By Mark Gutglueck
Since March of last year, inmates in San Bernardino County’s jails have been dying at the rate of about one every 38 days. As time has moved forward, the pace of death has been increasing to the point that within the slightly more than three months of 2016 so far, there have been five such fatalities, accelerating to one every 19 days. Officially, the department acknowledges that only one of those was a clear cut case of homicide. At least four have been chalked up to suicide. Medical reasons, at least tentatively, were given as the causes in the remaining cases.
Unacknowledged officially but recognized almost universally at the street level is that in most if not all of the cases attributed to medical factors there was at the very least some degree of negligence. Information as to how relatively young and healthy individuals in a closed, controlled and monitored environment would just expire has not been forthcoming, with the department citing the deceased inmates’ medical privacy as preventing disclosure of pertinent information in that regard. The department and the county wish to avoid going down that road because of the liability the underlying circumstances represent. Moreover, in the cases of alleged suicide, negligence is again a factor that muddies the water. Beneath that shroud are suggestions that some of the alleged suicides and the deaths attributed to medical factors may actually have been homicides perpetrated by an individual or individuals within the jail, perhaps another inmate or other inmates or one or more of the jailors.
To members of the public on the outside, events within the jail system under normal circumstances are difficult to track. Given the nature of what has transpired and the absolute control the sheriff’s department has over the incarceration facilities and the ebb and flow of information therefrom, a virtual curtain of silence has descended over the situation, making the matters even more opaque than usual.
The lack of clarity has extended to the public’s inability to obtain access to the coroner’s reports or autopsies done in the deaths’ aftermaths. In at least four of those cases, there is something to suggest that the department is being tightfisted with the information it possesses because of yet ongoing investigations. This implies that potential suspects in those investigations are or may be deputies working in the jails. The dissemination of information relating to the deaths could foreclose the use of investigative methods intended to obtain information implicating a suspect or suspects that would be based upon the forensic verification of facts known only to the perpetrator or perpetrators.
Since March 2015, there have been ten deaths of inmates while incarcerated in the county sheriff’s detention facilities. One of those occurred at the Twin Peaks sheriff’s station holding facility. One other occurred at the Big Bear sheriff’s station. The other eight occurred at the West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga. Another in-custody death, the eleventh in that time span, occurred prior to the arrestee being booked into a facility. Two of the eleven dead were woman. Nine of the dead were men. Two of those who died were African Americans. Four of those who died were Caucasian. Five of those who died were Hispanic. The average age of those who died was 37. The actual ages of each of victims were 33, 28, 19, 23, 50, 54, 58, 40, 33, 30 and 48.
In chronological order and based upon what information has been released by the sheriff’s department, here is what is known about the eleven deaths:
On Saturday, March 28, 2015 at 1:30 p.m. Gilbert Mesa, 33 of Sugarloaf, arrived at the Big Bear Station at 477 Summit Blvd. in Big Bear Lake to provide a statement regarding an assault with a deadly weapon investigation, in which he was named as the suspect. Following the interview, Mesa was arrested and booked into the Big Bear jail. According to the sheriff’s department, Mesa was the sole occupant of the cell. At 8:15 p.m. the jail deputy observed Mesa, and Mesa acknowledged the deputy. At 8:50 p.m. the jail deputy was conducting his observation logs when he saw Mesa hanging from the top of his bunk, with his shoelaces tied around his neck. Deputies quickly cut the shoelaces from his neck, called for medical aid and began CPR. Fire personnel responded and transported Mesa to Bear Valley Community Hospital. On Sunday, March 29, 2015 at 1:30 a.m. Mesa was transferred to Riverside Community Hospital.
On Tuesday, March 31, 2015 at 9:19 p.m. Mesa was pronounced dead. The Riverside County Coroner conducted an autopsy on Wednesday, April 1, 2015. The cause of death was determined to be anoxic encephalopathy due to hanging.
Sheriff’s homicide investigators sergeant John Gaffney and detective Eddie Bachman conducted the investigation into Mesa’s death, concluding he had committed suicide.
On Wednesday, April 15, 2015 deputy Gary Brandt, deputy Shannon Deasey, deputy Peter Gentry and sgt. Mike Rude responded to a report at 1:17 a.m. of a man trying to damage an emergency fuel shutoff switch at a Valero gas station at 27767 Base Line in Highland.
When deputies arrived they found 28-year-old Joseph Slater, later identified as a homeless man who frequented the area to panhandle and was described by those in the area as often wandering the area yelling at imagined people or holding conversations with himself, “behaving oddly.” Deputies detained him, according to the department, and tried to place Slater into a patrol car, at which point he became combative. Deputies used pepper spray on him but his resistance continued, and the deputies were unable to get him more than partially into the vehicle. When Slater forced his way out of the car, the deputies tackled him. According to the sheriff’s department “force was used to overcome his resistance.” Slater was eventually placed into the patrol car, but evinced, according to the department, “symptoms of having a medical emergency.” Paramedics were summoned. He was transported to a hospital, where he later died.
It is unclear who investigated Slater’s death.
On April 27, 2015, Jeremiah Ajani Bell, 22, who had been arrested for attempted murder, was booked at West Valley Detention and placed into a cell with Rashad Paul Davis, 19, who had been arrested for robbery and had been in custody at West Valley since March 26, 2015. Not quite four weeks later, on Friday, May 22, 2015 at 10:02 a.m., West Valley Detention Center deputies found Davis unresponsive on the floor of the two-man cell he occupied with Bell. Davis received immediate medical attention and was transported to Kaiser Hospital in Fontana, where he was pronounced dead.
An autopsy on Davis was conducted on Tuesday, May 26, 2015, by the Riverside County Coroner’s Office. The cause of death was determined to be from blunt force injuries. Investigators from the San Bernardino County Specialized Investigation Division Homicide Detail, detective Gary Hart and sergeant John Gaffney, conducted the investigation into the incident. Those investigators determined that Jeremiah Ajani Bell was responsible for the death of Rashad Paul Davis.
On Saturday, September 12, 2015 at approximately 2:25 p.m. Karla Renae Jones, 23, a convicted arsonist awaiting a probation-violation hearing, was found by deputies at the West Valley Detention Center unresponsive in her single-person cell. According to the sheriff’s department “it appeared as though she had committed suicide. Deputies and medical staff immediately attempted life saving measures and Jones was transported to a nearby hospital, where she was later pronounced deceased.” Jones had been in custody, at West Valley Detention Center, for approximately two weeks prior to the incident.
Detective Justin Long and sergeant Trevis Newport of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department Homicide Detail investigated Jones’ death, reaching the conclusion that she had committed suicide.
On Sunday, October 18, 2015, at approximately 1:34 p.m., deputies assigned to a housing unit at West Valley Detention Center found inmate Robert Lundberg, 50 of Adelanto, who was arrested four days previously and charged on October 16 with possession of a controlled substance for sale and was due to be arraigned November 9 on that charge, on the floor of the housing unit just below the second tier, suffering from severe head trauma. Medical staff from West Valley Detention Center immediately responded and initiated life saving procedures. Rancho Cucamonga firefighters and personnel from American Medical Response also responded to the facility. Lundberg was pronounced dead at the scene. According to the sheriff’s department, “Lundberg was the only inmate assigned to his cell and was the only inmate out of his cell at the time of the incident.”
Detectives from the Sheriff’s Department Specialized Investigations Division, Homicide Detail, detective Mark Goodwin and sergeant Jason Radeleff, conducted the investigation into Lundberg’s death. The Riverside County Coroner’s Office conducted an autopsy and determined Lundberg’s cause of death was severe head trauma. Goodwin and Radeleff concluded Lundberg committed suicide.
On or about December 6, 2015, Salvador Munoz, 54, suffered a medical emergency while in custody at West Valley Detention Center. He was transported to Kaiser Hospital in Fontana for treatment, where he was pronounced dead. According to the sheriff’s department, his death was medically related.
On or about January 4, 2016, Fernando Cordova, 58, experienced a medical emergency. He was transported to Kaiser Hospital in Fontana for medical treatment, where he was pronounced dead.
On or about February 7, 2016, Michael O’Brien, 40, experienced a medical emergency while in custody at West Valley. He was transported to Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton for treatment, where he was pronounced dead.
There is no information publicly available relating to which investigators looked into the Munoz, Cordova and O’Brien deaths.
On Wednesday, February 10, 2016, Angela Zuniga, a 33-year old resident of San Bernardino, who had been remanded into custody at the West Valley Detention Center on January 11 on charges of shooting at an inhabited dwelling and being a felon in possession of a firearm, gave birth to a boy by C-section and underwent a hysterectomy at the county hospital, known as the Arrowhead Regional Medical Center. Three days later, Zuninga was returned to custody at West Valley Detention Center. Her jailors assigned her to a clean-up detail. After she experienced bleeding and complained of abdominal pain, she was placed in solitary confinement. Other inmates report that she requested medical assistance that was not forthcoming.
On Saturday, February 27, 2016, according to the sheriff’s department, “Zuniga experienced a medical emergency and at 10:00 p.m. was transported to Arrowhead Regional Medical Center. Despite lifesaving measures, Zuniga was pronounced deceased on Sunday, February 28, 2016, at 5:41 a.m.”
Investigators from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department Specialized Investigations Division, detective Troy Mooradian and sergeant Robert Warrick, are conducting an investigation into Zuniga’s death. Their report has not been released, but the department has made a preliminary finding that her death was attributable to “medical” causes.
On Easter Sunday, March 27, 2016 at 6:41 a.m. deputies at the West Valley Detention Center found an inmate, Federico Juarez Guardado, 30 of San Bernardino, unresponsive in a jail cell. Guardado had been jailed on a contempt of court charge, a misdemeanor. According to the department, Guardado “was housed alone and appeared to be suffering a medical emergency. Medical staff assigned to the West Valley Detention Center and emergency medical responders from American Medical Response and Rancho Cucamonga Fire Department performed lifesaving measures. At 7:00 a.m., the inmate was pronounced deceased at the jail.”
Detective Brendan Motley and sergeant Greg Myler of the sheriff’s specialized investigations division are conducting the death investigation. An autopsy was to be conducted last week by the Riverside County Coroner’s Office to determine cause and manner of death. The results have not yet been made public.
This week, on Tuesday, April 5, 2016 at 10:15 a.m. a San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy witnessed Michael Paul, 48 and a resident of Twin Peaks, jaywalking in the 23000 block of Crest Forest Drive. According to the department, “The deputy evaluated Paul, determined he was under the influence of a controlled substance and took him into custody. Paul was placed in a single man holding cell and following a brief interview, deputies determined Paul had weapons in his residence, which were in violation of a criminal restraining order.”
Deputies obtained a search warrant for Paul’s residence for firearms and narcotics and served that warrant at 2:50 p.m. According to the department, “Numerous firearms and narcotics were seized from the residence” and Paul’s 37-year-old girlfriend, Emily McKernan, was arrested for narcotic and firearms violations. Deputies returned to the Twin Peaks station and after a brief interview, McKernan was placed in a single person holding cell.
According to the department, “At 5:39 p.m. deputies prepared to interview Paul regarding the evidence located at his home and found he had hanged himself in the cell. Medical personnel responded and Paul was pronounced dead at the scene.”
Sergeant Jason Radeleff of the Specialized Investigations Division Homicide Detail is conducting this latest in-custody death incident.
Prior to Paul’s death, the Sentinel had sought permission from the department to speak to or otherwise communicate with detectives Bachman, Long, Goodwin, Mooradian, and Motley as well as sergeants Newport, Radeleff, Warrick and Myler with respect to the Gilbert Mesa, Rashad Davis, Karla Jones, Robert Lundberg, Angela Zuniga and Federico Guardado deaths, while seeking to identify what members of the department had made an examination of the Michael O’Brien, Fernando Cordova and Salvador Munoz fatalities. No clearance for any of those interviews had been granted by press time.
Of note is that the lion’s share of the deaths in San Bernardino County’s jails over the last 13 months occurred at the West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga, which has a 3,291-inmate capacity and averages roughly 3,000 inmates per day. There were no fatalities at the High Desert Detention Center in Adelanto, which opened in early 2015 and since that time has housed on average 700 inmates daily. Nor were there any deaths at the Glen Helen Rehabilitation Center in Devore, which over the same period has housed an average of 1,020 inmates per day. Another relatively large scale prisoner holding facility run by the sheriff’s department is the Central Jail in San Bernardino, which is primarily used to house pre-sentenced county inmates and federal inmates, and averages a daily population of 930. No deaths occurred there in 2015 or so far in 2016. There thus appears to be a statistical anomaly attending the death rate at West Valley.
The Sentinel was unable to engage the department, including any of the sergeants or detectives that investigated the rash of deaths at the West Valley Detention Center over the last 13 months, in a discussion relating to potential flaws or shortcomings in the design of the West Valley Detention Center that may have rendered the inmates there more vulnerable or isolated from supervision and monitoring than the design of the department’s other incarceration facilities. The Sentinel, despite a written request, was further unable to find out whether individually or collectively the investigators of these recent deaths had drawn any conclusions with regard to the department’s protocols and procedures, the personnel employed at the detention facilities or any other factors that they believe may have contributed to these deaths, and if so, what recommendations they have made or will be making up the chain of command.
The department did not respond to an inquiry into whether the investigative teams probing the deaths traded notes with one another or in some fashion exchanged information and collectively discussed or brainstormed over these cases to see if they noted any commonalities between the cases or circumstances along whatever parameters they might have deemed relevant. Nor did the department respond to questions about whether an abstract of factors attending each of the deaths was collated, such as the time of the suicides or medical emergencies, level of staffing in place at those times, location, supervision in place, rapidity of response, appropriateness of response, ready medical care in place, vulnerabilities and shortcomings that could be redressed, or other factors. The department did not provide a statement as to what set of facts drove the investigators to the conclusion that those deaths deemed suicides were in fact suicides and not homicides.
Over the last two years, there have been seven lawsuits filed on behalf of at least 41 current and former West Valley Detention Center inmates against the county, the sheriff’s department, sheriff John McMahon and both named and unnamed sheriff’s department employees alleging abuse of inmates at West Valley Detention Center. Among the attorneys representing those inmates are former San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Stanley Hodge, as well as Jim Terrell, Sharon Brunner, American Civil Liberties Union Attorney Melissa Goodman and the law firm of Kaye, McLane, Bednarski & Litt.
In March 2014, roughly two months before the first of the lawsuits was filed, four sheriff’s department employees working at the jail were witnessed being “walked off” the premises by FBI agents.
At least seven deputies who worked at the West Valley Detention Center – Brock Teyechea, Andrew Cruz and Nicholas Oakley, Robert Escamilla, Russell Kopasz, Robert Morris and Eric Smale – have been fired. Two civilian jailers with the last names of Stockman and Neil were identified in the original lawsuit filed in May 2014 as having participated in the abuse. Their status at the jail is not known.
Yet all of that occurred before the current spate of deaths at West Valley began last year, and it would be impossible for any of those disgraced deputies to have had a hand in the Mesa, Davis, Jones, Lundberg, Cordova, Munoz, O’Brien, Zuniga, Guardado or Paul deaths.
The department would venture no response to the Sentinel’s inquiry as to whether a homicidal avenger might be ensconced among the deputies now serving as jailors at the West Valley Detention Center.
Jodi Miller, an official spokeswoman for the department acknowledged that Davis had been murdered in his jail cell by his cell mate. Mesas’s death, she insisted “was a suicide.” She similarly cataloged the Jones and Lundberg deaths. And she maintained, the deaths of Munoz, Cordova, O’Brien and Zuniga were “medically related.”
As alarming, or at least concerning, as the deaths in San Bernardino’s jails in 2015 and early 2016 have been, they contrast favorably in terms of numbers with deaths that occurred in neighboring Riverside County’s jails in the same time frame. Riverside County has a general population – 2.3 million – that is only slightly larger than San Bernardino County’s 2.2 million. Both have comparable jail populations. Yet in the first eight months of 2015, a dozen inmates in Riverside County’s jails died.
Keith Bushey rose to the position of captain with the Los Angeles Police Department and was later the marshal in San Bernardino County before that office was merged with the sheriff’s department and he was given a deputy chief assignment with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. He retired from the department a decade ago, but in 2012 he was among the candidates considered by the board of supervisors to succeed Rod Hoops when he retired as sheriff mid-way through his first elected term. Ultimately, the board of supervisors selected John McMahon to succeed Hoops. Bushey was in Lubbock, Texas this week, lecturing in seminars on law enforcement issues in conjunction with an FBI training program. He briefly spoke with the Sentinel telephonically between seminars on April 6, responding to questions about the uptick in deaths in the San Bernardino County jail system over the last year and potentially discernible patterns.
After offering the disclaimer that “I’m not in the loop over there anymore,” Bushey said that the vast number of deaths at West Valley versus the department’s other facilities might be an indicator that something is “out of balance” but that the more substantial inmate population at West Valley might account for the statistical lopsidedness in terms of fatalities.
He said the medically-related deaths of relatively young inmates might be accounted for by the “lifestyle choices” of many of those who are incarcerated generally, including drug use and other risky behaviors they may have engaged in before they were incarcerated. Such behaviors, Bushey said, may have damaged their health. As for the suicides, Bushey said, “Suicides in a detention setting are always a concern.”
Bushey said that whatever the case, he was absolutely confident the sheriff was not neglecting the problems at West Valley.
“With that many lawsuits filed over the conditions there, I can guarantee you John McMahon is not ignoring what is going on,” Bushey. “The department might not have a handle on what is happening, but they are not ignoring it.”

SAN BERNARDINO—There will be a less-than-evenly-balanced distribution of pain, i.e., monetary loss, by the various entities being stiffed by the City of San Bernardino as the result of its now three-and-a-half year long tarrying in bankruptcy and its recently crafted exit therefrom. Of note is that the element historically representing the primary drain on the city’s pocketbook  – city employees – will bear far less of a burden at present and into the future than will practically all of the city’s creditors.
San Bernardino filed for Chapter Nine bankruptcy protection in August 2012 after years of dwindling revenues, expenditures drastically exceeding income, and deteriorating financial numbers that resulted in $80 million in unfunded liabilities and a $49 million annual operating deficit.
What is referred to as the city’s “plan of adjustment,” will result in those who in years past had delivered goods and services to the city in good faith or had invested in the city by purchasing municipal bonds getting something far less than half of what they are owed with absolutely no allowance for interest.
On March 30, just two hours before the midnight deadline imposed on the city by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Meredith Jury, the city put forth its ultimate plan of adjustment and attendant disclosure and noticing statements intended as the blueprint for the city’s alleviation of a major portion of its debt and other ongoing financial obligations. The plan of adjustment is intended to achieve a rough equivalency between the city’s income and expenditures so that it can make its exodus  from bankruptcy.
Of issue is that many of the holders of the city’s municipal bonds who had made those purchases on the assumption San Bernardino would make good on the terms of those securities calling for the paying back of double or more of what those investors had ventured will be gravely disappointed.
The document filed last week is a refinement of the first bankruptcy exit plan demanded by Jury last year and which was delivered on May 30, 2015. That plan called for the city deferring payments to a significant number of the city’s creditors for years or decades, such that they had no prospect for being made whole for an extensive period of time, if ever. Most pointedly, the city at that time proposed paying 1 percent of the $50 million owed to pension obligation bondholders, spelling out that investors holding those promissory certificates valued at $50 million receive an unsecured note and be paid under a reduced schedule predicated upon principal of $500,000, with the city not beginning payments on that principal until the sixth year after the plan of adjustment became effective.  The plan also called for significant reductions in retirees’ healthcare coverage, and the elimination of a number of city staff positions, including firefighters and trash collectors.
In the intervening time, the city has in large measure executed upon that plan, dissolving the municipal sanitation division and franchising trash hauling to Burrtec Systems and all but finalizing an arrangement to shutter the 137-year-old municipal fire department and have the county fire division take over firefighting and emergency medical response duties in San Bernardino, pursuant to the annexation of the entirety of the city into a county fire protection district, entailing the levying of a $148 per year parcel tax on all city landowners intended to underwrite the county’s provision of the service.
The city’s exit plan filed in May 2015 elicited howls of protest, not to mention litigation, from its creditors.
CalPERS, which is short for the California Public Employees Retirement System, is the city’s major institutional creditor. At present San Bernardino currently has an approximate $26 million annual obligation to the retirement system.  From July 2012 until July of 2013, the city withheld more than $14 million in pension fund payments and thereafter continued to underpay CalPERS the amount the system’s administrators maintain is continuously due it. The city offered to make partial payments into the system until such time as it got  back on its feet financially. CalPERS sternly rejected the city’s effort to forge a long-term solution that included renegotiating the amount of its commitment to the retirement system altogether.
CalPERS spent some $7 million on lawyers in its response to the bankruptcy filings made by San Bernardino and two other California cities, Vallejo and Stockton.
Pursuant to a mediation effort between the city of San Bernardino and CalPERS under the guidance of a court-appointed mediator, Judge Gregg Zive, some order of compromise was arrived at by which, according to a court filing, the city is to “make certain payments to CalPERS on deferred amounts owing.”  The precise amount the city is to pay has not been disclosed. CalPERS maintained the city was at least $16.5 million behind on its payments and that it owed interest on that arrearage. San Bernardino, while suggesting it would at some point make CalPERS whole, has not yet provided a schedule for doing so. Because of the confidentiality surrounding the tentative agreement and its precise terms, it is not publicly known whether the break CalPERS has assented to cutting San Bernardino on the money owed it is temporary or permanent, or whether it includes interest payments on the overdue payments or not.
Last week what became clear was that the city’s offer of one percent on the $50,000,000 debt owed to the holders of its pension obligation bonds had been a lowball offer intended to set the tone for the negotiations over what the city would pay to buy back those bonds. It turns out the city will pay 40 times that amount, and has now achieved an agreement to pay those certificate holders 40 cents on the dollar.
Jury, who ultimately held the leverage of being able to impose whatever terms she chose on all parties, was able to get everyone to come to an agreement. Whereas the unions representing the city’s police officers, firefighters and general employees, CalPERS and the pension obligation bondholders had all opposed the restructuring plan, they have now endorsed it.
But paradoxes yet attend the entire matter.
City staff, whose salaries and benefits represent the lion’s share of the expenses that left the city in such sad shape that the 2012 Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection filing was its only viable strategy, will fare comparatively well while the city engages in  legalistic and accounting ledger sleight-of-hand that will downscale the city’s over-burdensome debt.
The city has shed itself of the fire department, a major cost burden, as 67 percent of the cost of running the city was taken up by salaries and overtime paid to the city’s public safety employees – firemen, fire management, police officers and police management. Yet to achieve the cooperation of the fire department’s member in effectuating the county takeover of the city fire department, the city had to throw a major financial bone to fire management. Initially, the county offered to guarantee the hiring of the city’s firemen, but gave no such assurance to fire department management – the chief and seven battalion chiefs. When a way was cleared for the chief and battalion chiefs to be hired by the county, there was no guarantee that they would be extended job offers for management positions similar to what they now hold with the city. Nor were they given guarantees that they would be paid at the same rate as the city is paying them.
The San Bernardino Fire Management Association, the bargaining unit for the management echelon in the fire department, opposed an early version of the plan to annex the city into a county fire protection district, which was crucial for the takeover to take place. Once that takeover has been effectuated, the county has consented to hiring the battalion chiefs as fire captains, positions that would pay them anywhere from $33,000 to $54,000 less than they are now making as battalion chiefs. To get the battalion chiefs to go along, the city council has signed off on making up the difference between the $116,277 per year base salary the county pays its fire captains and the $150,000 to $172,000 per year the city’s seven battalion chiefs are now being paid and to continue to make up that difference for the first five years after the takeover is effectuated.  That element of the deal cuts contrary to the city’s stated goal of reducing/eliminating the cost of running a fire department, translating into another $280,000 in annual costs or $1.4 million over the life of that agreement.
At the same time, the city, which over the last seven years has reduced police department staffing from 356 to 248, is with the plan of adjustment committing to investing an average of just over $4.5 million per year in beefing up police presence in the city of 213,000, a total of $91 million over the next 20 years. City officials acknowledge they at present do not have nor do they anticipate having revenue to accomplish that. What is suggested is the need to increase police presence in the city is vital if it is going to overcome the stigma of being, behind Oakland, the second most violent crime-marred large city in California.
A sobering consideration is that the bankruptcy itself has cost the city in the neighborhood of $17 million for the services of attorney, auditors and financial consultants.
“The plan represents a major step forward for the city in its efforts to exit bankruptcy and breathe new life into the city’s economy,” the document filed with Jury puts forth. “All of the city’s principal creditor constituencies that initially opposed the city’s restructuring efforts now support the plan. That includes the City’s police, fire and other unions, the official retirees committee and CalPERS and the holder of the city’s bonds.”

The quixotic effort by three members of the Chino Valley Unified school board to perpetuate their practice of peppering their board meetings with Christian references has redounded to their potential personal financial detriment, with a U.S. District judge ordering them to dispense with the religiosity at their meetings. Now they, and another board member who never involved herself in using her public position as a proselytizing forum are on the hook for more than $200,000 in legal fees and court costs associated with the debacle.
For years, school board member James Na, an immigrant who treasures America as the home of political and religious freedom, has assumed his elected position gives him the power to make his Christian faith known to all when he is acting in his official capacity. At school board meetings, he has for years recited prayers, made Biblical references and told those present that they need to accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior. Subsequently Sylvia Orosco and Andrew Cruz were elected to the school board. All three are members of the Chino Hills Calvary Chapel, a church led by the Reverend Jack Hibbs, whose denominationalist philosophy dictates that it is the duty of Christians to run for public office and use their incumbency to preserve United States as a Christian nation. With the troika of Na, Cruz and Orozco on the board, their meetings soon took on the atmosphere of revivalist events.
In 2014, a number of parents and students, including just two who consented to using their names, filed suit against the district, seeking to have the board desist with the constant religious references during public meetings. Rather than knuckle under, however, Na, Cruz and Orozco over the dissent of board members Irene Hernandez-Blair and Pamela Feix voted to hire the Pacific Justice Institute, a Christian advocacy law firm to represent the district.
Ultimately On February 18, U.S. District Judge Jesus Bernal ordered the board to end its years-long tradition of “reciting prayers, Bible readings and proselytizing at board meetings.” Bernal enjoined the board from “conducting, permitting or otherwise endorsing school-sponsored prayer in board meetings.”
Na, Cruz and Orozco, buttressed by Hibbs and the parishioners at Calvary Chapel, were persuaded to fight on, dispensing with the representation of the Pacific Justice Institute and on March 7 opting to be represented by another Christian advocacy attorney, Robert Tyler of the Murrieta-based law firm Tyler & Bursch, to handle their appeal of Bernal’s ruling.
In pursuing the appeal, the school board has evinced a misunderstanding of a legal case, Town of Greece v. Galloway, they believe will reassert their rights to proselytize during public forums.
In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4, in the Greece case that public officials can open public meetings with prayers — even explicitly Christian ones — if the government agency does not discriminate against minority faiths when choosing who may offer a prayer and the prayer does not coerce participation from nonbelievers. Nevertheless, in the majority opinion in the Greece case, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy made clear that prayer was acceptable only when it is offered “during the ceremonial portion of the town’s meeting. Board members are not engaged in policymaking at this time, but in more general functions, such as swearing in new police officers, inducting high school athletes into the town hall of fame, and presenting proclamations to volunteers, civic groups, and senior citizens. It is a moment for town leaders to recognize the achievements of their constituents and the aspects of community life that are worth celebrating.”
Based upon their public remarks and ones made outside of public forums, Na and Cruz believe that Tyler will be able to use the Greece case to inject Christian references into all order of the board’s discussions rather than its initial ceremonial portion. Nearly a month ago, Tyler acknowledged that the board majority, Na and Cruz in particular, have an imperfect understanding of the reach of the Greece case. At that time, Tyler told the Sentinel, he had not explained the precise extent and limitations of the legal issues emanating from the Greece decision.
Despite their faith in God and Tyler, the board was unable to prevent Bernal from awarding the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and its lawyers, David Kaloyanides, Andrew Seidel and Rebecca Markert lawyer’s fees ranging from $650 per hour to $500 per hour and the foundation’s law clerk, Roda Torres, $200 per hour for her work. The four had collectively sought $208,275 for work totaling 429.9 hours, which included time the foundation spent researching the grounds by which the anonymous plaintiffs in the suit could maintain their anonymity.
The school board did not contest that the plaintiffs were entitled to some attorneys’ fees, but they challenged, in various ways, the reasonableness of the hours billed and the billing rates. The defendants argued the plaintiffs’ counsel could not bill for unproductive travel time or clerical tasks and that some of plaintiffs’ billing entries should be reduced because the plaintiffs’ allegedly engaged in “block billing,” which was defined as insufficiently itemized work. The defendants also contended the plaintiffs’ counsel should not receive attorneys’ fees for time investigating alleged incidents of retaliation against the plaintiffs, or for time spent on a related motion for a protective order.
For the most part, Bernal denied the defense’s challenge of the billings. In doing so, he made oblique reference to the lack of sophistication and ignorance of Constitutional law and legal expertise of the defense team. In seeking to lower the amount to be paid to the plaintiffs’ attorneys, Bernal said the “Defendants submit[ted] declarations from current and former defense counsel, stating what they believe to be reasonable hourly rates for their own services. Defendants miss the point. What defense counsel charges, or what defense counsel believes to be reasonable, is irrelevant to the determination of the prevailing rate in the legal community. $275 and $350 per hour may be reasonable rates for defense counsel, but defendants have presented no evidence that these are the prevailing rates in the district for counsel of Mr. Kaloyanides’ experience.”
While Bernal made a reduction of seven hours from the total 429.2 hours of work done by the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s legal team, the judge said 422.2 of those claimed hours were valid and he ruled, “Plaintiffs are entitled to $202,425.00 in attorney’s fees and $546.70 in costs from defendants James Na, Sylvia Orozco, Andrew Cruz, and Irene Hernandez-Blair in their individual representative capacities as members of the Chino Valley Unified School District Board of Education, for a total award of $202,971.70.” Pamela Feix was not named in the award because she was not elected to the board until November 2014 and she was not sworn into her board position until after the lawsuit was filed. Hernandez-Blair was named because she was a member of the board when the policy ruled to be unconstitutional by Bernal was taking place, although she dissented from Na, Orozco and Cruz’s activity.
Kaloyanides is to receive $131,560 for his 202.4 hours at $650 per hour dedicated to the matter. Seidel is to receive $37,400 at $500 per hour for his 74.8 hours working on the case. Markert is to be paid $7,425 at $550 per hour for the 13.5 hours she invested in the case. And Torres is to get $26,040 for the 130.2 hours she worked on the matter.
While Bernal’s ruling could be construed to indicate that it should be Na, Orozco Cruz and Hernandez-Blair who should pay the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s lawyers, that is unlikely. The school board has ultimate control over the expenditure of district funds, and they are thus enabled to use district money to cover the legal costs Na, Cruz and Orosco’s imposition of their religious views has resulted in for the district.
Julie Gobin, the district’s official spokeswoman did not respond to questions about whether the district would pay the $202,971.70 the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s legal team is now owed and whether the district will continue to indemnify the board members over any further legal costs or judgments against them on the prayer issue going forward.
Robert Tyler, who is representing the district pro bono, said the judgment against the board members was not applicable to them personally, as they were “acting in their capacity as officers of the school district.”
Thus, Tyler said, the district will cover the $202,971.70 cost. He said the district will not stand to recover its lawyer’s fees if it prevails on the appeal, which he said is aimed only at reestablishing the right of the board to engage in ceremonial prayer.
Tyler said the Freedom From Religion Foundation had an “athiestic agenda” to “remove all references to God from public life.”

By Ruth Musser-Lopez
Many years ago, even before her water was shut off for nonpayment of her utility bills, 78-year-old Jean Jones had replaced the lawn and sprinklers at her home with gravel, rock, decorative boulders and drought resistant cactus. On the otherwise halcyon Easter morning, March 27, three patrol cars filled with San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies pulled up to her parched abode in Needles. Their intent was to arrest her only son, David Buckley, for “elder abuse,” (PC 368(b)(1). Jones relies solely upon David for assistance with her daily affairs. When the sheriff’s deputies came in, they took no heed, nor in later writing their reports did they mention, the bottles of fresh water that Jones’ devoted son ported daily to the house. Instead, they reported that the “victim” appeared “dehydrated.”
How the deputies came to that conclusion is subject to debate, as a witness whom Mrs. Jones called as the arrest was being made claimed she seemed lucid and spirited at the time. An examination done a few hours later did not indicate she suffered from dehydration.
Former Needles City Councilman Terry Campbell, now a member of the city’s utility board, has been sharply criticized by David Buckley  over the board’s ongoing effort to raise water rates. Campbell gloated over  David Buckley’s arrest. Campbell, who refers to Buckley as a “gadfly,” said he believed his nemesis was looking at a long prison sentence and worse.   As it turned out, Buckley was released three days later without charges being filed. In the interim, a defamatory report was released by the captain of the Needles Sheriff’s Substation to the local newspaper, The Needles Desert Star, for publication.  On the day Buckley arrived back in Needles, he was welcomed with a public smear campaign, a spectacle in which he was held out to be – without any accompanying substantiation – a methamphetamine user, an elder abuser and thief.
Five days prior to his arrest, Buckley had gone to the Needles City Council meeting and distributed copies of a complaint he had filed that very day with the Fair Political Practices Commission.  This complaint alleged that neither councilman Shawn Gudmundsen nor (now former) councilman Jimmy Lopez had reported loans or gifts from the city on their Form 700 Economic Interest statements required of all elected officials. These gifts or extended loans, he said, were over the FPPC limit of $500 and were made to the council members in the form of extended credit on utility (electric, water, sewer and trash) bills the two council members were either not required to pay or given special low interest terms to repay.
While distributing copies of the complaint prior to the commencement of the meeting, one in the audience handed a copy to the two sheriff’s officers who were sitting in the back of the room, including sheriff’s captain Ross Tarangle. Allegedly, it was Tarangle, who David has previously called out several times for corruption, who ordered David’s arrest on Easter Sunday no matter what the circumstances were found in Buckley’s mother’s home.
In a preceding council meeting, Buckley had also openly stated during public comment that he had learned from the mayor’s wife, Jan Paget, that instead of discontinuing former councilman Jim Lopez’s company’s utility service (electric, water, sewage and trash removal), as is city policy for everyone else, Lopez was allowed to go without paying to the point where Lopez’s business had accumulated over $30,000 in free utility service.   This charge was not denied by the city manager or city attorney.   The usual practice by the city’s adjunct Needles Public Utility Authority is to notify the customer with a letter printed on red paper (the “red slip” as it is locally referred to) that the customer’s utilities will be discontinued, typically within 10 days of receipt of the notice if the bill is not paid.   Most who cannot pay a utility bill have their power turned off—as is the case with Buckley and his elderly mother, Jean.
Since Buckley’s arrest, the Sentinel has learned that in the case of Jimmy Lopez’s business, Colorado River Distributors (which Lopez had reported to be worth over $1 million), Lopez was never billed, the red letter was never sent out, the collections were never made, the utility was never shut off, and a lien was never filed against Lopez’s business property. When Lopez filed for bankruptcy last year, the city used that as grounds to “write off the bad debt.”
Under the state’s constitution it is the giver who is liable in a “gift of public funds” situation involving Government Code 8314, which states “It is unlawful for any elected state or local officer, including any state or local appointee, employee, or consultant, to use or permit others to use public resources for a campaign activity, or personal or other purposes which are not authorized by law.”
Rather than filing a complaint with the grand jury or the district attorney’s public integrity unit against Needles city management, Buckley instead directed a complaint to the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC). Buckley chose not to remain anonymous in his FPPC complaint filing, which would enable him to remain in the loop as to the progress of the investigation.  This, however, may have subjected him to reprisal when officers at the command echelon of the sheriff’s department in Needles received the copy of the FPPC complaint at the March 22 council meeting.
The complaint filed on Tuesday, March 22, alleges “failure to report statement of economic interest on a Form 700.”  The complaint recites the economic interest reporting requirements to which all elected officials and public employees in California are subject before asserting that Lopez and Gudmundsen had a disqualifying conflict of interest in the Needles city governmental decisions relating to the Needles utility division.
“Both Shawn Gudmundsen and Jim Lopez are former City of Needles elected officials and served on the city council,” the complaint states. “Gudmundsen was not reelected in November of 2014.  Early in 2015 Lopez stepped down off of the council and Gudmundsen was appointed to replace him.   It was later learned that Lopez had been extended over $30,000 in credit on his company’s (Colorado River Distributors) electric bills by the City of Needles.   It has also been learned that Shawn Gudmundsen had run into financial troubles and that he was not paying his electric bills but instead had also been extended thousands of dollars (about half of what Lopez had been given) in utility credits.   It was learned and it is alleged that the city manager, Rick Daniels, declared the credit as ‘bad debt’ with no effort to collect or enforce.   For other ratepayers, the electric service is discontinued if the bill is not paid, with the exception to elderly or sick, but service is discontinued within 2 or 3 or 4 months, even for them, not allowed to go into thousands of dollars of debt and then ‘written off’ as is the case allegedly for Lopez and Gudmundsen.  The council and manager did not deny that this is the case when questioned at the council meeting.”
Buckley’s complaint continues, “Please note that Jimmy Lopez hand selected Rick Daniels as City Manager, and Daniels replaced David Brownlee.  Daniels was appointed on or about July 2013, which placed him in the scene at the approximate time of Lopez’s non-payment on electric bills and the gifts of public electricity via extended credit over and above that of any ‘regular’ citizen not a public official.   Lopez stepped down almost two years later.  Daniels may have been brought in as a deal by Lopez so that Lopez could get away with not paying [for] the electric[ity] while continuing to use it.”
Named in the complaint and the amended complaint as potential witnesses are former city manager David Brownlee, assistant city manager Cheryl Sallis, Daniels, Campbell, mayor Ed Paget and his wife Jan, and all workers in the City of Needles utility department.
Two days after filing the complaint, on Thursday, March 25, Buckley arrived at City Hall with $600 in hand and requested that the city turn his water back on and put him on the “Shawn Gudmundsen Payment Plan,” that he be allowed to pay his monthly bill at $300 per month plus $300 per month that he is in arrears until he is caught up, and that he be extended a 2% interest loan for the balance…the same payment plan that had been given, he maintained, to Gudmundsen.   Buckley said that he was refused.   “They demanded an extra deposit,” Buckley recounted. “Jimmy and Shawn were never disconnected. Why should I now have to pay an extra deposit to be reconnected?”
Meanwhile that day, Buckley received a response to the FPPC complaint he filed two days prior, informing him that the FPPC “decided not to open an investigation on this matter…since we have no evidence that it is the city’s intent to make a gift of free utility service to either person” and “you did not provide evidence of any specific government decision…”
The response did not address Buckley’s allegation that Lopez and Gudmundsen failed to “report” loans on their Form 700s.
Local papers printed the Needles Sheriff’s Station press release about Buckley’s Easter arrest stating that “the dependent elderly female appeared to be malnourished, dehydrated and confused.  She was transported by ambulance to the Colorado River Medical Center for medical treatment.”
The Colorado Medical Center was formerly owned by the City of Needles and has since been sold to Bing Lum. Lum provided Councilman Jimmy Lopez $100,000 at a time the city was negotiating the sale of the hospital to Lum.
“It would be one thing if the sheriff’s had reported that my mother was taken to the hospital for observation, but it is quite another to say that she needed ‘treatment’ and then call an ambulance. They made it sound like I was abusing her, doing something wrong by not putting her in the hospital, but the local hospital in Needles  released her to me after finding no reason to keep her.”
Buckley provided the Sentinel with a copy of the “disposition” report prepared by Kingman Regional Medical Center (KRMC) on March 25, 2016 which indicated that his mother was in normal condition, was provided with her medications and sent home with David.  The report states:  “[T]he patient has “right knee pain, states her cpp stopped her prescription and didn’t tell her…states only 4 pills left…the provider who is covering while her Dr. is out would not see her and sent her to the  ED…the patient arrived in a wheelchair via automobile from home…the patient was accompanied by:  immediate family member….son is at the bedside and is speaking for the patient….“The patient was discharged to home in stable condition, via wheelchair, accompanied by family member.  The patient’s diagnosis, condition and treatment were explained to patient or parent/guardian.  The patient/responsible party expressed understanding.  Aftercare instructions were given to patient.  A discharge plan has been developed. The patient is awake, alert, with a calm affect.  The patient is oriented to person, place and time.  The patient’s skin is normal for age and race.   The skin is warm, dry and good turgor.”
The discharge papers included prescription medication for moderate to severe pain and Buckley states there was no incident, the meds were issued and they went home. He said, “If the KRMC suspected I was under the influence of an unknown controlled substance, it is hardly imaginable that they would let me leave the facility with my mother.”
Contradicting the medical center paperwork, the local captain reported in a press release with regard to Buckley’s arrest on Easter Sunday that “The hospital (Kingman Regional Medical Center) indicated that Buckley appeared to be under the influence of an unknown controlled substance and would not allow the 78 year old dependent adult to be cared for by the hospital once he was denied more medications.”
Buckley claims that this is preposterous. He said he drove the 50 miles to Kingman on Friday with his mother and that this was a routine trip to obtain the prescriptions that she normally takes.   “This situation is especially draconian because now sheriff’s officers seem to think they are qualified to make an on the spot assessment  that someone needs medical ‘treatment’  when this was not what was reported in the triage and disposition report prepared by the Kingman Regional Medical Center on that day,” Buckley stated.
One witness said she was on the phone with Jean Jones at the time of David’s arrest and said David’s mother was “quite lucid, while normal and quite rational” contrary to the Sheriff’s report which characterized her as “confused.”  When that hospital released Jean Jones back to Buckley upon his release, Buckley claims that the hospital staff were very supportive of him and reported nothing that would support the sheriff’s department allegations.  He publicly thanked San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon for having dropped the charges filed at the local station level.
The sheriff’s department press release was titled “David Buckley is arrested for Elder Abuse” and reported the victim to be “confidential,” not stating that it was David’s mother.    They also said that “Paraphernalia used to smoke methamphetamine was also found in the home.”  Buckley said that this was a total fallacy.
Buckley believes that the press release was retaliatory and filled with false allegations that can be disproven.  He said that the press release reported that bail was set at $50,000, but he was released, no bail required, 10 hours before the arraignment because the sheriff’s department had nothing it could prove. No charges were filed by the district attorney’s office.   Buckley said “they tested me and there were no drugs in my body and no drugs in the house.  …the press release printed in the local papers is filled with false allegations that were not even in the complaint, so the local captain let a bogus press release out where there was no evidence of any of it.”
Jean Jones characterized the police report as a fabrication.
The Sheriff’s department also reported that David was “neglecting” his mother, but Buckley was found with his mother, caring for her at the time of the arrest.  David and his mother are known in the community to have a special bond. He has been witnessed by scores of Needles residents pushing her around town in her wheelchair, which he also uses to transport her to city council meetings. Indeed Buckley is something of a “chip off the old block” as Jean Jones is as unforgivingly skeptical and distrustful of city officials as her son. She rarely arrives at city council meetings without a stack of evidence folders on her lap the pair have accumulated against city management who they say refused to allow them to open their food vendor business in town, though they held a license and unlicensed vendors were permitted to sell food items at all of the local events.  In numerous conversations with Jean Jones, the Sentinel has learned that she admires her son for what she calls his “courageous” stand against government corruption.
This week, after his release, Buckley amended the FPPC complaint to include the evidence of intent.  He stated that “the suspects, Jimmy Lopez and Shawn Gudmundsen are elected officials who are or were at the time of the acceptance of public funds, ultimately responsible for directing the city manager via a council vote on all matters concerning the workings of the city.  They had reason to know that utility customers are informed that their services will be cut off for non-payment and that if payment is not made, then services will be discontinued.  Attached are four ‘red slips’ which indicate  the same city policy has been in effect since 2009 that the city demands payment via a ‘red slip’ and discontinues services within two weeks of a red slip being issued.”
The amended complaint continues, “Intent can be shown because, had Gudmundsen and Lopez shown on their Form 700 that they were given special treatment  and not required to pay their bills (a gift of public funds) or given special loans, then this would be evidence of disparate treatment and the rest of the public would have demanded the same right and access to utility services without paying.”
“Further evidence now exists,” Buckley stated, “that the city never billed Jimmy Lopez’s business and never sent out late notices for non-payment.” The source of that report is the “spouse of a Needles utility worker.”   He went on to say,   “It is also possible that the city owned the property that Lopez’s business is located on, which relationship may also have been reportable.”
Buckley also cited a published quote by Shawn Gudmundsen admitting that he owes $600 to the city.  “It may sound like chickenfeed compared to what Jimmy Lopez was given” Buckley stated, “but any loan over $500 is required to be reported to the FPPC.” Gudmundsen claims that the city charges him interest of 2% on the loan.
Buckley believes his arrest was a “show of force” as to just what the city’s contracted police department – the local county sheriff’s substation – can do as far as making life miserable for whistleblowers.  “These are more than just intimidation tactics.” he said, “These are debilitating allegations made to undermine our constitutional speech rights.”
Efforts to induce Tarangle and Gudmundsen to offer their version of events for this report were unsuccessful and Lopez said he had nothing to do with anything that happened to Mr. Buckley and he just found out about his arrest and didn’t know why he was arrested. “I really don’t care what people say or write about me because most of it is lies,” he said.
On an internet post, Campbell suggested that the accusations against Buckley to justify the sheriff’s department’s Easter day raid on Jones’ home that day Buckley was arrested and those put out about Buckley in the sheriff’s press release in the aftermath of his arrest were less than true but that Buckley had brought the situation upon himself by engaging in false accusations and half-truths relating to him, Gudmundson and Lopez.
“Remember when your [sic] shoveling bullshit your [sic] likely to get some on you!” Campbell posted on the IE Politics blog on April 6 in reference to an account of Buckley’s arrest.

Even as the High Desert Mavericks scored three simultaneous legal victories in the team’s dispute with Adelanto over its continuing use of the city-owned ballpark where the minor league baseball team has played its home games since 1991, city officials were able to claim they are winning the battle for the hearts and minds of the city’s residents.
Founded in 1988 as the Riverside Red Wave, the Mavericks over the years have been the Class A minor league affiliate of the Padres, Marlins, Orioles, Diamondbacks, Brewers, Royals, Mariners and now the Texas Rangers. They moved to Adelanto in 1991, changing the team name to the Mavericks and playing their home games at the city’s 3,808-capacity public venue, known from 1991 to 2007 as Maverick Stadium and since 2007 as Stater Bros. Stadium. In 2012, the city, which was then headed by a city council with only two of its current members, entered into a lease arrangement with Main Street California, LLC, the Mavericks’ ownership, stipulating that the Mavericks only pay $1 annually for the use of Stater Bros Stadium. The rationale for the miniscule rent was the belief that the continual draw of baseball fans from around the High Desert into Adelanto served as a boost to the city’s sales tax-producing businesses.
Adelanto’s financial situation has been deteriorating for years. In 2013, the city council declared a fiscal emergency. In 2014, all three incumbents up for reelection were turned out of office by the city’s voters. In 2015, the newly composed city council began looking at the city’s bleak financial picture and undertook a review of past practices that were contributing to the city’s financial malaise. Last fall city staff undertook a “city subsidization review” which examined the city’s delivery of services to various entities which were not defraying in full those services’ costs. Cataloged in the staff review were itemizations showing the city had subsidized the High Desert Mavericks by roughly $600,000 per year – more than $1.8 million since 2012. In breaking down costs the city had sustained as a consequence of the agreement, the city maintained it had covered an estimated $675,938 of the team’s rent costs, $486,635 for city personnel in support of the stadium operation, $157,500 in janitorial fees, $46,521 for insurance, $14,000 in parking fees, $229,688 for utilities and another $200,000 in miscellaneous costs including catering. Driven home to the three newest council members was that the city was receiving only $1 annually in return from Main Street California.
Ultimately, that review would conclude that the three-and-half-year old deal with the Mavericks violated the state constitution in that the lease served no public purpose. Thus, city staff said, the arrangement was a “gift of public funds.”
Though it was not publicly disclosed at the time, on December 18, 2015, the city served Main Street California with a notice to vacate the stadium.
Based on the tentative findings of the staff review, which was not officially released publicly until two weeks later, the city council on January 13 voted unanimously to terminate the agreement for the Mavericks to use the city-owned stadium.
For its part, however, Main Street California has asserted it is the city that has cost the ball club money. Previously, the Mavericks were paying roughly $110,000 per year to use the stadium. The rationale for the change to $1 in 2012 was the team’s commitment to maintain the field, which Main Street California claims costs $150,000 per year.
The city went to court in Barstow, filing an unlawful detainer action against the High Desert Mavericks, essentially seeking to evict the ball club from the stadium.
On January 29, the Mavericks went to court, asserting the terms of the lease were binding and filing suit to force arbitration with the city. Two-and-a-half weeks later, on February 16, Main Street California filed another suit against Adelanto for breach of contract.
In its suits, Main Street does not address the city’s contention that the facility use contract does not serve a public purpose and that it is harming taxpayers, but it does allege the city’s action is damaging to the Maverick’s fans, players, charitable organizations, the Adelanto economy and the California League.
According to the second suit, the first suit calling for arbitration was needed to protect the team’s rights and that the city is not respecting the spirit of ongoing arbitration but proceeding as if it has the right to lock the team out of stadium “rather than wait for a judicial ruling on the validity of the contract.” Furthermore, according to the suit, “the city is actively taking steps to disrupt the team’s upcoming season in a blatant attempt to force the team out of the ballpark. The team will be irreparably harmed if the city is permitted to continue sabotaging the upcoming baseball season.”
On April 4, San Bernardino Superior Court Judge Brian McCarville made three rulings in the ongoing dispute between the city and the Mavericks that were at least temporarily in favor of the team, essentially preventing the city from evicting the team from the stadium prior to its home opening yesterday and augering that the Mavericks will very likely be able to remain at Stater Bros Stadium for the remainder of the 2016 baseball season.
McCarville granted the team’s request for a preliminary injunction, preventing the city from interfering with the team’s use of the ballpark until the litigation between the parties is definitively resolved. McCarville further denied Adelanto’s request to evict the team from the stadium, deeming the city’s petition to be premature prior to a final determination of the merits of the case. McCarville submitted the dispute to arbitration, as the Mavericks had requested in accordance with a finding that the 2012 contract compelled the parties to arbitrate any disputes and the city had not presented a compelling rationale to void the arbitration requirement.
“The Mavericks are delighted that the court has found in our favor on all three matters that were litigated today,” said Mavericks owner Dave Heller on March 4. “The court spoke in a very clear voice and told the City of Adelanto in unmistakable terms that its legal argument is flimsier, thinner and more full of holes than the thinnest slice of Swiss Cheese known to man.”
“The City of Adelanto has now lost four times in a row in court,” added Maverick’s General Manager Ben Hemmen, referencing a previous ruling by McCarville to disallow the fast tracking of the team’s eviction as part of the unlawful detainer petition. “At some point, Adelanto taxpayers have to wonder when the city council will stop willfully burning taxpayer dollars pursuing a failed legal strategy.”
“The California League is delighted that the court ruled in favor of the Mavericks on all three matters,” said California League president Charlie Blaney.
The ball club’s euphoric crowing in the aftermath of the April 4 rulings has been tempered by the erosion of support the Mavericks once enjoyed with a cross section of Adelanto residents, including Mavericks fans. Spurred by city officials’ recitation of the degree to which local taxpayers have been subsidizing the team and the salary and profits enjoyed by Hemmen and Heller, a group of residents held a protest at Stater Bros. Stadium in Adelanto in support of the city’s stance at the stadium during the Maverick’s season opener against the Inland Empire 66ers last night. Organizers dubbed the event “Take Back our Ball Park Night.” A flyer the group distributed called upon the Mavericks to “play fair.”
City officials insisted they were not behind the protest, but did grant the group a permit to hold the demonstration.
With the season having been initiated at the Stater Bros. Stadium venue and the continuation of the California League Season hanging in the balance, it is unlikely that arbitrators, using the “balancing of hardships” standard, would evict the Mavericks from the stadium this year, although the mediators may call upon Heller to pony up more money than the $1 specified in the 2012 lease for the Mavericks to remain in place.
Next week, the matter will return to McCarville’s courtroom, where he is to hear the merits of a second unlawful detainer action filed by the city.

The Desert Bones Democratic Club will hold a “meet and greet” event at Palo Verde College In Blythe on Wednesday April 13, 2016 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
According to local party officials, “This will be a time for new members to get acquainted with each other and with our Democratic candidates running in the 2016 Primary election to be held on June 7.”
The Democratic Candidates running in the primary election include Dr. Rita Ramirez-Dean for Congressional District 8, Roger LaPlante for Congressional District 8 and John Pinkerton for Congressional District 8. They are running against each other as well as incumbent Paul Cook, a Republican. Assuming no one candidate gets a majority of the vote, the top two vote-getters in June will face each other in a run off in November at the general election. Scott Markovich is running for Assembly District 33 against incumbent Republican Jay Obernolte and candidates of other parties, all of whom are also also competing for the “top two” positions. While there are other candidates running for these offices, the Desert Bones Meet and Greet event is limited to Democratic candidates only. Democratic officials said the forum will allow each Democratic candidate an uninterrupted five to six minute speech, with a follow-up question and answer period.
Refreshments will be served and entertainment will consist of “old time music” by Ira Guinn and the Handymen.

By Count Friedrich von Olsen
It is my understanding that elsewhere in the Sentinel this week there is an article about a local political dissident being tossed in the hoosegow out in Needles. I don’t have a mastery of all the facts, as I have not read this article but merely had an early unedited draft read to me over the phone. When I heard it was about Needles and the sheriff’s department out there my ears pricked up and the rim of my monocle bit into the flesh around my eye. I have heard a thing or two about that town…
I am, as all who know me can attest, passionately in favor of law enforcement. Whenever I see the gendarmes putting some scoundrel into handcuffs, my heart raises a cheer I scarce can restrain. Despite my obvious attitude in this regard, I have heard, from elements I am inclined to trust and heed, a few less than complimentary things about the attitudes of the deputies who work at the sheriff’s station in Needles. In Needles, the county’s smallest city at its extreme east end next to the Colorado River, the sheriff’s department serves as the police department…
I occasionally have visitors up here at my palatial estate. Indeed, some see Lake Arrowhead and its environs as some sort of mythical Alpine paradise and I am continuously beseeched with entreaties from a lifetime’s worth of acquaintances, friends and others with whom fate intertwined me to put them up for a few days or weeks so they can experience firsthand the place where Milton Berle and Joyce Mathews honeymooned in 1941. It might go without saying that most of these are people from the Eastern Seaboard or the Old Country, across the Atlantic, be they Mediterraneans, or Northern Europeans or from the east or west side of the Continent. Many of these choose to travel not by car, but by rail, a particularly European mode of conveyance when you must go a grand distance…
Amtrak has a station in Needles. As Needles is right up next to the Colorado River, many of my visitors elect to make Needles a stopover, a place where they will spend the night or even a day or two before again hopping on the train to San Bernardino or Los Angeles. So many of my visitors tell me the same story that even if I was disinclined to credit what I was told the first or second time, I am now inexorably moved to believe what I am repeatedly told…
It turns out that Amtrak often misses its schedule, that is, runs late. As the train originates in Chicago and there are multiple stops along the line before it reaches California, a four or five or ten minute delay at each can mean the train chortling into Needles as much as two or three hours late. What I have been told, again and again, is that those waiting at the Needles Amtrak station are often approached by sheriff’s deputies and subjected to a rather unseemly rigmarole of having to fend off charges that they are loitering, identifying themselves, opening their bags for inspection and so forth. This is what happens at the train station. If, because the train is several hours behind, they venture out on foot to one of the nearby restaurants, they run the risk of an even more heavy-handed going over, including in one case I was told about, the man being handcuffed while the search of their baggage was ongoing. The officers routinely use the threat of arrest, I am told, to obtain “voluntary” compliance in carrying out these searches…
Those I have spoken to about being subjected to this welcome to California do not exactly look like criminals. It is no longer fashionable, I understand, for people to wear fur, but let me tell you, many of those accorded this treatment are in the mink and fox set. Some have refrigerated closets. On one occasion, some guests I was expecting were so rudely treated by sheriff’s deputies while they were near the Needles Amtrak station that they called me to tell me about it. The sword side of this couple was an old and dear friend, one to whom I indeed literally owe my life as a consequence of an act of breathtaking courage he took upon himself some six decades ago. I felt as if I somehow had lost face with this couple because of how abominably they were being treated by the authorities in the county within which I have chosen to reside. I was so embarrassed I had Anthony fire up the Bentley and we immediately drove down the north side of the Mountain and out into the Mojave, where through a series of back roads we found I-40 and made it to Needles to retrieve them I am told that last year the publisher of the Sentinel was in Needles, awaiting the Amtrak in the early morning. He, too, was subjected to insinuations that he was a criminal or at least suspected of being one because he was toting a gunny sack into which he had placed his computer and some odd items of clothing…
I cannot, of course, be certain of what the totality of circumstances are relating to the arrest of this fellow who has assumed the mantel of community watchdog out in Needles. Perhaps he indeed engaged in activity that merited his being taken into custody. But if you were to ask me, a fellow who normally will give the police the benefit of the doubt, do I believe it possible or even likely that the deputies in Needles might go out of their way to make trouble for some guy who has been critical of local officials and demonstrably skeptical of the quality of governance in that remote and small outpost in our gargantuan county, I must say, regretfully, I do…

Samuel Wesley Break was born on August 30th 1896 in Peabody, Kansas, the son of Alan and Cynthia (Clausen) Break. In 1898 when Wesley was two, the family moved West, living first in Pomona until 1904 when they settled in Bryn Mawr, which was then known as Redlands Junction and even earlier as Nahant. Young Wesley received his early schooling at the Old Mission School, starting in 1904, the year that the school was built. Soon after graduating from Redlands High School, Wesley enlisted in the United States Navy Reserve and served during World War I.
In his adult years, Break dispensed with his first name and was known by his middle name.
Break Grew up in the orange industry. His father was a grower of oranges on an extensive scale in Bryn Mawr. At about 20 years of age, Break became the owner of his first citrus property, five acres located in Loma Linda. Before becoming associated with his father in the citrus business, he was foreman of the Bryn Mawr fruit growers association in 1920 and 1921.
Break was a member of the firm of Allen Break and Son, which owned 235 acres of citrus property in the Bryn Mawr District. They operated the only family-owned packing house in that area. The old building was destroyed by fire on New Year’s Eve in 1950, several years after all operations there had ended and the packing plant was dormant.
Break married Hermine Brauer, a teacher at the Redlands Junior High School, on June 22, 1921. They had two sons, Richard Allen Break and Robert Brauer Break, and lived for many years at one of their orange groves in Bryn Mawr, where he could oversee the management of his vast citrus groves.
Mr. Break was a charter member of the American Legion, Post #106. He became a member of the Redlands Elks Lodge in 1919 and was twice elected its exalted ruler, 1937-1938 and 1944-45. He was a member of the Masonic Lodge, F. and A.M. and the “High Twelve” Club and was a member of the Rotary Club, which he joined in 1942. He served for five years on the Mission District School Board, serving on that board during the building of the present Mission School on California Street. The dependency unit building, which cares for the county’s dependent children, is named “Wesley Hall” in his honor.
For many years he served on the State Fire Board of the Division of Forestry and was a member of the board of directors of the Security First National Bank of Redlands, later named the Security Pacific National Bank. He was a member of the board of directors of the Bear Valley Water Company and was also a director of the Bear Valley Extension Pipeline Company. He was a long time member of the First Congregational Church of Redlands and served faithfully and well on the board of deacons. He was also a board member of the local Salvation Army Citadel.
Wesley Break was chairman of the citrus packing plant which operated at the National Orange Show for many years and marketed the fruit which was picked there for the visitors to see. This display drew much attention because it was a model of an actual packing plant, showing all operations from the grove to the transportation to market. In 1950 the San Bernardino County Fair was named in his honor. He was elected president of the 50th National Orange Show in 1965.
Wesley Break was elected to the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors on November 7, 1944, representing the Third District. He served as the chairman of the board from December 1952 to December 1960. During his 24 years on the board, he was elected president of the California Supervisors Association for one year and the Southern Regional Association of County Supervisors at another time. He was a member of the Board of the National Association of County Supervisors.
When Ontario Airport was threatened with closure following World War II, Break led a group of mayors of surrounding cities and other local officials to persuade the federal government that the facility would be needed in the future. That successful gambit preserved the airport, now considered a major asset to San Bernardino County.
As supervisor, Break was instrumental in obtaining $1.5 million in flood control aid from the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee for the construction of the Devil’s Canyon Diversion by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which helped to protect the city of San Bernardino from devastating floods.
He was elected president of the Gold Banner Packing Company in 1965. His extensive land holdings then included 110 acres of Bryn Mawr citrus and a third interest in 1,608 acres of foothill lands.
Upon serving with distinction on the board of supervisors for six consecutive four-year terms, Break retired from public service on December 2, 1968, and with the assistance of his son Bob, looked after his citrus interests in Bryn Mawr until his death at the age of 84 on September 11, 1980. He was survived by his wife of 59 years, Hermine; sons Richard of Visalia, and Robert of Bryn Mawr, five grandchildren; six great-grandchildren; a sister, Leta Break Carroll, and three nieces.

Opuntia basilaris, the beavertail cactus or beavertail pricklypear, is a medium-sized to small cactus species common in the Mojave Desert as weall as the Anza-Borrego Desert, and Colorado Deserts, the Colorado Plateau and northwest Mexico and ranges elsewhere in the southwest United States, through the Grand Canyon and Colorado River region to southern Utah, and in western Arizona.
A single plant may consist of hundreds of fleshy, flattened semi-oval or heart-shaped pads. These are more or less blue-gray, or sometimes described as green to purple in color, depending on variety, growing to a length of six inches and are maximum four inches wide and up to three fifths of inch thick. They are typically spineless, but have instead many small barbed bristles, called glochids, that easily penetrate the skin. The pink to rose colored flowers are most common; however, a rare variety of white and even yellow flowers also exist. Opuntia basilaris bloom from spring to early summer.
The Cahuilla Native Americans used beavertail as a food staple. The buds were cooked or steamed, and then were eaten or stored. The large seeds were ground up to be eaten as mush. The fruit is very sweet. When the pads of cactus are young, they can be cooked and used as greens.

By Grace Bernal
Fashion is something that everybody loves and we all wear different hats according to weather. There are a lot of things happening right now with regard to fashion. Spring has an intensity that never quits. Hats are a fun piece of fashion and vintage hats – 1940s style – are coming back. Also, yellow and blue flowers on a hat work well during this season’s celebration. It’s all about detail and creativity when it comes to dressing for spring. Color definitely grabs your attention and without color there wouldn’t be spring. We have had a cold winter in California, with a little bit of rain which means color revival with style in California. Let’s face it: We have not seen this type of spring in a while! I hope everyone is making the best of these fresh sunny days and showing off their daring hats. Here’s to refreshing and colorful beginnings! Spring has so much more left to offer. Until next week, here’s looking at you, kid. .

“How a hat makes you feel is what a hat is all about.” ~Philip Treacy