or union scale wages to the construction workers on the project was waived.

     The Sentinel has learned that Bill Postmus and DeFazio are minority owners in Eagle 55. Bill Postmus’s activity in providing money to Supervisor Hagman, Supervisor Rowe and Supervisor Cook suggests a quid pro quo arrangement.

The Sentinel is informed that both Hernandez and Snoke were aware during the county’s dealings with Eagle 55 with regard to the $5.5 million affordable housing loan for The Villas project that Postmus and DeFazio had a financial interest in the Eagle 55 ventures.

San Bernardino County Chief Deputy Controller Vanessa Doyle signed off on the county providing the loan to Eagle 55. The Sentinel initiated several inquiries with Doyle, both in the form of an electronically carbon copied email exploring the subject sent to other high-ranking county officials and phone messages for her left directly at her office. Among the questions Doyle did not respond to was whether it was made clear to her that Postmus and DeFazio had a financial stake in the Eagle 55 project and whether she independently had developed precise knowledge as to the fundraising and political money launder activity Postmus had engaged in on behalf of Hagman, Cook and Rowe before she affixed her imprimatur and that of the county auditor-controller’s office to the $5.5 million affordable housing loan for The Villas project. Doyle did not respond to the Sentinel.

The Sentinel did succeed in reaching Doyle’s ultimate boss, Auditor-Controller/Treasurer/Tax Collector Ensen Mason.

Mason did not explicitly say whether Doyle knew about the tangle of relationships involving Hagman, Cook, Rowe, Postmus, DeFazio, Holmes and Friend prior to her certification of the loan, though he suggested that information would not have been provided to her.

“Our role is very limited,” Mason said with regard to the auditor-controller’s participation in the consideration of the county’s issuance of the loan. “It is merely an accounting function.”

He said of Doyle, “All she did was review the financing numbers to say they were correct. I don’t believe determining whether or not that particular company should have been eligible for a loan has anything to do with what our function is. The supervisors are an independently elected body. What they are doing is completely out of my wheelhouse by design because they answer to the public, not to me. I don’t know if providing that company with the loan violated any of the county’s policies or not. If the issue is how they voted, that is something you need to ask them about.”

The Sentinel, having already sought to obtain from Hagman, Cook, Rowe, Hernandez, and Snoke their version of why they have allowed Postmus, more than a decade after his political career imploded in scandal, to advance to a position in which he has reasserted in a very real sense control over the county’s governmental structure, redoubled those efforts. None was willing to go on the record.

Last year, the Sentinel did manage to flag down Cook, asking him if he thought it wise, given Postmus’s history, for the county’s leadership to be associating itself with him and allowing him to raise political funds on their behalf.

“That’s politics,” Cook said, shrugging. He said that Postmus had been processed by the justice system, paid his debt to society and should be allowed to participate in an arena – politics – in which he had shown true talent.

According to county employees, Principal Assistant County Counsel Julie Surber and Deputy County Counsel Suzanne Bryant are knowledgeable about illegitimate goings-on behind the scenes at the county and issues involving Postmus and his distribution of political grease to county officials. Surber and Bryant have been brought face-to-face with the circumstance, the county employees say, because of the manipulations deals involving Postmus’s clients come into conflict with county Policy 11-01, which specifies that all procurements are to be solicited on a competitive basis.

The Sentinel has proven unsuccessful in getting Surber or Bryant to open up with regard to what they know, which is not unsurprising given that they are technically Hagman’s, Cook’s and Rowe’s Hernandez’s and Snoke’s legal representatives and are bound by the principle of attorney-client confidentiality.

In 2020, then-Fifth District Supervisor Josie Gonzales was prevented from seeking reelection as a consequence of the county’s term limits. Four competitors to replace her emerged that electoral season, including then-Fontana Councilman Jesse Armendarez, who was then a member of Mayor Acquanetta Warren’s ruling coalition.

Postmus was active in the effort to support Armendarez’s candidacy. Armendarez raised $991,766.52 for the campaign, including $214,523.03 in 2019, $578,993.79 during 2020 and $55,871.79 in 2021 after the race was concluded. Armendarez expended $721,371.70 in calendar 2020 on both the March primary and November general elections and managed to poll 26.88 percent in the March primary, which was good enough to overcome third and fourth place finishers Dan Flores and Nadia Renner, who, respectively collected $237,919.42 and $19,164.35, spent $251,463.11 and 21,240.09 and polled 18.14 percent and 14.76 percent in the primary. That was good enough to get the second place-finisher Armendarez into the November final against Baca, who received 40.22 percent for first place in the March race. Baca collected $484,262.80, for his entire campaign, including $88,213 in 2019 and $396,049 in 2020 and spent $474,370.80 overall. In the November 2020 final, Baca triumphed solidly over Armendarez 58.49 percent to 41.51 percent.

Last year, in accordance with the 2020 Census, San Bernardino County reset its district maps. In the previous map, roughly two thirds of the westernmost side of the city was in the Second Supervisorial District, with approximately one third of the city on the east side in the Fifth District. With the redrawing of the county district map, all of Fontana was placed in the Second District.

Both Armendarez and Renner, who live on the east side of Fontana, have now qualified their candidacies for Second District supervisor in this year’s race. Also in the contest are Cucamonga Valley Water District Board Member Luis Cetina; Eric Eugene Coker, the previous president of Me Management Solutions and the current owner of PC Pricebusters; and DeJonaé Shaw, a licensed vocational nurse.

Postmus along with Hagman, Cook and Rowe have endorsed Armendarez, along with Warren and councilmen Cothran, Garcia and Roberts.

There is concern at the highest level of the county that a group of county employees who are knowledgeable about what corners have been cut and deals involving quid pro quos and the suspension of policy and law will initiate action that could prove highly problematic for multiple members of the county’s political and governmental establishment. Efforts have begun to trace out who those “disloyalists” are, the Sentinel is told.

A department head considered disloyal is Real Estate Services Director Terry Thompson. Assuming Hagman, whose second term as supervisor is coming to a close this year, is reelected and Armendarez gains election, Thompson will be sacked, the Sentinel is informed, shortly after Armendarez is sworn in.