The Orange County Superior Court on May 27 reversed a March 12, 2021 relocation order that would have placed Lawtis Rhoden, a five-time convicted sex offender with a fixation on girls and young women, to Twentynine Palms.
Available information did not specify which judge or judges made the respective March 12 and May 27 rulings. The March 12 assignation of Rhoden, now 71, to Twentynine Palms was made despite his having no previous known connection with San Bernardino County.
His sex crimes span five decades. In 1969 in Cocoa Beach, Florida he lured a 13-year-old victim to his apartment and raped her on three separate occasions. For that he was convicted and sentenced to 14 months in a state mental hospital and 12 years in state prison. After his parole, Rhoden sexually assaulted four children in two states, including rape by force, forceful sexual penetration, sexual battery, and two counts of forcible rape stemming from crimes he committed in Orange County and Los Angeles County in April and June 1984. Those involved two 14-year-old girls and one 17-year-old girl. While those crimes were under investigation, Rhoden went to Nashville, Tennessee where he sexually assaulted a 13-year-old girl in December 1984 and was subsequently convicted of rape and use of a minor for obscene purposes. The State of Tennessee sentenced Rhoden to 20 years in state prison, the Orange County Superior Court sentenced him to 12 years in state prison, and the Los Angeles County Superior Court sentenced him to six years in state prison.
From March of 1983 until his arrest in Tennessee, Rhoden also defrauded older women in California, Florida and Texas of approximately $440,000. After his 2004 prison release, Rhoden was detained in the Orange County jail based on a sexually violent predator petition filed by the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, and was found by an Orange County jury to be a sexually violent predator, which led to his commitment to the Department of State Hospitals for treatment.
On October 25, 2019, the Orange County Superior Court ordered Rhoden released into the community under the supervision of Liberty Healthcare. That led to the order for his placement in Twentynine Palms.
San Bernardino County District Attorney Jason Anderson assigned deputy district attorneys Dan Ross and Maureen O’Connell to oppose, after the fact, the Orange County Superior Court’s March 12 order. Ross’s and O’Connell’s filings and arguments led to yesterday’s outcome.
“It’s been a very long and uphill battle,” said O’Connell. “One of the underlying objectives as a prosecutor is to protect our community and to advocate for our victims. This case did just that.”

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Pyromaniacs might want to take note that the San Bernardino County Fire Protection District is now employing an arson detection canine.
The county fire department, after an interlude of more than two decades without such an asset, has acquired a four-year-old black Labrador, which goes by the name of Dinty, to revive its K-9 program. The county fire department formerly employed an arson canine, but that program lapsed sometime around the turn of the Third Millennium.
One of the department’s investigators, Shawn Reiss, is Dinty’s handler, which is to say he is the dog’s owner. Together, Reiss and Dinty recently completed a four-week, 200-hour training course at the Arson Dog Academy in Concord, New Hampshire.
The course was conducted by Paul Gallagher, the owner and trainer with Maine Specialty Dogs.
Arson dogs are also referred to as accelerant detection canines. They are trained to sniff out minute traces of accelerants that may have been used to start or rapidly spread a fire.
Virtually all arson K-9s are Labrador retrievers, which are deemed best suited to sniff out how a fire was intensified.
The program uses Labrador Retrievers for numerous reasons. Labradors have a superior ability to discriminate among scents at a fire scene, as their noses are sensitive to a level of parts per quintillion, a sense of smell that is 100,000 times more acute than a human’s.
Labs generally have a gentle and cooperative disposition, and are responsive to the food-reward method of training used to transform a dog into a firefighting asset.
Labradors have an ability to work within a fire scene, and are oftentimes most effective when a crowd is present. At such fire scenes, arsonists will sometimes linger, giving himself an opportunity to savor the public reaction to his work. Arson dogs, mingling among spectators, can give such a perpetrator a good sniff. If the arsonist is in the crowd watching, the accelerant detecting canine will alert to the smell of the acelerant on his or her clothes, shoes or body. If someone within the crowd has had contact with a flammable liquid or material, that individual will not escape the attention of the dog.
At the site of a fire, the dogs can often pinpoint the spot where the accelerant was used, which can in some instances lead to other evidence useful in an arson probe.
–Mark Gutglueck

Read The May 21 San Bernardino County Sentinel in PDF form by clicking on the portal below

Sentinel 05-21-21

By Mark Gutglueck
In a temporary victory for San Bernardino City Councilman Ben Reynoso, in consonance with four of his council colleagues he has been able to direct city staff to prepare an urgency ordinance that could impose a moratorium of up to two years duration prohibiting the construction of new warehouses in the city.
Still, Reynoso’s suggestion that city officials suspend the construction of what serve essentially as distribution facilities for merchandise which largely originates in China and other Asian countries stands little chance of getting a final endorsement, since the required margin for the passage of a moratorium is so high.
Under state law, a moratorium cannot be put into place by anything less than a four-fifths vote of the elected decision-making panel of a given jurisdiction. San Bernardino has seven voting members on its city council. Thus, if all seven members of the panel participate in the vote, the temporary ban on warehouse construction in the city will need six votes to pass to meet the 80 percent or greater approval threshold for the temporary ban. .
Both Councilman Fred Shorett and Councilman Juan Figueroa appear philosophically opposed to preventing warehouse development to proceed.
Since 2015, 26 warehouse projects have been processed and approved by the city, entailing acreage under roof of 9,598,255 square feet, or more than one-third of a square mile, translating into 220.34 acres.
Councilman Reynoso has long questioned whether warehouses constitute the highest and best use of the property available for development in the city. He cites the relatively poor pay and benefits provided to those who work in them, the large diesel-powered semi-trucks that frequent them with their unhealthy exhaust emissions together with the bane of traffic gridlock they create in refuting the assertions of their sponsors and proponents that they constitute positive economic development.
As they have been developed over the last several years, Reynoso maintains, warehouses entail greater liabilities than benefits. Simultaneously, recent developments in terms of mechanisms for loading trucks, unloading them and the transition from fossil fuels to electricity in the powering of vehicles has created a circumstance in which many of the untoward environmental impacts traditionally associated with warehouses can be attenuated. San Bernardino currently has no guidelines to ensure the emission or pollution reductions that can be achieved are actually mandated into the conditions of approval for warehouses in the city going forward. Reynoso maintains the city should ensure such improvements are incorporated into the design and operation of any new warehouses or that the city forego such developments altogether unless substantial community benefit agreements from the developers proposing to build warehouses can be wrung from the project proponents to offset the downsides of such development
Accordingly, an attitude has grown in place around those politicians in Reynoso’s orbit that it would therefore be appropriate for the city to hold off on further warehouse construction while a comprehensive review of warehouses as a land use is conducted in conjunction with the reformulation of the city’s general plan, which has not been reviewed or revamped for more than a decade-and-a-half.
A general plan is the blueprint by which land use throughout a city is to be managed, and becomes the document by which a city’s broad planning guidelines are set and the city’s future development goals and standards are defined within the context of policy statements to achieve those development goals.
As the catalyst that has provoked the concept of imposing a moratorium to allow an assessment of the economic, environmental and social implications of allowing intensive warehouse development to occur, Reynoso has been thrown into a direct confrontation with San Bernardino Mayor John Valdivia, whose approach toward development is in large measure driven by the willingness of the development industry to provide hefty political contributions to the elected officials who act as the decision-makers determining whether development projects can proceed.
In this way, Valdivia, who holds the traditional post of political leader in the 218,000 population city, is strongly opposed to a moratorium, as this would likely reduce the level of donations into his electioneering fund.
In response to Reynoso’s request that the city consider such a moratorium, city staff sought to steer a middle ground between the two contrasting attitudes toward the advisability of warehouse development.
A staff report written prior to but dated the day of this week’s city council meeting, May 19, 2021, authored by Director of Community and Economic Development Michael Huntley that was passed to the council by City Manager Robert D. Field states, “Over the last two decades, the Inland Empire has grown as a key logistics hub on the West Coast. While there are economic benefits to the growth of this sector, there are also challenges that must be considered as we evaluate land use issues in the city moving forward, including traffic and safety, infrastructure, environmental and health issues. Over the last 16 years, since the city’s general plan was last updated, there has been a marked increase in industrial development including warehouse, distribution, logistics, fulfillment center, manufacturing and other similar development in the city’s industrial and heavy commercial zoning districts. Additionally there are several specific plans that allow for the establishment of heavy trucking and warehousing uses around the San Bernardino International Airport and along the Cajon corridor to the west of the I-215 Freeway.”
Noting that the term warehouse is used to refer to all of the previously described uses, Huntley’s report continues, “Since 2015, the city has processed and approved 26 warehouse projects equaling 9,598,255 square feet. The city is currently processing three warehouse projects and five truck storage facilities. As the planning division processes warehouse entitlements, staff has identified that the land use classifications, definitions, development standards, performance standards, and design guidelines are not adequate for ensuring quality development that is compatible with surrounding land uses. To address these concerns, the update to the city’s general plan and development code is currently underway and will include an evaluation of warehouse uses. The issues that will be addressed as part of this analysis include land use compatibility, traffic and safety, infrastructure, environmental and health. The update to the general plan and development code will include evaluating the positive and negative impacts associated with warehouse development and operations in the community.”
The city council had the option, Huntley pointed out, under California’s Government Code, of “changing direction and proceeding with a moratorium before the general plan and development code update are completed,” This would entail, he said, passing an urgency ordinance.
“An urgency ordinance could prohibit the establishment, expansion, or modification of a warehouse oriented use anywhere within the city, and prohibit the city from accepting any new application or issuing any permits or entitlements to those that submit applications following the posting of the agenda for the consideration of a moratorium,” according to Huntley. “Pursuant to Government Code Section 65858, an urgency ordinance establishing a moratorium requires an affirmative vote of four-fifths of the city council to be adopted. If adopted, the moratorium continues in effect for 45 days unless extended by council action. Depending on whether the original moratorium was noticed or not, the ordinance may be extended either: (1) by an additional 22 months and 15 days; or (2) by an additional 10 months and 15 days and subsequently by an additional 12 months. In no event may a moratorium last for more than two years. While the moratorium is in effect, city staff would be required to study the issue and bring back proposed standards for council consideration.”
Huntley avoided recommending one way or another that the urgency ordinance putting the moratorium in place be adopted. Rather he called upon the city council to make that decision and “provide direction regarding whether it wishes to consider warehouse development standards as planned (i.e., as part of the update to the general plan and development code) or if it wishes for staff to prepare an urgency ordinance for more immediate consideration.”
On Wednesday night, it became clear that a solid majority of the council falls within Reynoso’s camp in terms of believing that the city should not be embracing unregulated warehouse development. Nevertheless, it does not appear that the council majority in favor of the temporary ban is overwhelming enough to meet the four-fifths burden to pass the urgency moratorium ordinance.
In its discussion Wednesday night, a majority of the city council evinced an understanding that developers stood the opportunity to acquire property and convert it into a warehouse and make some relatively sure and fast money in doing so, leading to the assertion that warehouses represented so-called “economic development,” but that this then left the city with the burden of projects that did not provide the community with high-paying jobs or a substantial amount of income into governmental coffers through sales tax receipts or property tax enhancements. The same council members indicated their sensitivity to the consideration that warehouse operations themselves often involved levels of pollution and impact on the environment that were unacceptable and incompatible land uses with nearby existing homes and schools.
Seventh Ward Councilman Damon Alexander decried the poor quality and character of development that many developers attracted to the city engaged in, and he called for raising the standards the city imposes on developers. He said he wanted the development community to “stop bringing us us their ‘C’ grade paperwork all the time.”
Alexander said San Bernardino was in danger of being overwhelmed by inferior development that did not bring into the city adequate infrastructure needed to accompany it.
“Hopefully someplace down this line we can put in place ‘no more million square foot facilities.’ Million square foot facilities can’t be repurposed. We need to shrink the size of all these warehouses. as well as [have] a moratorium. We’ve got to think thirty years from now. My best friend has got a 3D printer and he can print anything. Thirty-five years from now that’s going to be the thing and what are we going to be stuck with in the City of San Bernardino? A bunch of large warehouses when everybody’s going to have 3D printers in their back yard, in their office.”
Those warehouses that have already come to exist and which are yet to be built needed to be using, Alexander said, “alternative fuel vehicles,”
Alexander embraced the development, environmental and alternative energy standards the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians had incorporated into its 1.1 million-square-foot Landings warehouse project proposal approved by the city council in March. He said those standards were not yet incorporated into the city’s development code, and that the moratorium would give the city the opportunity to become more exacting in its standards. He indicated he was in favor of a moratorium as long as it did not exceed the state’s two-year limit.
Councilwoman Sandra Ibarra said she too was in support of a warehouse project ban that went no longer than two years or the time it would take to put new warehouse standards into the city’s revamped general plan.
She said the proliferation of warehouses and the trucks that frequent them was damaging the city’s infrastructure.
“Up Waterman and Tippecanoe, near the warehouses, I see those streets, how they’re being damaged,” she said. “Small streets are also being damaged around the warehouses. We’re not maintaining them. Nobody is.”
She said she would vote to support a moratorium “if we can hold off on this for no more than two years [and] get on to the general plan. The problem is the developers. They are not going to be happy with us because they can’t build a warehouse in our city. Well, maybe they’re not meant to come into our city. If they want to, they should be patient until we finalize our general plan. It has not been updated in over ten years, and unfortunately, we’re just putting warehouses in small neighborhoods right now.”
Councilman Fred Shorett indicated his belief that any development is good development, and that the city would be shooting itself in the foot if it were to disallow further building of warehouses.
“I certainly support the idea of a clean environment, electrification and going forward in thinking,” he said. “I have to, with all due respect, disagree that you can’t repurpose a million square foot building down the road. The owner will certainly, if it is not being used or if it’s vacant, they will find a way to repurpose it. I can’t agree with my colleague that they’ll just have to wait two years or what have you.”
Shorett further enunciated his pro-development philosophy. He indicated the city had problems, and that there were dilemmas larger than having to accommodate warehouses.
“We need to change our image,” Shorett said. “Developers are not bad people. They create jobs. They create environment. We can hold their feet to the fire, and we can put high standards on them, but the word moratorium is pretty scary and we would perhaps miss some opportunities over the next two years if there were a moratorium in place. In the business world, in the development world, in the building and the jobs world, we have ebbs and flows, and you strike while the iron’s hot. One reason we have a lot of warehouses is because we’ve got an airport, and we’ve got an airport that generally speaking is going to be a logistics airport and not a passenger airport. Hopefully. We will come in with a few passenger routes or a few planes, but generally speaking that’s going to be a freight and logistics airport.”
It is not the city’s place to inhibit potential developers with environmental standards, Shorett opined, and he said the scientific world, industry, state and federal environmental authorities and the innovation of the private sector should be relied upon to make improvements and raise standards rather than the city. Diesel trucks are, he said, “if I’m not mistaken going over to clean gas [sic]. They’re not going to be spewing the…
“diesel particulate matter,” Councilman Ted Sancez interjected.
“the pollutants they have in the past,” Shorett continued. “We’re not going to stop the traffic on the 10 the 215, the 210 We are surrounded by a freeway.”
Shorett said, “I don’t support a moratorium but I do support the high standards and all the things that we need to with the tools we have, and I think we just have to make sure we’re using them to the utmost.”
Councilwoman Kimberly Calvin noted that recently approved warehouses were being located within one mile of existing schools.
“Where is the city going to place their expectations, raise the bar as far as that is concerned?” she asked.
She said the warehouses were not built to remain empty, and that when they were filled, they brought with them certain environmental, health and safety risks. She said that there are better developmental opportunities out there and that warehouses are “taking up space for something the community does need and want.”
Councilman Ted Sanchez said that warehouses do represent a form of economic growth that can lead toward prosperity, but that building must be balanced with environmental safeguards against the devastation from pollution that warehouse operations can bring. He predicted that there were not the requisite six votes on the council to put a moratorium in place.
In making his pitch for not going the moratorium route, Mayor John Valdivia told the council it could layer the environmental protections and other limitations on warehouse projects it collectively felt desirable into conditions of approval and the conditional use permits (CUPs) for the projects on a case-by-case basis.
“Consider the implementation of strong CUPs,” Valdivia said.
When the council considered Reynoso’s motion, seconded by Calvin that staff be directed to prepare an urgency ordinance for a moratorium on warehouse construction, it passed 5-2 with Shorett and Councilman Juan Figueroa, who  in virtually every vote he has cast since he has been a member of the council has sided with Mayor Valdivia, dissenting.

The controlled-growth advocacy group Friends of Redlands has found itself in a footrace against Village Partners Ventures, LLC and that company’s partisans on the Redlands City Council in seeing which entity will be able to slam shut or open the door on high-rise development in the city of 73,000. .
In September 2020, Friends of Redlands initiated a petition drive to gather signatures to force the city to conduct a referendum on whether structures of more than three stories can be erected in most of the city.
On April 27, 2021, the planning commission made a recommendation that Village Partners Ventures LLC be allowed to transform the largely vacant 11.15-acre Redlands Mall, which formerly hosted the Harris’ department store, into a melange of mixed-uses including residential, retail, office professional quarters, restaurants, recreational facilities and parking structures around a pedestrian plaza and swimming pool, with multi-story buildings of three, four and five vertical levels.
At present, Friends of Redlands appears to have gathered sufficient signatures to force a vote on what the allowable height limit on Redands buildings is to be, though that election would be likely to be held no earlier than the date of the California Primary election in 2022. The group is now heading into the clubhouse turn to see if it can, before the signature-gathering deadline elapses, gather more signatures and thereby force a circumstance in which the election would be held this year.
The Friends of Redlands’ initiative calls for disallowing buildings taller than two stories next to single-story homes without the consent of the owner of the single-story home, limiting the height of buildings in the downtown area, which involves the University of Redlands Transit Villages Area, to no more than 50 feet, and the permitting of buildings to a height of no more than 62 feet – tantamount to four stories – in the New York Street/ESRI Transit Village Area. The initiative would further require that the city council unanimously approve making any density intensifications on projects, and it would layer greater parking provision requirements on developers seeking project approvals. To qualify the initiative for the ballot in 2022, the petitioners needed ten percent of Redlands’ 42,000 voters to affix their signatures to the ballot application. To force the election to be held this year, within 109 days of the requisite number of signatures being verified, Friends of Redlands needs 15 percent of the city’s voters – 6,409 – to sign the petition. Indeed, at this point Friends of Redlands have more than 6,400 signatures, but as to whether an evaluation by the city clerk or the county registrar of voters will determine that all of the signatures are valid and that there are no other irregularities disqualifying some of the signatures to leave enough of the signatures intact for Friends of Redlands to have met the 6,409-signature burden is another question. Therefore, Friends of Redlands is pushing to get as many more signatures as it can to see if the election can be held later this year.
If the election were to be held this year, it could unravel Village Partners Ventures, LLC’s proposal to convert a portion of the Redlands Mall property to five-story apartments.
Village Partners Ventures, LLP is hoping to capture Redlands city officials’ enthusiasm for rejuvenation of the mall property after it has remained unproductive for more than a decade, and use that momentum to get permission to complete its energetic plan, which calls for a transit-oriented mixed use project built in phases. Village Partners Ventures is working from the premise that the mall redevelopment project can be considered to be in conformance with the Transit Villages Specific Plan, a subcomponent of the Redlands General Plan adopted in 2017 that envisions mixed uses including relatively high density residential units in the districts around the train stations to be built in Redlands as part of the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority’s “Arrow” light rail passenger line tentatively slated to begin operating in 2022, The density of projects approved under the Transit Villages concept is far greater than densities permitted elsewhere in the city. Approval of the Village Partners Ventures project would clear the way, according to the staff report accompanying the April 27 agenda, for Village Partners Ventures, LLC to “demolish existing on-site buildings and improvements; construct multiple mixed-use buildings with up to 3-, 4-, and 5-stories; construct up to 722 multifamily dwelling units to include live/work, studio, one-bedroom, two-bedroom, and three-bedroom units ranging between 475 and 1,500 square-feet each; construct an approximately 10,000 square-foot recreational amenity multi-story building including an exterior pool and resident areas; construct up to 73,000 square-feet of commercial floor area on ground floors to include retail and restaurant uses, as well as a rooftop restaurant; construct up to 12,000 square-feet of office space on upper floors; (complete a) pedestrian plaza totaling approximately 16,500 square-feet; construct a six-level parking structure with 780 spaces and two single-level subterranean parking structures each with approximately 240 spaces; construct a 14,600 square-foot single tenant retail building for a pharmacy on the south side of Citrus Avenue at Eureka Street; construct public and private open space areas to include landscaping, shade trees, street trees, and pedestrian improvements; and construct related site improvements to include sidewalks, driveways, landscape, lighting, flood prevention, and public and private utility connections.”
The pharmacy referenced pertains to the CVS drug store, one of the last remaining commercial operations yet open on the mall site. It will be relocated across Citrus Avenue onto 1.1 acres located at the southeast corner of Citrus Avenue and Eureka Street, which currently exists as a parking lot.
West State Street, which currently terminates at Orange Street, is to be extended through the project.
Another element of the Transit Villages Specific Plan relates to one of the other main concentrations of commercial uses in the city in a district west of downtown, the area surrounding a train station that is to be constructed proximate to the New York Street/Redlands Boulevard intersection.
The Friends of Redlands’ proposed initiative offers slightly different standards with regard to building elevation, permitting four stories in proximity to the New York Street/Redlands Boulevard District, which does not involve as may historic buildings as those in the downtown area.
The city staff report to the planning commission for its April 27 meeting stated that Village Partners Ventures, LLC was attempting to maneuver around the city’s restrictions banning projects involving structures higher than two stories or more than 18 units per acre. “The applicant is requesting a city council determination that the proposed project is exempt from Measure ‘U’ (which included provisions specifically exempting certain types of development),” the report states, identifying those as “Measure ‘U’ Section 2, (Exemptions). The applicant is requesting exemption based on category D, “Development directly related to proposed Metrolink stations in the City of Redlands….”
Given the methodical nature of both governmental and developmental processes, it is realistic to expect that the Redlands Mall conversion project will not have progressed to a point at which the four- and five- story elements of the project would be in place or even significantly toward completion by later this year. Accordingly, if the referendum is held this year and development more than three stories is banned downtown, the advent of four- and five-story structures beyond what already exists in the form of the Redlands Federal Bank Building built in 1981 will not be allowed to take place. The Redlands Federal Bank Building is now occupied by Citi Bank, which stands as the lone six-story structure in Redlands.
If the vote is delayed until 2022, Village Partners Ventures, LLC may at that point have made sufficient progress toward completing the four- and five-story components of the project to render any efforts to limit the project’s height moot.
The effort to limit building height in Redlands and the current initiative drive comes within a wider context a struggle over the intensity of development in Redlands, which has featured efforts by both sides to use the initiative process to define the community’s land use values and priorities.
Redlands, the third oldest of San Bernardino County’s cities, was the first primary destination of well-heeled Easterners to California, and thus became, prior to the turn of the 19th Century to the 20th Century, the earliest upscale residential community in what is now known as the Inland Empire. A degree of pride has accompanied this history right up the present, such that a significant level of active resistance to aggressive development exists within Redlands’ populace. An outcome of this resistance a generation ago was Measure U, a controlled-growth ordinance which remains in effect. In recent years, as developmental interests have sought to undercut the provisions of Measure U, a dedicated and heavy contingent of Redlands residents and activists – watchdogs who seek to ward off any efforts to compromise the principles of Measure U – have asserted themselves.
Last year, Redlands residents were called upon to consider Measure G, which was placed by the city council on the March 3, 2020 California Primary ballot. Measure G sought to undo all of the provisions of Measure U in the city’s 782-acre central corridor and make further general sallies against Measure U’s restrictions throughout the city, as well as against Measures R and N, two other controlled-growth initiatives previously put in place by Redlands’ voters. Specifically, Measure G called for eliminating the requirement that a four-fifths vote of the city council is needed to approve residential densities exceeding 18 dwelling units per acre, eliminate the current requirement that a four-fifths vote of the city council is needed to approve residential buildings exceeding two stories or 35 feet in height, eliminate the need for developers to ensure that the level of traffic flow that exists at the intersections proximate to their projects prior to the construction of their projects be maintained after the projects are completed, eliminate the requirement that the voters of the city rather than the city council be solely authorized to establish any new land use designations in the city, eliminate the requirement that the proponents of certain new development projects prepare a socioeconomic‐cost/benefit study before approval of those projects, eliminate the requirement that certain residential subdivision projects be subject to competitive review for issuance of building permits, and eliminate the requirement that the developers of new projects pay 100 percent of the development impact fees that are imposed on those projects. Measure G also called for rescinding the earlier voter‐approved measures R, N and U, which prohibit more than 400 residential dwelling units being constructed within the city in any year.
Measure G was soundly defeated, gathering 7,798 votes of support, or 35.12 percent of the ballots cast, while being met by 14,407 votes in opposition, equal to 64.88 percent rejection.
-Mark Gutglueck

An unverified report received by the Sentinel is that in the San Bernardino Mountain communities in the last six weeks there have been six fentanyl overdose deaths.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid developed in 1960 as a pain medication. It is also sometimes used as a sleep aid. It was approved for medical use in the United States in 1968. It is on the order of 100 times stronger than morphine and 60 times as powerful as heroin. Some fentanyl analogues are up to 2,000 times as powerful as heroin.
In the last two decades, fentanyl has become more and more popular as a recreational drug, appealing particularly to those enamored of heroin. In some circles it is mixed with heroin, methamphetamine or cocaine. It has a rapid onset, with its effects substantially diminishing after two hours.
Fentanyl patches, which transmit minute amounts of the drug transdermally are considered an essential medicine in the treatment of cancer pain.
Adapted for street use, fentanyl is imbibed in much the same fashion as when it is used medically: by injection, nasal spray, skin patch absorption, through the cheek or as a lozenge or tablet. In addition, those using the drug illicitly will sniff or snort it, and those marketing it illicitly have taken to pressing it into pill form, sometimes in conjunction with other drugs.
In some markets, it has displaced heroin.
In the last decade, fentanyl-related deaths have risen dramatically. At issue is the drug’s potency. As it is most often substituted for heroin, and in some cases mixed with heroin, users can very easily overdose on the drug by using it in a physical quantity measured by mass or weight that is as little as one-twentieth that of the typical amount used by a heroin addict.
Based upon available information, it appears one of four or five circumstances accounts for the sudden upturn of Fentanyl-related deaths in the area around Lake Arrowhead. One is that a new drug dealer has arrived in the San Bernardino Mountain community, extending to Crestline, Lake Gregory, Lake Arrowhead, Blue Jay, Crestpark, Cedar Glen, Sky Forest, Twin Peaks and Rim Forest, one who has perhaps “stepped on” or cut the drug with a buffer such as mannit, a baby laxative, or mannitol, and is representing the product as heroin. If there is too rich of a fentanyl to buffer mixture, the result can be fatal. Another is that a newly arrived drug dealer is selling heroin laced with fentanyl. Another is that an established dealer has recently obtained a new source of drugs and is either selling buffered fentanyl as heroin knowingly or is selling it unknowingly while representing it as heroin, without giving his customers notice of what they are actually buying. Another is that what is being represented as fentanyl is actually an even more powerful fentanyl analogue such as carfentanil or ohmefentanyl.
The Sentinel was unable to verify the report of six fentanyl-related deaths since mid-April in the mountain communities. The Sentinel confirmed a rash of deaths, but because of standard policies of medical confidentiality, was able to establish that just two of the deaths were overdose related.
Five of the deaths suspected of being fentanyl overdoses were of people in their twenties or very early thirties.
A close friend of one of those confirmed to have died in a fentanyl overdose told the Sentinel that there is “definitely” a growing trend of fentanyl use among the younger set within the mountains.
“Personally, I don’t use drugs, and I didn’t know [her friend] was using it [fentanyl],” she said. “I didn’t know about pills or anything like that before, but I know at this point that is how she got it. They are now putting fentanyl into pill form. They press it into pills along with many other drugs. I’m not involved or a part of that, but I can tell you just by being around, they are easily available.”
Asked how she knew her friend’s death was an overdose, she said, “She did not seem suicidal, but it was either an overdose or it was suicide. I did not see her as being suicidal, but she was in a bad position in life. She grew up as a foster child and there were people in her foster family who were not always nice to her. I don’t know how it happened, if she just took too much or what. She was always a party girl.”
She said that fentanyl can kill in more ways than one. A fentanyl-related death occurred in the mountains about six months ago, she recalled, which she said was not an overdose. In that case, she said, the drug triggered a seizure in the user, who then drowned while in a bathtub.
Fentanyl use, she said, is hidden, and many people are oblivious to its presence. Nevertheless, she said, there are clear telltale indicators that give away to someone who can read the signs when someone is using it. There is no doubt it is a growing problem, she said.
“Nobody talks about it,” she said. “Drug addiction is horrible. It is so sad. Parents are losing children over this. Drug addiction is a mental illness. This should be talked about and dealt with. I don’t want to see any more kids, 18-year-olds, caught in this and ending up dead. I want to speak out about this for her sake. I think she would have wanted people to know. I don’t think she wanted to die like that.”
-Mark Gutglueck

Pyromaniacs might want to take note that the San Bernardino County Fire Protection District is now employing an arson detection canine.
The county fire department, after an interlude of more than two decades without such an asset, has acquired a four-year-old black Labrador, which goes by the name of Dinty, to revive its K-9 program. The county fire department formerly employed an arson canine, but that program lapsed sometime around the turn of the Third Millennium.
One of the department’s investigators, Shawn Reiss, is Dinty’s handler, which is to say he is the dog’s owner. Together, Reiss and Dinty recently com-
pleted a four-week, 200-hour training course at the Arson Dog Academy in Concord, New Hampshire.
The course was conducted by Paul Gallagher, the owner and trainer with Maine Specialty Dogs.
Arson dogs are also referred to as accelerant detection canines. They are trained to sniff out minute traces of accelerants that may have been used to start or rapidly spread a fire.
Virtually all arson K-9s are Labrador retrievers, which are deemed best suited to sniff out how a fire was intensified.
The program uses Labrador Retrievers for numerous reasons. Labradors have a superior ability to discriminate among scents at a fire scene, as their noses are sensitive to a level of parts per quintillion, a sense of smell that is 100,000 times more acute than a human’s.
Labs generally have a gentle and cooperative disposition, and are responsive to the food-reward method of training used to transform a dog into a firefighting asset.
Labradors have an ability to work within a fire scene, and are oftentimes most effective when a crowd is present. At such fire scenes, arsonists will sometimes linger, giving himself an opportunity to savor the public reaction to his work. Arson dogs, mingling among spectators, can give such a perpetrator a good sniff. If the arsonist is in the crowd watching, the accelerant detecting canine will alert to the smell of the accelerant on his or her clothes, shoes or body. If someone within the crowd has had contact with a flammable liquid or material, that individual will not escape the attention of the dog.
At the site of a fire, the dogs can often pinpoint the spot where the accelerant was used, which can in some instances lead to other evidence useful in an arson probe.
-Mark Gutglueck