San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Deputy Corie Smith has been charged by the district attorney’s office for his mistreatment of a suspect he took into custody on June 16.
Smith, aged 28 and a five-year member of the department who is credited with two separate life-saving actions while on duty in 2020, has been charged with one felony count of assault under the color of authority, stemming from his encounter with Willie C. Jones in Victorville late last spring.
Jones, 32, was riding alone on a motorcycle around 40 minutes past midnight on June 16 in the area of Seventh and Lincoln streets in Victorville. He was observed by a deputy operating the motorbike in what the department later described as “a flagrantly dangerous manner.” Jones failed to comply with an attempt to pull him over. Accelerating to an excessive speed, he ran multiple traffic signals, entered the northbound lanes of Interstate 15 in the opposite direction and almost collided head-on into several vehicles. A radio dispatch for assistance from the pursuing patrol deputy went out.
Thereafter, Jones exited the freeway in the vicinity of Roy Rogers Drive/La Paz Avenue, then headed toward the Valley Hi Toyota Dealership, located on Valley Center Drive. He dropped his bike at the side of the road behind the dealership and fled onto the dealership’s lot on foot. There, for a time, he hid beneath the undercarriage of a vehicle.
Surveillance footage of the dealership grounds, which has since been obtained by the Sentinel, shows what appears to be a lot lit by overhead lights with ten vehicles in the video’s range of field. There is no immediate activity, but roughly five seconds into the video, Jones can be seen crawling out from underneath what is either a black or dark-colored pickup truck. Crouching down, he is seen creeping away, then standing upright and assuming a casual attitude, but looking back in the direction from which he came. At 37 seconds into the video, Deputy Smith, running, comes into the camera’s field of view from the direction in which Jones was looking.
At that point, Jones begins walking, at first nonchalantly, back in the direction from which he came as if to see if he can simply pass himself off as a pedestrian walking through the lot. When Smith immediately veered in his direction, however, Jones raised his hands in a show of surrender. Smith, at that point having slowed to a walk and carrying what appears to be either a lit flashlight or a laser source, comes toward Jones.
In the video obtained by the Sentinel, there is no sound, and it is not possible to discern the verbal exchanges that took place.
At 42 seconds into the video, Jones begins to bend down and at 44 seconds into the video he is on his knees with his hands touching the ground, and he appears to be heading into a prone position. At 46 seconds, Jones’ hips are flat on the ground as are his forearms, with his neck and head arched up, just as Smith begins a powerwalk and rather gratuitously, using his right foot, kicks Jones in the head with considerable force. Smith then shines the light he is holding on Jones, and at 48 seconds into the video, kicks him in the head once more, this time somewhat less forcefully.
Jones, whose position on the ground shifted to his right somewhat because of the violence of the kicks, is seen laying completely prone, with his head on the pavement. Smith then bends down and seizes Jones’ left arm at the 51 second point and bends it up to take it behind Jones and begin handcuffing him. Smith has bent Jones’ right arm back to fully effectuate the handcuffing at 53 seconds, when another deputy, running, comes into the video’s frame of view. That deputy assists Smith and at one minute and seven seconds into the video, a third deputy arrives. A fourth deputy arrives at the 1:34 mark and then a fifth deputy four seconds later. From that point on, Jones’ arrest is carried out with no further incident on the video, and Jones is led away.
The violence exhibited against Jones during the arrest came two weeks and one-and-one-half days after Sheriff’s Sergeant Dominic Vaca was killed in Yucca Valley in broad daylight during the noon hour on May 31, at the end of an incident in which deputies there sought to make a traffic stop of another motorcyclist, Bilal Winston Shabazz, for riding a motorcycle without a license plate. Like Jones, Shabazz fled and when Vaca approached him, Shabazz, who was armed, shot and killed him. Shabazz was himself mortally wounded by other deputies at the Yucca Valley scene.
Smith had been a sheriff’s deputy for five years and two months at the time of the June 16 incident.
After the video became publicly available and was broadcast nationally in extended form by TMZ, a syndicated television program, and was mounted by YouTube in an abbreviated form which included both of Smith’s kicks to Jones’ head, action to suspend Smith was taken by the sheriff’s department.
Then-Undersheriff Shannon Dicus, in a video in which he spoke on behalf of then-Sheriff John McMahon released by the department before Smith was publicly identified, said, “This video came to our attention after a Victorville watch commander was contacted by the security company that monitors the parking lot where this incident occurred. The watch commander reviewed the video and immediately determined the deputy’s actions were disturbing. The watch commander notified the commander of the station. I want to [assure] the community it is our expectation that deputies respond to any incident professionally and in a manner that’s consistent with their training.”
Dicus, who in July succeeded McMahon as county sheriff, in the video further stated, “I want to [assure] the citizens of San Bernardino County, the sheriff and I are aware of the alarming video depicting a deputy kicking a suspect. We know the community’s trust is the platform which enables us to do our jobs. The deputy involved in this incident was immediately taken off duty and placed on administrative leave. A criminal investigation is being conducted. This investigation will be submitted to the district attorney. Subsequently, an administrative investigation will also be initiated to allow for the appropriate employment actions to be taken.”
As of this week, when the charges were filed against Smith, he was still a member of the department and on the county payroll, though not back at work. For reasons the department did not disclose, the criminal and internal departmental investigation relating to Smith and his action was halted immediately after Dicus’s video was issued. It is believed that the department’s command echelon was stood off through intercession on Smith’s behalf by the union representing the department’s deputies, the Safety Employees Benefit Association. With the matter now being revived by the district attorney’s office’s filing against Smith, the department announced it is at present ready to “conduct an internal investigation” that will take into consideration “employment issues consistent with labor law and the Peace Officer Bill of Rights.”
Smith’s action in the early morning of June 16 has presented a thorny challenge to Dicus in the first months of his tenure as sheriff. Dicus has sought, in his words uttered during the video made in response to the exposition of the treatment of Jones displayed across the World Wide Web, to impress on the public that “We take these matters seriously, and want to assure you a thorough investigation will be conducted. It’s unfortunate when incidents like these occur, because it causes turmoil within our communities and equally amongst our deputies who pride themselves on providing professional service.”
Many of Dicus’s deputies, however, feel that since they are being called upon to apprehend oftentimes dangerous criminals and must do so during fast-paced encounters in the field under unpredictable circumstances where their lives may be at stake, they should have the latitude, as their judgment dictates, to deal harshly and even brutally with those they are encountering, and that the sheriff, as their employer who has placed them into these circumstances, should have their backs.
There is an indication that the department sought to shield Smith from prosecution by arranging to quiet Jones in the aftermath of the video of him being twice kicked in the head going viral.
On July 2, Jones, who said he was knocked unconscious by one or both of the kicks and was not mentally alert after he was jailed, maintained that while he was yet in custody members of the sheriff’s department offered him $4,000 in return for signing a waiver by which he committed to not sue the county for excessive force. This was done, Jones said, while he was in the process of being transported from the hospital where he had undergone treatment for the injuries he sustained during his arrest to the sheriff’s jail system and before he had posted bail and had an opportunity to consult with a lawyer. He signed the waiver and release of liability form, he said, though he did not understand the document or its implication. Jones related that he was “coerced” into affixing his signature on the waiver. He said he had not cashed the check presented to him. He is now represented by attorney Zulu Ali, and has lodged a $5 million claim against Smith, McMahon, Dicus, the sheriff’s department and the county.
One of Smith’s colleagues told the Sentinel that Smith’s action on June 16 was “atypical” of and “out of character” for the deputy he knew and had worked with previously, and was likely a manifestation of the events surrounding the arrest, including the chase and the recent slaying of Vaca.
Smith began with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department in April 2016, and has been assigned to the Victorville Sheriff’s Station since September 2017.
Earlier this year, the department presented Deputy Smith with two lifesaving awards. One of those pertained to an incident on August 26, 2020, when he responded to a call and found a two-year-old lying in a pool of blood and bleeding profusely from multiple stab wounds in his chest and abdomen. Smith used his fingers to plug the wounds to stem the bleeding until medical help arrived. The child survived. On July 11, 2020, Smith responded to a call of a woman having a medical emergency. Upon arrival, he found an unresponsive woman with three young children in a car with the engine running inside a garage in which the temperature exceeded 140 degrees. Smith was credited with saving the lives of the children.
-Mark Gutglueck

Shirley Harlan, 92, the first woman to serve as an officer with the Redlands Police Department and who later made a mark as a local civic affairs and national political activist most notably affiliated with the effort to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, has died.
With a deceptively calm demeanor that belied her hidden intensity and energy, Harlan multi-tasked through life and made herself relevant across four generations, springboarding herself and others on to each next stage.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1929 four weeks to the day before the stock market crash, she was the only child of parents who lacked high school diplomas. They pushed her to achieve academically and refine her talents. At a local hospital she served as what would later become known as a candy striper and volunteered as well at a Jewish community center. After her 1947 graduation from West Tech High School, she attended Western Reserve University, obtaining a bachelor of science in sociology with a minor in physical education.
In 1952, she moved to California from Ohio, and found a job as a social worker in San Bernardino almost immediately. It was while working in that capacity that she met Herbert Harlan, and they married in 1954 and started a family shortly thereafter, raising two children.
In the midst of that, in 1956, she applied for an open position as an officer with the Redlands Police Department, and secured a position within the previously all male domain by a combination of factors, the first being her finishing second in testing done of those taking a pre-hiring training class and the willingness of the department’s command structure, led by Police Chief Stanley R. Bowen, and the city’s leadership to take what was then an unorthodox path.
Harlan later recalled that the officers at the department were accommodating and showed no resentment toward her, but she did lament that she was left to her own devise when it came to her uniform. Policeman of that day, as is the case now, could buy their uniforms off the rack at clothing stores or specialty shops that outfitted police officers. No such attire was available in what was then off-the-beaten track Redlands, so Harlan, using her own sewing machine, had to design hers, using a pattern and material approximating that used for her colleagues’ uniforms she came up with on her own, matching, as best she could, the attire of the men she worked with. In this way, she maintained herself within the social protocol of the day, which was that women wore dresses. She complimented the dress with a pair of white shoes with moderate heels. Instead of a hip or shoulder holster, she carried her gun in her purse.
She later recounted that she had never used her gun in the line of duty, though she had honed her shooting skills on the shooting range, and had proven herself equal to or better than her fellow officers in that regard. On a single occasion, she said, she was present when her partner had fired his firearm when they encountered a resistant subject at his residence where they had gone to effectuate his arrest.
Harlan acknowledged there was a physical aspect to some police work, but that at the time, when she was in her late twenties and very early thirties, she was up to such challenges, since she was agile and fit, and ready to acquit herself if the need arose.
She was initially assigned all of the duties of a beat officer, which included patrolling the streets. After her first year, she was no longer spending the lion’s share of her time out on the streets, but was working, in accordance with Chief Bowen’s reassignment of her, as an investigator within the department’s three-member juvenile unit, then headed by Lieutenant Claude Miles and which also included Officer Arthur P. Crim III. In 1958, Miles stated publicly that “due a more adequate juvenile unit,” which was a reference to Harlan’s addition, arrests of youthful offenders in Redlands were increasing at a faster pace than were the offenses.
Chief Bowen also utilized Harlan as an officer/investigator in what was the department’s domestic violence division, although that was not its official title, as well as in pursuing female offenders and the perpetrators of sexual offenses. An element of Harlan’s job was going to schools to deal with students whose offenses necessitated them being detained, interviewed or transported to juvenile hall. She also served as the custody officer used for dealing with, searching and transporting women who had been arrested. When work on those assignments lagged, she would return to patrol.
In August 1961, Harlan resigned her post to accept a position as director of Las Amigas Girls Home, which had been established three years previously by Margaret Baer, who resigned as that facility’s operator to take a job with the Ventura Girls School in Ventura. In her letter of departure to Chief Bowen, Harlan wrote that “I consider myself fortunate to have been associated for the past four years with such a high caliber group of law enforcement officers. I am especially grateful to have received my basic training in juvenile work under an officer as able at Lt. Claude Miles.” In the letter to Bowen, Harlan said her training and experience with the department were of substantial aid in qualifying her for taking on the management of the orphanage.
Later, Harlan would say, “In the Redlands Police Department, all the officers were certainly some of the most wonderful people I’ve ever worked with.”
Her departure came a few months short of her five-year anniversary with the department, a milestone at which officers, at that time, were provided with a permanent metal badge.
Harlan threw herself into the operation of the residential school for girls, but ultimately was persuaded by the encouragement of others to get back into law enforcement work, and she became a San Bernardino County probation officer.
Having been forced by the standards of the times in the 1950s and early 1960s to wear a dress on a daily basis, a requirement imposed on women strictly because of their gender, Harlan was among the movement that began to rebel against this stricture in the late 1960s and early 1970s, defying dress codes that mandated that women wear dresses or skirts. She wore pants almost daily, though in a gesture to placate or evade the head of the probation department who was less than pleased with the growing number of women who were in defiance of what were workplace standards, she always had a dress she would change into whenever he was to be around.
In her role as a probation officer, she undertook a number of what were at least at first considered to be unorthodox approaches in seeking to ensure compliance on the part of probationers with the terms of their release and achieving the ultimate goal of the probationers’ rehabilitation.
She admitted that she did not always follow the rules just for the sake of following rules. Some things needed to change, she said, even though some people are not open to new ideas. She was ready to experiment with things if she thought they might work. “I have always been quirky,” she said. “I’m kind of an oddball.”
At least some of the different approaches she proposed or advocated were accepted. In the 1970s, after the department had acquired video production equipment intended to be used for videotaping training and instructional presentations for probation officers, Harlan sought to refocus the purpose of the equipment, utilizing it for involving youthful probationers in the production of videos to divert them from criminal activity and antisocial attitudes. Some of the probation department’s higher-ups were skeptical, particularly when the freedom given the youth participating in the project resulted in videos that took a critical view of juvenile hall or an instructional video on how to make a break from juvenile hall, as well as films that were less than laudatory of the probation department itself. Harlan overcame her superiors’ resistance to the program by pointing out that the process of creating the videos involved a degree of discipline and commitment on the part of the young probationers that included the writing of the scripts used, acting them out and mastering the techniques of videography and editing, which provided the probation office’s youthful charges with new skills, an understanding and appreciation of the importance of extended focus on a goal, labor and follow-through and a sense of accomplishment, even if it involved using their resentment and anger toward the probation department and other social institutions as a motivating factor.
Harlan retired from the probation department in 1989, and having herself picked up skills as a videographer, obtained cameras and editing equipment and set up a videography company she ran out of her home in San Bernardino.
For someone who had worked in law enforcement, Harlan possessed what some considered atypical “liberal” or “progressive” notions regarding certain elements of police work, most notably relating to training officers to use less aggressive means in dealing with the mentally ill.
She was politically active as a Democrat, as a member of the League of Women Voters and as a member of the Older Women’s League, which is devoted to finding solutions including public policy changes to solve challenges mid-life and aging women face.
As a Democrat, she was a longtime advocate of a public healthcare system, and after one was in place, she pushed for a single-payer healthcare system.
As someone who had defied the professional and circumstantial confines placed on women in her youth and young adulthood and who blazed a path in at least some measure in overcoming those limitations, she was not content to allow that progress to speak for itself, and she was active in the effort to put the Equal Rights Amendment before the American voters.
The Equal Rights Amendment is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution written by Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman and introduced in Congress in 1923 which calls for guaranteeing equal legal rights for all American citizens regardless of gender. It seeks to end the legal distinctions between men and women in matters of divorce, property ownership, employment and other matters.
For an initiative to amend the U.S. Constitution to be placed on the national ballot, it must receive ratification by the legislatures of 38 of the 50 states. At present, 38 of the 50 state legislatures have made such endorsements, but the 38th endorsement, that of the Virginia General Assembly, did not come until 2020, more than 40 years after the ratification deadline of March 22, 1979 originally set by Congress. In addition, five of those state legislatures have rescinded those endorsements.
As a resident of San Bernardino, Harlan was a frequent, indeed a virtually constant, attendee of San Bernardino City Council meetings over the last decade.
With her 90th birthday in October 2019, Redlands Police Chief Chris Catren and the woman who are now officers with the Redlands Police Department feted Harlan, at which time Catren presented her with the metal badge she had never received because she had left just short of logging her fifth complete year with the department.
-Mark Gutglueck

San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Deputy Corie Smith has been charged by the district attorney’s office for his mistreatment of a suspect he took into custody on June 16.
Smith, aged 28 and a five-year member of the department who in 2020 was credited with two separate life-saving actions while on duty in 2020, has been charged with one felony count of assault under the color of authority, stemming from his encounter with Willie C. Jones in Victorville late last spring.
Jones, 32, was riding alone on a motorcycle around 40 minutes past midnight on June 16 in the area of Seventh and Lincoln streets in Victorville. He was observed by a deputy operating the motorbike in what the department later described as “a flagrantly dangerous manner.” Jones failed to comply with an attempt to pull him over. Accelerating to an excessive speed, he ran multiple traffic signals, entered the northbound lanes of Interstate 15 in the opposite direction and almost collided head-on into several vehicles. A radio dispatch for assistance from the pursuing patrol deputy went out.
Thereafter, Jones exited the freeway in the vicinity of Roy Rogers Drive/La Paz Avenue, then headed toward the Valley Hi Toyota Dealership, located on Valley Center Drive. He dropped his bike at the side of the road behind the dealership and fled onto the dealership’s lot on foot. There, for a time, he hid beneath the undercarriage of a vehicle.
Surveillance footage of the dealership grounds, which has since been obtained by the Sentinel, shows what appears to be a lot lit by overhead lights with ten vehicles in the video’s range of field. There is no immediate activity, but roughly five seconds into the video, Jones can be seen crawling out from underneath what is either a black or dark-colored pickup truck. Crouching down, he is seen creeping away, then standing upright and assuming a casual attitude, but looking back in the direction from which he came. At 37 seconds into the video, Deputy Smith, running, comes into the camera’s field of view from the direction in which Jones was looking.
At that point, Jones begins walking, at first nonchalantly, back in the direction from which he came as if to see if he can simply pass himself off as a pedestrian walking through the lot. When Smith immediately veered in his direction, however, Jones raised his hands in a show of surrender. Smith, at that point having slowed to a walk and carrying what appears to be either a lit flashlight or a laser source, comes toward Jones.
In the video obtained by the Sentinel, there is no sound, and it is not possible to discern the verbal exchanges that took place.
At 42 seconds into the video, Jones begins to bend down and at 44 seconds into the video he is on his knees with his hands touching the ground, and he appears to be heading into a prone position. At 46 seconds, Jones’ hips are flat on the ground as are his forearms, with his neck and head arched up, just as Smith begins a powerwalk and rather gratuitously, using his right foot, kicks Jones in the head with considerable force. Smith then shines the light he is holding on Jones, and at 48 seconds into the video, kicks him in the head once more, this time somewhat less forcefully.
Jones, whose position on the ground shifted to his right somewhat because of the violence of the kicks, is seen laying completely prone, with his head on the pavement. Smith then bends down and seizes Jones’ left arm at the 51 second point and bends it up to take it behind Jones and begin handcuffing him. Smith has bent Jones’ right arm back to fully effectuate the handcuffing at 53 seconds, when another deputy, running, comes into the video’s frame of view. That deputy assists Smith and at one minute and seven seconds into the video, a third deputy arrives. A fourth deputy arrives at the 1:34 mark and then a fifth deputy four seconds later. From that point on, Jones’ arrest is carried out with no further incident on the video, and Jones is led away.
The violence exhibited against Jones during the arrest came two weeks and one-and-one-half days after Sheriff’s Sergeant Dominic Vaca was killed in Yucca Valley in broad daylight during the noon hour on May 31, at the end of an incident in which deputies there sought to make a traffic stop of another motorcyclist, Bilal Winston Shabazz, for riding a motorcycle without a license plate. Like Jones, Shabazz fled and when Vaca approached him, Shabazz, who was armed, shot and killed him. Shabazz was himself mortally wounded by other deputies at the Yucca Valley scene.
Smith had been a sheriff’s deputy for five years and two months at the time of the June 16 incident.
After the video became publicly available and was broadcast nationally in extended form by TMZ, a syndicated television program, and was mounted by YouTube in an abbreviated form which included both of Smith’s kicks to Jones’ head, action to suspend Smith was taken by the sheriff’s department.
Then-Undersheriff Shannon Dicus in a video in which he spoke on behalf of then-Sheriff John McMahon released by the department before Smith was publicly identified, said, “This video came to our attention after a Victorville watch commander was contacted by the security company that monitors the parking lot where this incident occurred. The watch commander reviewed the video and immediately determined the deputy’s actions were disturbing. The watch commander notified the commander of the station. I want to [assure] the community it is our expectation that deputies respond to any incident professionally and in a manner that’s consistent with their training.”
Dicus, who in July succeeded McMahon as county sheriff, in the video further stated, “I want to [assure] the citizens of San Bernardino County, the sheriff and I are aware of the alarming video depicting a deputy kicking a suspect. We know the community’s trust is the platform which enables us to do our jobs. The deputy involved in this incident was immediately taken off duty and placed on administrative leave. A criminal investigation is being conducted. This investigation will be submitted to the district attorney. Subsequently, an administrative investigation will also be initiated to allow for the appropriate employment actions to be taken.”
As of this week, when the charges were filed against Smith, he was still a member of the department and on the county payroll, though not back at work. For reasons the department did not disclose, the criminal and internal departmental investigation relating to Smith and his action was halted immediately after Dicus’s video was issued. It is believed that the department’s command echelon was stood off through intercession on Smith’s behalf by the union representing the department’s deputies, the Safety Employees Benefit Association. With the matter now being revived by the district attorney’s office’s filing against Smith, the department announced it is at present ready to “conduct an internal investigation” that will take into consideration “employment issues consistent with labor law and the Peace Officer Bill of Rights.”
Smith’s action in the early morning of June 16 has presented a thorny challenge to Dicus in the first months of his tenure as sheriff. Dicus has sought, in his words uttered during the video made in response to the exposition of the treatment of Jones displayed across the Worldwide Web, to impress on the public that “We take these matters seriously, and want to assure you a thorough investigation will be conducted. It’s unfortunate when incidents like these occur, because it causes turmoil within our communities and equally amongst our deputies who pride themselves on providing professional service.”
Many of Dicus’s deputies, however, feel that since they are being called upon to apprehend oftentimes dangerous criminals and must do so during fast-paced encounters in the field under unpredictable circumstances where their lives may be at stake, that they should have the latitude to deal harshly and even brutally with those they are encountering, and that the sheriff, as their employer who has placed them into these circumstances, should have their backs.
There is an indication that the department sought to shield Smith from prosecution by arranging to quiet Jones in the aftermath of the video of him being kicked in the head twice going viral.
On July 2, Jones, who said he was knocked unconscious by one or both of the kicks and was not mentally alert after he was jailed, maintained that while he was yet in custody members of the sheriff’s department offered him $4,000 in return for signing a waiver by which he committed to not sue the county for excessive force. This was done, Jones said, while he was in the process of being transported from the hospital where he had undergone treatment for the injuries he sustained during his arrest and custody within the sheriff’s jail system before he had posted bail and had an opportunity to consult with a lawyer. He signed the waiver and release of liability form, he said, though he did not understand the document or its implication. Jones related that he was “coerced” into affixing his signature on the waiver. He said he had not cashed the check presented to him. He is now represented by attorney Zulu Ali, and has lodged a $5 million claim against Smith, McMahon, Dicus, the sheriff’s department and the county.
One of Smith’s colleagues told the Sentinel that Smith’s action on June 16 was “atypical” of the deputy he knew and had worked with previously, and was likely a manifestation of the events surrounding the arrest, including the chase and the recent slaying of Vaca.
Smith began with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department in April 2016, and has been assigned to the Victorville Sheriff’s Station since September 2017.
Earlier this year, the department presented Deputy Smith with two lifesaving awards. One of those pertained to an incident on August 26, 2020, when he responded to a call and found a two-year-old lying in a pool of blood and bleeding profusely from multiple stab wounds in his chest and abdomen. Smith used his fingers to plug the wounds to stem the bleeding until medical help arrived. The child survived. On July 11, 2020, Smith responded to a call of a woman having a medical emergency. Upon arrival, he found an unresponsive woman, with three young children in a car with the engine running inside a garage in which the temperature exceeded 140 degrees. Smith was credited with saving the lives of the children.
-Mark Gutglueck

By Carlos Avalos
On November 6, 2020, the policing procedure consulting firm Hillard Heintze/Jensen Hughes Company completed its independent assessment of the Fontana Police Department via the department’s and city’s urgent request. Hillard Heintze believes the FPD’s willingness to allow this assessment of itself is proof that the department is attacking head-on the issues that plague the department and police departments across the United States.
One such issue under widespread public scrutiny nationally and locally is ethnic diversity of the employees within police departments. This was a central issue in the review of the Fontana Police Department, along with ethics and policing practices. In its report of the Fontana Police Department, Hillard Heintze noted its assessment focused on and identified areas where the FPD could make operational changes to improve its services. This included increasing diversity within the department and improving engagement and training.
Boiled down to its essence, the Hillard Heintze report dealt with how the Fontana Police Department treats and perceives the people it serves, and how the FPD deals with the people trying to become members of the department.
An issue in American policing is an us-versus-them mentality, which is not complex. Police agencies and unions are populated by officers who are predominantly white, which some assert makes policing a white profession. Women are also greatly underrepresented in policing, so a more accurate characterization might be that policing in America is a predominantly white male profession. Many times, though not universally, this circumstance is accompanied by the mindset that certain groups of people are more of a threat to a police officer. It has been argued that this can be clearly affirmed by the way in which police officers in America encounter Caucasians compared to people of any other race, then how they react, and their choices to use deadly force or not, which many assert shows that something is amiss with the overall training, psychology and ethos in American policing.
Of relevance is that negative minority community perceptions of police in America have a historical basis in fact. A primary example of this is the war on drugs, with its primary focus in black and other minority neighborhoods where stop-and-frisk police protocols routinely subjected hundreds of thousands of innocent minorities to such searches, which exacerbated feelings of marginalization on the part of those frisked and created frictions with the police. Other historical examples of the disparate treatment of members of the minority population in the United States outside the context of policing consists of slavery, segregation, Jim Crow laws, red lining, voter suppression, lynchings, barred entry into real estate ownership, banking and loan denials, and employment discrimination.
Any negative feelings from the minority community toward police did not start with the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Eric Gardner, Daunte Wright, Rayshard Brooks, Daniel Prude, Atatiana Jefferson, Aura Rosser, Stephon Clark, Botham Jean, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, or Freddie Gray. These minorities were killed for such offenses as selling loose cigarettes, using counterfeit money, selling CDs and DVDs or upon being pulled over while driving, while in their own homes including while they slept or for standing in his grandmother’s yard. Feelings of animosity, disdain, and fear have existed even prior to policing in America. Do the police kill white people for engaging in these types of activities? If so, do they do so with the same frequency? The answer to these questions are up for debate, but appears as if they do not, or at least such killings are not caught on camera as much.
The Sentinel reached out to Fontana Police Chief William Greene for comment on the Hillard Heintze assessment on June 2, 2021. For the record, Chief Greene stated in response to the Hillard Heintze 2020 report on the Fontana Police Department that he found “the report/ assessment encouraging, but there are things that they [his officers] currently do that can be absolutely improved upon.” He went on to say that “The FPD is a place of constant assessment, self reflection, and change, and we are dedicated to continue to do things better then they have ever been done.”
The Hillard Heintze report started off with an overall general recommendation that the city and the FPD embrace and implement the recommendations contained in its report such that the department will have a “renewed sense of how personnel can improve community relationships, increase and value diversity, and develop best-practice internal affairs protocols.”
Hillard Heintze, a Chicago-based company founded in 2004 by Terry G. Hillard, a retired superintendent of the Chicago Police Department, and Arnette F. Heintze, retired special agent in charge of the U.S. Secret Service’s Chicago Field Office and an ex-Fortune 100 director of security, touts itself as a strategic security risk management and corporate investigations consulting firm. In 2019, it merged with Jensen Hughes, which bills itself as a global leader in safety, security and risk-based engineering and consulting. Hillard Heitze employs as some of its analysts and experts individuals who were once themselves police officers and remain attuned to law enforcement rules and standards and have valuable insight to assist police departments devise more efficient, transparent, and honest internal affairs protocols.
For some, it is puzzling how a police organization would need a recommendation to or have to first check with a consultant on the importance of having a diverse police force that mirrors the community that department serves, and need to be told why there is more value in having police officers who are not just Caucasian.
The introduction of the Hillard Heintze report calls upon the Fontana Police Department to identify its organizational vulnerabilities and be committed to improvement via training, communication, and initiative. The assessment/report credits the police department’s leadership with an existing commitment to excellence, stating that is what drove the department’s command echelon to seek the assessment. This represented, Hillard Heintze stated, what is presumed to be a hard and purposeful glance into the police department, a willingness to open the department to scrutiny so ways could be identified to improve department operations and service to the community.
This report states that the Fontana Police Department is trying to be proactive and increase confidence in the police in the city. According to Hillard Heintze, many police agencies and officers are confused about what it takes to build real trust and confidence within the communities they serve; Fontana, is no different. Thousands of Fontanans will never directly encounter a police officer. Nevertheless, a majority of Fontana’s residents will. The department can begin to gain the trust and confidence of the more than one hundred thousand Fontana residents who are protected minority members as defined by U.S. law through icebreakers such as having coffee events, cookouts involving the public or giving away toys and other good faith gestures and being nice to the masses, but it will never achieve actual trust building in the community if behind the public’s back the department is being dishonest with its rules, protocols, procedures, and disciplinary actions against its officers, according to Hillard Heintze. Everything needs to flow together and be genuine. If not, it is subpar and pseudo.
The Hillard Heintze methodology used to analyze the Fontana Police Department was based on the six strategic principles of (1) independent and objective analysis, (2) solicitation of multiple viewpoints, (3) an acute focus on collaboration and partnership, (4) an information-driven decision-making mindset, (5) a structured and highly disciplined engagement approach and (6) clear and open lines of communication.
The only way that the Fontana Police Department could truly fulfill the six objectives of analysis is if its leadership allowed someone to investigate or analyze the department from top to bottom who was not picked by the department. Otherwise, this Hillard Heintze methodology might be flawed. The Sentinel’s informants within the police department stated that this was not an independent and objective analysis. According to them, the Fontana Police Department’s motive is to make it appear that its leadership has solicited multiple viewpoints when it in reality has not, and the information used to drive decision-making comes from a silo made up of 95 percent white men, and in their own words, the Fontana Police Department “has never had clear and open lines of communication with the public.” This is because when one party is constantly manipulating and deceiving the other, open and clear lines of communication cannot be achieved.
The actual physical visit by Hillard Heintze’s to the Fontana Police Department consisted of interviews with members of the department from all ranks. The analysis also included a random sampling of department internal affairs cases handled or being handled between the years 2018 and 2019 and through June 2020. A major issue the Sentinel noted was that the report does not say who made the random sampling, who selected the cases to be reviewed or how the random sample was developed.
The stakeholders involved who were interviewed were Chief William Green and his command staff, Fontana Police Department supervisors and officers working in internal affairs, recruiting, hiring and community policing, non-sworn staff members, a random sampling of department members hired between 2017 and 2020, including those who were at that time in the police academy. They also interviewed Mayor Acquanetta Warren, other members of the Fontana city council, the newly formed police chief’s round table committee, and then followed through with individual interviews with the police chief’s round table committee members.
It is important to hear the positive remarks and stories from internal personnel. Nevertheless, such interviews of people who are part of the same team have a decided tendency to elicit calculated statements – one description might be the bending of the truth and another more direct description might be lies  – to make the team look good, particularly since their jobs and the well being of their families depend on how they respond to questions.
As American police culture shows, unfortunately many times these officers want to speak the truth, even if it puts their department in a negative light, but because of the reprisals for breaking the blue line, they just put their head down and mind their own business.
This community round table is like the round table San Bernardino County District Attorney Jason Anderson has put in place and touts as a major progressive step forward to show his department’s willingness to create change by having normal people in the community work hand-in-hand with law enforcement. Jason Anderson’s round table consists of community members from the five county supervisorial districts who work with law enforcement. In theory, this is a great idea, and every police organization should have something similar where the community can give guidance, express concerns, and offer recommendations. The problem is, at least in the cases of Fontana’s and Jason Anderson’s round tables, there is an overwhelming indication they were assembled for show. The people on the committees were ones who were picked on the basis of their offering the least resistance to the status quo. When this happens, the committee is irrelevant and non-beneficial to normal citizens and the broader community.

Carlos Avalos’s analysis of the Hillard Heintz report will continue in upcoming editions of the Sentinel.

On Tuesday, October 19, Chino became the second city in San Bernardino County to impose on the development industry what is being introduced as a 45-day moratorium on the application for and further processing of warehouse construction permitting.
Chino joined the cities of Colton and San Bernardino in seeking to introduce such a ban. As was the case with Colton, which put its ban in place in May and has since extended it, Chino succeeded. San Bernardino’s proposal to suspend warehouse building, though favored in June by five of its seven council members, failed to achieve adoption, as passage of a building moratorium in California must take place on a vote of four-fifths or more of the elected decision-making body with land use authority in any particular jurisdiction.
The measure the Chino City Council put in place this week was identical to the temporary suspensions both San Bernardino and Colton considered insofar as the ban can be extended from 45 days to a year, and then from a year to two years, if the council makes a determination that should be done. Chino’s action differs from the proposals San Bernardino and Colton had before their councils in that it applies only to a specified part of the city, while those two municipalities were seeking to temporarily discontinue such construction generally within their city limits.
Chino’s action does not impact projects that are already under way or for which the application process has been completed. It extends to any projects for which an application has not yet been made and to applications that have been filed but which have not yet been completely processed.
Covered under the Chino ban is property readily available and properly zoned for warehousing, and therefore most likely to be coveted by warehouse developers, those being the southwest triangle at Monte Vista and Chino avenues, the northeast corner of Yorba and Schaefer avenues and the southwest corner of Chino and Central avenues.
As was the case in Colton and San Bernardino, members of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, which represents construction workers involved in the construction of tilt-up buildings, were present Tuesday to oppose the moratorium.
In the last two decades, San Bernardino County has seen an explosion in the construction of warehouses, partially because of its location within Southern California, which involves large port facilities in San Pedro and Long Beach, both of which land massive amounts of merchandise from manufacturers in Asia brought across the Pacific Ocean by ship. That cargo is offloaded onto trains and trucks and distributed throughout much of the country. In this way the Inland Empire has become a major logistics center.
Nevertheless, with more and more land locally being consumed by warehouses and distribution centers, some have begun to second guess the wisdom of allotting so much property, which could be developed for what many consider to be better purposes, for the building of warehouses.
Increasingly, some elected officials, local residents and futurists are questioning whether warehouses constitute the highest and best use of the property available for development in the region. And while logistics facilities in modern times must be part of any land use mix, there is an argument to be made that there is a need to maintain a balance between such operations – or at least the quarters for such operations, as many of them stand empty – and other types of development. In refuting the assertions of the proponents of warehouses that they constitute positive economic development, their detractors cite the relatively poor pay and benefits provided to those who work in distribution facilities, the large diesel-powered semi-trucks that are part of those operations with their unhealthy exhaust emissions, together with the bane of traffic gridlock they create.
Councilman Walt Pocock indicated that he could have in good conscience supported a 45-day moratorium on the acceptance of or processing of warehouse construction applications, but that he did not want to initiate action that would clear the way for a two-year discontinuation of development activity.
Councilwoman Karen Comstock offered her rationale for suspending warehouse development long enough to reassess what the proper balance of that sort of land use should be.
“We don’t have much land left in Chino, and I think it’s worth preserving and evaluating whether or not these parcels are suitable,” she said.