Richard Harpole, who as a Barstow city official became emblematic of the moral dilemma in California’s transition from a state that had criminalized for multiple generations the use of marijuana for any purpose to one that allowed its use first for medicinal and then abruptly for its intoxicative effect, is resigning from the city council.
Harpole was 25 years old and nearing the end of his hitch in the U.S. Army, serving in the capacity of a military policeman, when he was assigned to Fort Irwin as an investigator in 1983. It was at that time when he met his future wife, Donna, whom he married just about a year later. Shortly thereafter, he was discharged from the Army, and he hired on with the Barstow Police Department as a police officer.
Harpole spent just under 24 years with the Barstow Police Department, rising to the rank of lieutenant before retiring. A primary element of his assignment during his last decade-and-a-half with the police force was overseeing drug interdiction efforts.
Harpole was born in 1958, which put him in the middle of a generation that had a far more liberal attitude with regard to the use of  drugs than was the dominating ethos of previous generations or those who were yet in control of society’s governmental institutions including the courts, prosecutors’ offices and law enforcement agencies. As a law enforcement professional, Harpole functioned in lockstep with the continuing restrictions on cannabis and other drugs that remained in place throughout the 20th Century. At the same time, an underground traffic in marijuana had established itself throughout the United States that was every bit as pervasive and even more sophisticated in many respects than the one that facilitated the continued use of alcohol during the 13 years of prohibition from 1920 until 1933 during which mobsterism flourished. Officialdom considered those participating in the marijuana culture to be elements of the criminal underworld, encompassing anyone who used the drug and possessed it in relatively minute quantities for personal use, as well as those who sold it and those who transported it, grew it or imported it into the country from elsewhere. Those members of the subculture who were caught by law enforcement at whatever level of their involvement were subject, almost uniformly throughout the United States, including California, to increasingly harsh, sometimes brutal and even draconian efforts to suppress marijuana at a multitude of governmental levels, both state and federal. Barstow, a railroad town and a major transportation juncture into the Golden State, was a place where a considerable degree of the transportation of and trafficking in marijuana was ongoing. Harpole, as a member of the Barstow Police Department, was a functionary in the war on drugs and as such spent more than two decades in arresting and consigning those involved in the use and sale of marijuana to prosecution and conviction.
In 1996, at what was roughly the halfway point of Harpole’s career in law enforcement as a civilian, California’s voters provided the first indication of the sea change in attitude within the general population toward marijuana when Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use of Marijuana Act, passed statewide. It called for allowing marijuana to be dispensed to anyone who obtained a prescription for the drug from a licensed physician. While doctors for patients suffering from maladies and conditions in which the drug was of some remedy indeed wrote out prescriptions for what were ostensibly legitimate purposes, medical marijuana prescriptions very soon became a means by which that portion of the population seeking to be able to use cannabis recreationally without being subjected to arrest, prosecution and imprisonment indulged in its use. Simultaneously, the political establishment and reactionary elements utilized that portion of the act that allowed local governmental entities to regulate or outright ban dispensaries selling the product from locating within their jurisdictions to keep the vast majority of California’s cities and counties marijuana-free zones. Most cities and counties in the state had city councils or county governing boards composed of elected officials who yet considered marijuana to be anathema to a well-ordered society and community. Those officials, in league with zealous opponents of cannabis, used their dominant political authority to employ local law enforcement agencies to prevent marijuana purveyors from establishing a toehold in their communities. Routinely, medical marijuana distributors would set up dispensaries or clinics, in some cases straightforwardly or in others surreptitiously or through obtaining a business license by representing the operation as a health food store or spa, reap a considerable but short-lived profit that would in most cases offset the considerable start-up costs, and then be shut down by code enforcement or zone enforcement or law enforcement action. In due course, these entrepreneurs would move on to reinvent their operation at a different location in the same jurisdiction or perhaps another jurisdiction, repeating the process. In some cases, emboldened clinic operators would reinvest their profits in legal action challenging the efforts by local authorities to shut them down, occasionally succeeding by obtaining a usually temporary injunction to prevent enforcement action or their closure.
As marijuana remained under federal standards a Schedule 1 narcotic indistinguishable from heroin and cocaine, those yet determined to stem the rising marijuana tide in California endeavored to utilize authority from up the governmental evolutionary chain to reestablish that the revolutionary forces all about them were in fact nothing more than moral reprobates and criminals. Either at the request of local authorities or in some cases on their own initiative, federal authorities, i.e., the U.S. Attorney’s office working in conjunction with the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Agency, pursued federal criminal cases against some dispensary owners, operators or their landlords, particularly in those cases where the operators were deemed to be particularly defiant, asserted challenges to federal law, or were particularly persistent in their operations.
Simultaneously, the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office and in some cases the offices of various city attorneys sought to keep up. Initially what had been fewer than a dozen individuals willing to brave the legitimate marijuana sales frontier – running a medical marijuana dispensary in local venues where municipal ordinances did not allow for them – could be corralled into court and in some cases jailed and in all cases fined substantially in an effort to convince them to desist.
In 2008, Harpole retired from the Barstow Police Department. He was at that point eligible to receive a pension, which he at once began to draw and which currently stands at $77,700 per year.
By 2009 the number of medical marijuana sales venues countywide had jumped to a score or more. By 2012 that number had zoomed to several hundred. The same year, Harpole was elected to the Barstow City Council.
At that point, the sheer volume of those willing to run the marijuana distribution restriction gauntlet had come to overwhelm local civil authorities. In July 2014, San Bernardino City Attorney Gary Saenz, taking stock of the number of pot shops sprouting up in the county’s largest city, offered his view that the cost and difficulty of shutting down dispensaries made enforcement of the city’s ban on the enterprises “futile.” Two years previously, Needles, lying at the extreme east end of the county on the shore of the Colorado River, the gateway to California, was the first of the county’s 24 cities to bow to the new social reality, clearing the way for five licensed marijuana dispensaries to operate in what, at 4,900 residents, is the county’s least populous city.
Three years later, the City of Adelanto, led by then-Mayor Rich Kerr, became the second city to seek to cash in on the marijuana bonanza, enacting an ordinance by which the city was at liberty to permit large-scale indoor nurseries cultivating medical marijuana to operate within the city’s industrial park.
Adelanto and Needles, however, were the dual exceptions in San Bernardino County, with the other 22 cities and the county maintaining the ban.
When 2016 dawned, the minority of social conservatives in San Bernardino County whose philosophy held that the only form of moral and legal intoxication was to be found in a bottle continued with their generations-long success in ensuring that those who felt differently would be effectively labeled as criminals. Before the year concluded, however, those marijuana prohibitionists would be overtaken by events. A statewide movement succeeded in achieving the passage, in the November general election, of Proposition 64, the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, which legalized, for those of the age of majority in the Golden State, the possession and use of marijuana for its intoxicative effect, and legalized the cultivation and sale of the drug for the same purpose.
In one fell swoop the anti-marijuana crowd had been both discredited and ineffectualized as a driving social and legal force, at least in California.
There ensued what many observers consider to be the hypocritical adaptation of the new ethos that is breathtaking in scope. Officials who for years or decades and until quite recently insisted that pot smoking was not only illegal but a severe moral failing and that those who profited by the sale of the substance were parasites feeding upon society and trafficking in human misery such that they were deserving of decade-long prison sentences plunged headlong into a rush to get in on the ground floor of the new economy with marijuana at its core so their cities can cash in, like the drug dealers of just a few years ago, on the public’s appetite for inebriation.
Among those individuals was Richard Harpole.
Of note was that Harpole was not merely in years past a city official whose participation in the general societal disapprobation toward cannabis and marijuana was passive as forces about him militated against pot smokers and weed dealers, but was rather someone who was actively involved in the prohibition, whose bread was buttered by marijuana’s illegality, who had a financial stake in the enforcement of the law against marijuana because it kept him employed and provided him with a paycheck and put food on the table for him and his family.
In the aftermath of the passage of Proposition 64, Barstow, like most of the other cities in San Bernardino County fell into a state of paralysis, either deliberately or inadvertently stalling in the face of the change in the law. By early 2019, somewhat belatedly, the City of Barstow, perhaps prompted by citizens inquiring as to when the city was going to get around to updating its ordinances regarding both medical and recreational marijuana sales, undertook an effort to reconcile itself with reality. Curiously, however, at least initially the city did so very quietly, carrying out backroom discussions that were not done publicly.  Thus, unbeknownst to the public was that Harpole was not only participating in that effort, which many people considered to be ill-advised, but that he was actually the one leading it. An ad-hoc committee, chaired by Harpole, was looking at the ins and outs of allowing the cultivation, sales, distribution, and manufacturing of marijuana, cannabis or cannabis-based products in the city, pursuant to a licensing or permitting regime, one that would entail requirements that such operations meet a set of criteria, be licensed as businesses within the city and be subject to a tax specifically levied on the growers of marijuana or the manufacturers and purveyors of cannabis or cannabis-based products. Curiously, in spite of and perhaps even because of Harpole’s history as a crusader against marijuana, his council colleagues saw no difficulty, problem or conflict in his overseeing the framing of the policy which would provide for the eventual legalized commercialization of cannabis in the City of Barstow.
It was not until April of this year that Harpole himself let it be known publicly that he and the committee he headed had been working “for several months,” he said, on finalizing the city’s proposed marijuana policy. In May, it was revealed that the committee had tentatively worked out placing on the ballot during a special election this fall a measure that the city’s voters could approve, by a two-thirds vote, putting a taxing scheme in place for commercial, agricultural and industrial marijuana and cannabis-related businesses in Barstow. Ultimately, it turned out, a measure very similar or identical to the one Harpole and his committee brought forth is to be considered by the city’s voters, albeit not this year but rather as part of the March 3, 2020 California Primary Election.
This week, a little less than two months after the Barstow City Council consented to put the rules framed by Harpole and his committee relating to how the city will allow and profit by marijuana commercialization before the city’s voters, Harpole announced that he will be resigning from the city council shortly because he is leaving Barstow for Texas. The ostensible reason given for his departure is that he and his wife want to live more proximate to their daughter and their grandchildren.
On Monday, December 2, Harpole was not in attendance at the city council meeting. Whether Harpole remains a member of the council at present was not clear. His name was called during the roll call for the meeting. When a resident inquired as to Harpole’s status, no answer was provided by the city council.
For months, Harpole’s role in shaping the city’s cannabis policy has been an issue of some controversy.
Harpole specifically and pointedly came under fire for having spent all of his law enforcement career participating in throwing people in prison for their involvement with marijuana and disfiguring them with criminal records that in some fashion compromised or destroyed their reputations and ability to obtain employment. He then did a 180-degree flip in which he personally involved himself as a city official in arranging for the city to avail itself of revenues to be generated from the sale of marijuana, money which as a pensioner with the city, he will share in. Asked whether in the aftermath of the change in California law and Barstow officials’ acceptance of a taxing scheme on using marijuana sales as revenue source he felt he could justify to himself having engaged in applying the authority of arrest and initiating the prosecutions of individuals which had the potential or actual effect of subjecting them to incarceration, Harpole remained mute.
When queried directly about whether he saw any contradiction or conflict in the current circumstance vis-à-vis the past or if he perceived there was for him any sort of personal moral dilemma or if he felt any qualms with regard to it, he steadfastly maintained his silence. Nor was he willing to say whether he had abandoned his earlier belief that the sale of marijuana was rightfully deemed a felony that mandated prison time, and he was equally reticent in the face of inquiries as to how he felt it justifiable for the city and city officials to participate in a financial free-for-all and be recipients of a windfall involving the sale of marijuana.
One reason Harpole is refusing to be drawn into a discussion of the issue is concern on his part and that of California’s law enforcement officers generally that it will lead to the broaching of the subject of the State of California making reparations to all surviving current and former state residents who were arrested, convicted, jailed and imprisoned for marijuana offenses. Such reparations could run, calculations vary, from anywhere from $4 billion to $25 billion. One means of the state defraying the cost of those payments would be to redirect a significant portion of the money held in the retirement funds for police officers, prison guards and prosecutors to a trust fund to make payments to those convicted of marijuana-related crimes over the last 60 years who are yet alive. Such a move, it is estimated, would reduce those retirees’ pensions by as much as fifty percent.
-Mark Gutglueck

Pope Francis has named Bishop Alberto Rojas, who currently serves as an auxiliary bishop and Episcopal vicar for the Archdiocese of Chicago, to succeed San Bernardino Diocese Bishop Gerald Barnes. Rojas, who was born in El Zapote de la Labor, Mexico on January 5, 1965, will serve as coadjutor bishop with Barnes until Barnes’ 75th birthday next year, at which point Rojas will succeed him as bishop.
The Diocese of San Bernardino was created in 1978 as an offshoot of the Diocese of San Diego. Geographically, it covers about 28,000 square miles and is the fifth largest diocese population-wise in the nation and the second largest in California after the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, which is the largest in the country with roughly 5 million parishioners. The San Bernardino Diocese boasts one of the highest concentrations of Latinos in the United States.
San Bernardino County at the time of the 2010 Census was 39.2 percent Hispanic. Latino numbers have grown since then, such that virtually half of the county’s residents are Hispanic.
Catholicism is significant element of the culture in the footprint of the San Bernardino Diocese. Within it, which includes much of San Bernardino County and extends into Riverside County, roughly 38 percent of the population  – 1.7 million – is Catholic. The diocese employs 151 priests to minister to the faithful.
Rojas was named an auxiliary bishop of Chicago by Benedict XVI and ordained bishop there in August 2011. In Chicago he served under Cardinals Francis George and Blase Cupich.
Rojas studied for the priesthood at Santa Maria de Guadalupe seminary in Aguascalientes, Mexico and at Mundelein Seminary in Illinois. He was ordained as a priest for the Archdiocese of Chicago in 1997, at the age of 32.
As the Chicago Diocese’s auxiliary bishop, Rojas was Cardinal Francis George’s delegate for the archdiocesan Hispanic-American council and for both bishops George and Cupich he was the Hispanic-American council delegate, the liaison to Hispanic Catholics, a member of the U.S. bishops’ conference’s Hispanic Affairs Committee, and a regional liaison for the National V Encuentro of Hispanic and Latino Ministry.
Rojas was also a member of the seminary formation faculty at Mundelein Seminary from 2002-2010.
Barnes has headed the Diocese of San Bernardino for 23 years, and is now the longest serving bishop in the United States. Diocesan bishops are required by canonical law to submit upon achieving the age of 75 a resignation to the pope, who then has the discretion to accept or reject the resignation. Barnes turns 75 in June 2020.
At a press conference to introduce Rojas to the community on Monday, Bishop Barnes said, “In church language we call this an episcopal transition. In layman’s terms, you might call it a changing of the guard.” Barnes said Rojas would become “the leader and shepherd of the diocese. It is with a great deal of gratitude to our Lord that I present to you our coadjutor bishop, Bishop Alberto Rojas.
“My wish and hope is that we begin this journey united in the name of Jesus Christ, trusting in the spirit of the Holy Spirit to lead us in doing the will of God in our ministries,” Rojas said. “I thank God for the opportunity to serve him in this capacity and am also very grateful to the Holy Father, Pope Francis, for trusting in me for this service. With an open heart and mind, I’m looking forward to working with all of you, my brother priests especially, deacons religious men and women, the youth, young adults, the parish leaders, the ecclesial movements, and all the people of good will in the diocese.”

The United States Justice Department on Monday filed a lawsuit alleging both the City of Hesperia and the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department in pursuing a municipal program aimed at reducing crime discriminated against African American and Latino renters in violation of the Fair Housing Act.
The federal lawsuit alleges that the city, with substantial support from the sheriff’s department, enacted a rental ordinance with the intent of addressing what one city councilmember called a “demographical problem,” which was defined as the city’s increasing African American and Latino population. The ordinance resulted in the evictions of numerous African American and Latino renters, according to the U.S. Justice Department.
The City of Hesperia’s “Crime Free Rental Housing Ordinance,” which was in effect between January 1, 2016 and its amendment on July 18, 2017, required all rental property owners to evict tenants upon notice by the sheriff’s department that the tenants had engaged in any alleged criminal activity on or near the property. The complaint further alleges that the sheriff’s department exercised its substantial discretion in enforcement to target African-American and Latino renters and majority-minority areas of Hesperia. Although the ordinance purported to target “criminal activity,” the sheriff’s department notified landlords to begin evictions of entire families – including children – for conduct involving one tenant or even non-tenants, evictions of victims of domestic violence, and evictions based on mere allegations and without evidence of criminal activity, according to the civil complaint.
“Our office is committed to defending the civil rights of everyone,” said United States Attorney Nick Hanna. “Protecting the public is one of the most important duties of local governments and police departments, and the public entrusts them with enormous power to carry out that duty. We will not allow them to abuse that power by depriving people of their rights.”
“The Fair Housing Act prohibits local governments from enacting ordinances intended to push out African American and Latino renters because of their race and national origin, or from enforcing their ordinances in a discriminatory manner,” said Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband. “The United States Department of Justice will continue zealously to enforce the Fair Housing Act against anyone and any organization or institution that violates the law’s protections against race, national origin, and other forms of unlawful discrimination.”
“Individuals and families have a right to live where they choose, regardless of their race or national origin,” said Anna María Farías, Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). “HUD applauds today’s action and will continue to work with the Justice Department to address policies and practices that violate this nation’s fair housing laws.”
The Justice Department’s lawsuit is based on an investigation and charge of discrimination by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which found that African American and Latino renters were significantly more likely to be evicted under the ordinance than white renters, and that evictions disproportionately occurred in areas of the city where both black and Hispanic populations predominated. According to the complaint, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development determined that African American renters were almost four times as likely as non-Hispanic white renters to be evicted because of the ordinance, and Latino renters were 29 percent more likely than non-Hispanic white renters to be evicted. Sheriff’s department data showed that 96 percent of the people the sheriff’s department targeted for eviction under the ordinance in 2016 had lived in what the federal government refers to as “majority-minority Census blocks,” meaning districts in which white residents are outnumbered by Latinos and Negroes. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development came to a determination that reasonable cause existed to believe the city and county engaged in illegal discriminatory housing practices.
The lawsuit alleges that city officials enacted the ordinance to drive African-American and Latino renters out of Hesperia. During city council hearings, city officials and others made numerous statements that demonstrate the city enacted the ordinance to reverse “demographic” changes in Hesperia, including focusing on purported newcomers from predominantly minority Los Angeles County, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. City officials expressed a desire for the ordinance to drive supposed newcomers “the hell out of our town,” according to one statement the suit attributed to a councilmember. The city enacted the ordinance despite civil rights-related objections to many of its provisions from various segments of the community, the federal government maintains.
The names of both William P. Barr, the U.S. Attorney General, and Eric S. Dreiband, the Assistant U.S. Attorney General, appear on the suit, as does that of Sameena Shina Majeed, the chief of the office’s Housing and Civil Enforcement Section, and the section’s deputy chief, R. Tamar Hagler.  Also listed as representing the government are Nicola T. Hanna, the United States Attorney in Los Angeles, and David M. Harris, the chief of the civil division in Los Angeles, Karen P. Ruckert, the chief of the Los Angeles Office’s Civil Rights Section, and Matthew Nickell, the head of the civil division within the Los Angeles office’s Civil Rights Section.
Megan K. Whyte De Vasquez, who is a member of the bar in Washington, D.C. is to be the trial attorney.
According to the suit, “The Sheriff’s Department, which the city tasked with enforcing the ordinance, …demanded evictions of entire families for conduct involving one tenant or even guests or estranged family members, evictions of victims of domestic violence, and evictions in the absence of concrete evidence of criminal activity. It also threatened and took action against housing providers that failed to evict tenants under the ordinance’s strictures. Defendants enacted and enforced the ordinance with the intent and effect of disproportionately impacting African American and Latino renters.”
The suit states “The city—with substantial support from the sheriff’s department—enacted the mandatory eviction ordinance to address a perceived ‘demographical problem’: the growing population of African American and Latino renters in Hesperia. The African American and Latino population in Hesperia grew rapidly in the late 20th and early 21st centuries while the percentage of non-Hispanic white residents declined. In 1990, non-Hispanic white residents were 76.8 percent of the city’s population, but by 2000, this had dropped to 62.4 percent. By 2010, Hesperia’s non-Hispanic white population was 41.1 percent. According to Census Bureau estimates, the percentage of non-Hispanic whites in Hesperia had further declined to 35.8 percent by 2016. The number of Latino residents in Hesperia rose by 140 percent between 2000 and 2010, from 18,400 to 44,091. The number of African American residents rose by 103 percent during the same period, from 2,388 to 4,853. According to the 2010 Census, the city was 5.4 percent African American and 48.9 percent Latino.”
The lawsuit continues, “On November 17, 2015, Hesperia enacted ordinance no. 2015-12, entitled ‘An Ordinance of the City Council of the City of Hesperia, California, Requiring the Registration and Regulation of Housing Rental Businesses for Crime Free Rental Housing.’ The ordinance went into effect on January 1, 2016, and remained in effect until on or about July 18, 2017. The ordinance applied exclusively to rental properties. It contained four core requirements relevant to the United States’ claims. First, it required all owners of rental property in the city to register their properties and pay an annual fee, and it imposed fines for failure to register those properties. Under the city fee schedule for the ordinance, an owner had to pay a $350 fine for failing to register a single-family rental property, and a fine of $50 per unit for failing to register a multifamily property. The ordinance also made the failure to register or to comply with the provisions of the ordinance a misdemeanor. Second, it required owners to submit the names of all adult tenancy applicants to the sheriff’s department for a background screening. In addition, it required owners to use a commercially available service to conduct a criminal background check of their tenants, at the owners’ expense. The city fee schedule for the ordinance imposed a $250 fine for an owner’s failure to screen a tenant or applicant. Third, it required all owners to incorporate a ‘crime free lease addendum’ into all new and renewed residential leases. The addendum mandated that if any occupant, guest, or ‘other person under the [occupant’s] control’ engaged in a single instance of any criminal activity ‘on or near’ the property or, in the case of drug crimes, ‘at any location,’ this ‘w[ould] result in a three-day notice to quit.’ Neither the ordinance nor the addendum required a conviction or other criminal disposition, or even an arrest, to trigger the three-day notice. The addendum allowed landlords to serve the three-day notice requiring that ‘every member of . . . [the] household . . . shall vacate the premises within three days.’ The city fee schedule for the ordinance imposed a $500 fine on owners for failure to initiate an eviction in accordance with the addendum, as well as a $250 fine for failure to incorporate the addendum in a lease. Fourth, the ordinance required all rental properties in the city to undergo annual police inspections for items related to actual or potential criminal activity, for example, whether poor lighting or landscaping offered places for individuals to hide. The city fee schedule for the ordinance provided a $100 fee for each reinspection and a $400 fine for failing to make any required corrections. The city amended the ordinance as of July 18, 2017, during the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s investigation. The language of the ordinance changed, but the components of the crime free rental housing program implemented under the original ordinance remain largely the same, although certain provisions are no longer mandatory. The current city fee schedule provides for many of the same fines under the amended ordinance as it did under the original ordinance.”
The suit states, “The ordinance’s stated rationale was a purported connection between rental properties and increased ‘illegal activity’ and ‘law enforcement calls for service.’ However, statements by city and sheriff’s department officials leading up to the enactment of the ordinance belie this rationale. Instead, statements by city and sheriff’s department officials indicate that the ordinance was enacted with discriminatory intent and with the purpose of evicting and deterring African American and Latino renters from living in Hesperia.
“In city council hearings prior to the ordinance’s enactment, the mayor, mayor pro tem, and other city councilmembers made numerous statements that demonstrate the city enacted the ordinance to reverse perceived ‘demographic’ changes in Hesperia. During hearings, city officials focused on the places from which renters had moved when discussing the need to expel the perceived newcomers from Hesperia. Although approximately three-quarters of new Hesperia residents between 2012 and 2016 moved there from other parts of San Bernardino County, city councilmembers focused many of their statements on purported newcomers from Los Angeles County, whose population in 2016 was estimated to be only 26.7 percent non-Hispanic white. City Councilmember Russ Blewett stated the purpose of the ordinance was ‘to correct a demographical problem.’ He stated he ‘could care less’ that landlords and organizations including ‘the Apartment House Association, and the Building Industry, and the Board of Realtors’ disagreed with him about the ordinance, and stated that the city needed to ‘improve our demographic.’ Blewett also stated that ‘those kind of people’ the ordinance would target were ‘no addition and of no value to this community, period,’ and that he wanted to ‘get them the hell out of our town,’ adding ‘I want their butt kicked out of this community as fast as I can possibly humanly get it done.’ The mayor, Eric Schmidt, stated ‘I can’t get over the fact that we’re allowing . . . people from LA County’ to ‘mov[e] into our neighborhoods because it’s a cheap place to live and it’s a place to hide.’ He also stated that ‘the people that aggravate us aren’t from here,’ and that they ‘come from somewhere else with their tainted history.’ Mayor Pro Tem Bill Holland stated ‘[w]e are surgically going after those elements that create an inordinate amount of problems in every single neighborhood,’ and ‘[y]ou are trying to eliminate them, you are trying to pluck them out and make them go somewhere else.’ He also stated that the ordinance’s purpose was to get each landlord ‘to rid his rental . . . of that blight,’ similar to ‘call[ing] an exterminator out to kill roaches, same difference.’ City Councilmember Mike Leonard stated that ‘we’ve had a lot of people from over the hill move up here that are not very friendly people,’ and ‘we need to work on getting them out of here.’ He also stated ‘[w]e need to get [the ordinance] going because we are falling further and further behind on our ability to cut down some of our problem areas.’ During a hearing on the proposed ordinance, Mayor Schmidt asked a property manager what percentage of his renters came from outside San Bernardino County. The property manager testified that people were moving from specific parts of Los Angeles County—all of which were well known as having significant minority populations, including the ‘323 area code’ (which is concentrated in central Los Angeles city) and the cities of Compton, Inglewood, Long Beach, and Los Angeles. According to Census estimates, in 2016 the non-Hispanic white population in Compton was 1.1 percent; in Inglewood, it was 3.7 percent; in Long Beach, it was 27.7 percent; and in Los Angeles, it was 28.5 percent.”
The suit notes that “Captain Nils Bentsen from the sheriff’s department, who later became Hesperia’s city manager, was present at the hearings during which the statements described were made. Captain Bentsen and the city councilmembers described Hesperia’s renters—a group in which African American and Latino individuals are overrepresented in comparison to their share of homeowners—as dangerous because they were ‘antisocial’ and ‘victimized’ homeowners. According to 2016 Census estimates, 58 percent of renter households in Hesperia were African American or Latino, compared to just 44 percent of homeowner households. Captain Bentsen and the city councilmembers also disparaged Hesperia’s Housing Choice (‘Section 8’) Voucher holders—three-quarters of whom were African American or Latino. For example, Councilmember Leonard stated the ordinance would ‘straighten . . . out’ Hesperia’s ‘issues with a lot of Section 8 housing,’ and told the other councilmembers “[y]ou just pay more taxes to support these people that are sucking up the Section 8 housing,’ and added ‘[w]e need to get them out.’ Captain Bentsen compared the ordinance to his previous efforts evicting people in ‘a Section 8 house’ where ‘it took us years to . . . find some criminal charges [and] arrest the people.’ The sheriff’s department  provided significant support and resources to help the city create and prepare to implement the ordinance before it was enacted. According to Hesperia’s City Manager at the time, Mike Podegracz, Captain Bentsen was the ‘driving force’ behind the ordinance. Bentsen testified in uniform before the city council over six months before the ordinance’s enactment ‘to see if the council [was] willing to establish a mandatory [crime free rental] program.’ In his testimony, he cited data that he claimed showed a nexus between rental properties and increased crime. However, these data were misleading and incomplete, and he provided no testimony demonstrating that any of the data points were appropriate measures of crime rates. First, Bentsen claimed that in 2014 one-third of 911 calls in the city came from rental properties. But he failed to exclude from his data those 911 calls that were unrelated to criminal activity, and did not provide any additional data about the remaining 911 calls to enable the decision makers to determine whether the proportion of 911 calls coming from rental properties was disproportionate to the percentage of occupied housing units that were rental units (which was approximately 37 percent in 2014), and if so, by how much. Second, Bentsen cited the proportion of ‘multiple response’ citations that the sheriff’s department issued at rental properties. According to Bentsen, the sheriff’s department issued ‘multiple response’ forms when its officers had responded multiple times to a particular residence, including for loud music. Although Bentsen claimed that 80 percent of ‘multiple responses’ from law enforcement were for rental properties, he omitted from his count those ‘multiple responses’ involving alarm calls, which typically occurred at homes. Bentsen also did not testify about the circumstances in which the sheriff’s department issued ‘multiple response’ forms. Finally, Bentsen asserted that nine of the ten homicides in Hesperia from 2012 through 2014 occurred at rental properties. He presented no statistics for other types of crime, however, claiming that it would be ‘very difficult’ and take ‘a lot of time’ to compile the data necessary to determine whether crime rates for any other offenses vary depending on whether a property is owner- or renter-occupied. He asserted that he presented only data on homicides because that information ‘was an easier one for me to pull up because we don’t have that many homicides, thank God.’”
The suit states “Captain Bentsen testified to the city council that, ‘[u]nder Crime Free, you don’t have to be convicted of a crime’ to be evicted.’ Captain Bentsen testified to the city council that the ordinance was designed to be ‘lighter on the requirements and more heavy on the enforcement.’ The city tasked its ‘police department’ and ‘chief of police’—i.e., the sheriff’s department and a designated sheriff’s captain—with enforcing the ordinance. Enforcement was specifically handled by a special crime free housing team within the sheriff’s department comprising a deputy, a service specialist, and an office specialist. The ordinance made the sheriff’s department the only entity with discretion to decide whether the ordinance required an eviction. It made the sheriff’s department responsible for maintaining a ‘crime free’ database and for sending crime notifications to property owners. If the sheriff’s department staff sent a crime notification to owners about their property, the ordinance mandated that the owners begin an eviction process. The sheriff’s department exercised discretion in all aspects of enforcing the ordinance. Neither the ordinance nor the city provided much guidance to the sheriff’s department regarding enforcement. The ordinance explicitly gave ‘discretion’ to the ‘chief of police’—i.e., sheriff’s department staff—to determine whether and what ‘evidence and documents’ would be sent to housing providers notifying them to evict a tenant. Sheriff’s department staff stated that the ordinance was applied on a ‘case-by-case basis of course’ and that they ‘handl[ed] each situation differently’ and applied ‘more of a ‘spirit of the law determination’ than a fixed set of rules.”
According to the suit, “Under the ordinance, the sheriff’s department routinely determined that tenants should be evicted despite the absence of any conviction or court judgment. Sheriff’s department staff stated that ‘a copy of the call [to 911] for service,’ a ‘negative law enforcement action [as opposed to a] conviction of a crime,’ or a ‘multiple response citation,’ which could be issued if the sheriff’s department responded to a property multiple times for ‘noise disturbances’ such as ‘loud music,’ could all trigger eviction.  Even conduct that was legal under California state law could justify an eviction. Sheriff’s department staff explained to a housing provider, ‘even if your tenant has a [medical] marijuana card . . . they will be in violation of the Crime Free Program [even though] as the police, we can’t arrest someone for smoking marijuana who has a card.’ Sheriff’s department staff pressured property owners to ensure evictions took place and dedicated or offered to dedicate significant attention and resources to assist. The Sheriff’s department also encouraged owners to use extra-judicial tactics to eject tenants from their homes. Sheriff’s department staff told a housing provider to use ‘whatever method fits the situation’ to evict tenants, ‘as long as [the tenants] leave.’ Sheriff’s department staff encouraged the use of threats of eviction to get tenants to vacate through a ‘voluntary move,’ ‘especially after explaining that an official eviction could have a negative impact on their credit.’  The sheriff’s department encouraged housing providers to evict entire households when one member of the household engaged in purported criminal activity.   For example, a staff member told a housing provider, ‘[n]ot sure which one [of your tenants] was arrested, but under the new city ordinance any arrest on the premises means the whole house is subject to eviction anyway.’ Sheriff’s department staff also demanded the eviction of an elderly Latino couple who lived in a majority-minority Census block after their adult son, who did not live with them, was arrested. The sheriff’s department also notified landlords to begin evictions of victims of domestic violence even though the ordinance contained language purporting to protect them. For example, one woman was evicted together with her three children from a majority-minority Census block after she called 911 to report that her husband was beating her with a television cable. Sheriff’s department staff explained to another landlord that, under the ordinance, the sheriff’s department ‘would be notifying you to begin eviction on the entire household’ of a domestic violence victim ‘if the victim ends up allowing [the abuser] back in, and the problems persist.’ Also, the sheriff’s department told the landlord of an African American domestic violence victim that the victim ‘is allowing the problem to continue,’ and that the landlord could ‘warn [her] that if she allows [her husband] back in, and the problem persists, she would be subject to eviction.’  Residents reported to the Department of Housing and Urban Development that they were scared to call the police due to the fear of eviction. Evicting crime victims who called 911 undercuts defendants’ assertion that a principal purpose of the ordinance was to reduce crime and make neighborhoods safer. Defendants retaliated against housing providers that hesitated to evict tenants as demanded by the sheriff’s department. If owners did not begin evictions, the sheriff’s department threatened them with fines. When a property management company raised concern about the ordinance’s legality, the sheriff’s department emailed the company’s clients to inform them the company was noncompliant with the ordinance, and thus the city could fine the clients.”
The sheriff’s department’s own internal documentation bears out that the housing discrimination took place, according to the lawsuit.
The suit states “The city failed to exercise meaningful oversight over the sheriff’s department in its enforcement of the ordinance.  The sheriff’s department tracked the progress of the eviction campaign it directed with a document listing more than 250 people it had targeted for eviction and the status of their housing. During its investigation, the Department of Housing and Urban Development obtained an ‘eviction tracking spreadsheet’ from the sheriff’s department purporting to list those residents and households that the sheriff’s department had targeted for eviction in 2016 and the status of their housing. Based on an analysis of the residents on the spreadsheet whose race and national origin could be identified, the Department of Housing and Urban Development determined that African American and Latino renters were significantly more likely to be evicted under the ordinance than non-Hispanic white renters. Specifically, the Department of Housing and Urban Development determined that African American renters were almost four times as likely as non-Hispanic white renters to be evicted because of the ordinance, and Latino renters were 29 percent more likely than non-Hispanic white renters to be evicted.  The sheriff’s department’s data further show that 96.3 percent of individuals and 96.9 percent of households evicted under the ordinance had been evicted from majority-minority Census blocks, even though only 79 percent of rental households in Hesperia are located in majority-minority Census blocks.  The Department of Housing and Urban Development further determined from the sheriff’s department data that of the Census blocks in Hesperia with at least 25 percent renters and at least four rental units, 24 percent were majority-white, but only 2.5 percent of evictions occurred in those blocks.  Moreover, the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s analysis showed that the rate of evictions under the ordinance increased in relation to the percentage of minorities residing in the Census block. The higher the concentration of minority population in an area, the more likely households in that neighborhood were to be evicted under the ordinance.”
City officials strongly denied a previous report by the Department of Housing and Urban Development alleging housing discrimination in Hesperia and they were equally adamant in their denials in the face of the U.S. Justice Department’s filing of the lawsuit.
“The information in the U.S. Department of Justice press release is factually incorrect and grossly misleading,” Rachel Molina, an assistant to City Manager Nils Bentsen and the city’s spokeswoman, said. “At no time did the city’s crime-free ordinance discriminate against residents of any ethnicity.”
Furthermore, according to Molina, “There are crime free programs across the United States aimed at providing residents with safer communities. In the recent past the Department of Housing and Urban Development supported such programs.
Molina continued, “One of the best things about Hesperia is its diversity. The city loves and embraces its diverse community.”
She asserted, “The city will defend against the false allegations in this lawsuit.”
-Mark Gutglueck

Chad Mayes, who as a young man made a rapid rise to the top echelon of the conservative political landscape in his Yucca Valley stomping grounds and launched himself from there into a berth in the state legislature, abandoned the political party with which he has been intimately identified at every stage of his public career so far.
California’s 42nd District Assemblyman since 2014, Mayes this week reregistered without any party affiliation, ending his lifelong identification as a Republican this week.
The son of Roger Mayes, who is the pastor of Grace Community Church and one of the most influential members of the Yucca Valley Community, Chad Mayes established himself as a rock-ribbed conservative in the town of nearly 21,000 by following his father’s formula, which equated Godliness with goodliness and virtue with conservatism and conservatism with Republicanism. In the universe the Reverend Mayes occupies along with the Grace Community Church’s parishioners, big government is the work of the devil and Satan counts among his legion of followers the members of the Democratic Party, which is forever imposing its “liberal” will on the individual, while militating against smaller government.
In no little measure because the Reverend Roger Mayes commended his church members to lend his son their support, Chad Mayes was elected to the Yucca Valley Town Council in 2002 when former Marine Colonel Paul Cook was that body’s mayor. Cook went on to the California Assembly and then Congress. Young Mayes succeeded Cook as mayor and subsequently made his way to the Assembly.
Throughout his time as a local politician, Mayes conducted himself as a true believer, adhering to Republican principles at every turn.
His arrival in Sacramento, however, presented for him, as it does every Republican politician, a challenge of faith and mettle. The Democratic Party dominates the city, as it controls the governorship, has a supermajority in the upper legislative house – the California Senate, has a supermajority in the lower legislative house – the Assembly, and controls virtually every major state office, including that of secretary of state, attorney general, auditor, insurance commissioner and secretary of education. Sacramento is for California’s Republicans virtually indistinguishable from Sodom or Gomorrah.
The only way for a Republican to escape being consigned to political irrelevancy while there is to embrace anathema and cooperate with the Democrats.
Just a little more than a year after he settled in at the state’s capitol, on January 4, 2016, Mayes assumed leadership of the California Republican Caucus. But despite his power within the party, he yet had to go hat in hand to the Democrats if he wanted to accomplish anything as a lawmaker.
One accommodation he made with the Democrats consisted of his decision in 2017 to join a minority of Republicans in support of cap-and-trade legislation, a government regulatory program designed to limit, or cap, the total level of specific chemical by-products resulting from private business activity, primarily industrial and energy production. Many Republicans are opposed to this type of regulation. He also supported an increase to the state’s gasoline tax of roughly 63 cents per gallon, a move considered poison to many members of the GOP.
Mayes’ votes in those regards marked him in the minds of a large number of Republicans as a traitor and heretic. His effort to defend himself by pointing out that, given the Democrats’ control of the legislature, if the cap and trade bill didn’t pass California would automatically have reverted to a stricter policy fell on deaf ears. Hardcore Republicans in his native Morongo Basin called for him to step down from his leadership position.
Mayes, who says he has come to recognize that strident Republicanism in the Golden State is a self-defeating proposition, took a step no one would have earlier anticipated: his resignation from the Party of Lincoln. In re-registering without party preference, Mayes both tweeted and spoke about the rationale behind his decision. He tweeted that the basis for his move was “really simpl[e]. It’s because of my frustration with the way our political system is working today. The political discord in the country is tearing us apart. Unfortunately, all politics is no longer local. It’s national.”
In an article that appeared in Cal Matters yesterday under the headline “Another California Republican defection: Former party leader bails on the GOP,” Mayes indicated his disappointment in the constant bickering between the two main political parties. Though he was equally pointed in his criticism of the Democrats, he was no less forgiving of his former party. He was quoted as saying, “It’s frustrating to watch Republicans defend whatever it is the president does. It’s also frustrating to watch Democrats attack virtually everything the president does, instead of thinking, ‘Is this a good policy or not a good policy?’ At some point you go, ‘It doesn’t make a lot of sense for me to keep banging my head against the wall.’”
Mayes’ defection is bad news for the Republicans, which were already in dire straits. At present, right around 44 percent of the state’s registered voters are Democrats and 24 percent are registered with the GOP. The Democratic advantage in the number of state political offices is even starker. Democrats hold 73 percent of those. As a result of Mayes’ reregistration, the Republicans now hold 23 percent of the state’s legislative positions.
The California Republican Party, which was caught flatfooted by Mayes’ departure from its ranks after having endorsed him for reelection in 2020, gave discourse to its consternation. “Chad has let the Republican Party down just as he let down the voters of California,” the party’s board of directors said in a prepared statement.
-Mark Gutglueck

Jeff Drozd, who has been on the Yucca Valley Town Council since 2016 and was previously a member of and the chairman of the town’s planning commission, was chosen by his council colleagues to serve as mayor for the next year. Drozd was presented with the mayor’s gavel by his predecessor, Robert Lombardo.
Drozd said, “Public safety will be the number one priority for me and the town council.”
The town council designated Councilman Merl Abel, who has formerly served as mayor, as mayor pro tem.
In Chino Hills this week, Art Bennett  was named mayor of the county’s southwesternmost city for the third time.
Bennett served previous rounds as mayor, in 2012 and 2016. He was elected to the council in 2008.
Previously, Chino Hills elected its councilmembers in at-large elections, but now does so by district, with voters in each of the city’s five districts eligible to vote for a representative within their district, with no say over the representatives of the city’s other four districts. Candidates for the council can run only as a representative of the district within which each lives.
Bennett was reelected in Chino Hills’ last at-large election in 2016. If he is to remain in office beyond next year, he will need to stand for reelection in the city’s first District 3 election in 2020.
He replaced outgoing Mayor Cynthia Moran. Councilman Brian Johsz was elevated to the position of mayor pro tem.