Rod Foster,  who previously served in the capacity of the top administrative, de facto top administrative or in senior administrative posts with four San Bernardino County cities, has returned to take up the top managerial position at a fifth county municipality.
On June 17, Foster will officially assume the city manager’s post in Rialto. He will replace Mike Story, who departed as city manager 18 months ago. A succession of acting managers, including several of the city’s department heads, have headed the city on an interim basis since December 2017.
“We are thrilled to have Rod lead our extraordinary City Hall team and build on the momentum we have created over the past several years,” Mayor Deborah Robertson said.
Foster’s municipal experience began three decades ago when he was hired into a mid-level management position with the City of Chino. His next move up the municipal managerial evolutionary chain was when he he was hired into a similar post in Hesperia, where he soon acceded to the post of deputy city manager. While in that position with Hesperia, Foster was temporarily elevated to interim city manager in 2001 following the departure of David Berger as city manager there. At that time, Robb Quincey, representing Western Water, had sought to convince the Hesperia City Council to sell off its water division to that company. The council declined to make that sale, but was deeply impressed with Quincey’s presentation. Upon discovering that Quincey possessed a bachelor’s degree, master’s degree and doctorate in public administration, the Hesperia city council’s members moved to hire him to serve as city manager, despite Quincey having no previous municipal management experience.
For four years, Foster mentored Quincey, his boss, in how to run a city. When Upland, led by its then-mayor John Pomierski, equally impressed by Quincey’s outward appearance, lured him away from Hesperia to become city manager, Quincey insisted upon Upland hiring Foster as his next-in-command. A week after Quincey’s arrival in Upland, Foster departed from The City of Progress and signed on with The City of Gracious Living, where, for the next four years, he essentially ran Upland while Quincey served as the staff’s figurehead and Pomierski’s hatchet man.
Foster’s value as a public administrator was starkly illustrated after he absented himself from Upland to take on the position of Colton city manager in 2009. In the months after his departure, with City Hall then under the care of Quincey, the Upland ship of state foundered. In 2011, Pomierski was indicted, and then pleaded guilty to bribery charges in 2012. Quincey followed Pomierski into infamy, being unceremoniously shown the door by the Upland City Council two months after Pomierski’s indictment. He was subsequently criminally charged by the district attorney’s office with several felonies, including unlawful misappropriation of public money, gaining personal benefit from an official contract, and giving false testimony under oath. In September 2014 three of those charges against Quincey were dismissed and a felony conviction on a single count of conflict of interest by a public officer was entered against him
Contrastingly, Foster was earning accolades for his performance as a public administrator in Colton, which while ranking 13th in population among San Bernardino County’s 24 cities, boasted the seventh largest overall budget of the county’s municipalities, and was as close to being a full-service city as any of the county’s municipal entities. Colton was one of only two San Bernardino County cities with its own electrical utility, and it had its own police, fire, water, water treatment and cemetery divisions. Though it had privatized its sanitation department in 1997, the city was nevertheless a self-sustaining urban unit in virtually every other sense. Significantly, it was host to the main campus of the county hospital, known as Arrowhead Regional Medical Center.
Foster took up the governmental reins in Colton at a difficult and challenging juncture in the city’s history, after the departure of former city manager Daryl Parrish, who left Colton to become city manager with the city of Covina, taking with him the city’s finance director, Dilu DeAlwis. Shortly after their departure, the council learned that confident budget projections Parrish and DeAlwis had made previously were in error and that the city in fact had a $5.8 million deficit.
Foster immediately set about imposing several rounds of belt tightening, including substantial layoffs and salary and benefit cuts for remaining employees. This triggered virulent personal attacks on Foster, who with aplomb blunted and deflected those challenges by imposing upon himself an even heftier salary reduction than was being assessed against the rest of city staff.
He energetically pursued state and federal grants, even as the economy was contracting, consolidated city departments, radically reduced spending out of the city’s general fund, and beefed up the city’s general fund reserves from the $50,000 contained therein in 2009 to $2.3 million prior to his departure.
He also overcame the disadvantage of having to manage a city that was being ruled by a sharply divided city council, which involved a 4-3 ruling coalition headed by former Mayor Kelly Chastain. In 2010, Chastain was defeated by former Colton Community Development Director David Zamora, who had been a casualty of Foster’s staff downsizing.  This put Zamora into political ascendancy, but Foster deftly made himself indispensable to Zamora, as the city continued in its effort to turn a corner in stabilizing its finances. When David Zamora died in the summer of 2011 and was succeeded as mayor by his wife, Sara, Foster maintained his status as the consumate administrative virtuoso leading the city.
That job was taking a toll on Foster, however, who was often working 50 to 56 hours per week to stay abreast of the challenges that continued to dog Colton. In February 2013 he departed Colton to take the position as city manager in the affluent Orange County community of Laguna Niguel, replacing Tim Casey, who at that point had been Laguna Niguel’s first and only city manager during its then-23-year history.
Slightly more than four years later, Foster departed Laguna Niguel in June 2017. He immediately moved into the position of chief of parish operations at St. Edward the Confessor Catholic Church in Dana Point.
Foster, who is fully vested in the State of California’s Public Employee Retirement System and has achieved retirement age, nevertheless has a reason to take on a lucrative public agency management post in that his 18-year-old son, Kyle, is headed to Louisiana State University, which will entail $28,627 out-of-state student tuition along with room and board costs roughly in the range of $19,000. Foster will be provided with a salary of $240,000 per year together with $85,000 in benefits, such that he will receive $325,000 in total annual compensation. He is being provided with 120 hours of vacation leave up front, with the addition of 10 hours per pay period thereafter. He is being given 120 hours of sick leave up front, with an accrual rate of 10 hours per month thereafter. He is allowed 140 hours of administrative leave per year. The council also consented to provide him with an $8,500 relocation reimbursement if he moves to San Bernardino County and within 25 miles of City Hall within two years.
Foster earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of La Verne. He also has studied in the executive program at the University of California Berkeley, where he earned a certificate in strategic management of public organizations.
Foster will relieve Fire Chief Sean Grayson, who was appointed to serve as interim city manager in December 2018.
–Mark Gutglueck

As efforts to comply with a state-imposed mandate that water users in Indian Wells Valley reduce water usage to a sustainable level by the year 2040 proceed, it appears that San Bernardino County has been politically outmuscled within the regime that has been formed to effectuate those limitations.
Accordingly, the ability of San Bernardino County, its residents and its businesses at the extreme northwest corner of its jurisdiction to preserve for themselves the ability to draft sufficient water to expand development or increase industrial, agricultural and mining activity over the next century or beyond is on a trajectory to be sharply attenuated.
Indian Wells Valley straddles southeastern Kern County, southwestern Inyo County and Northwestern San Bernardino County. Underlying it is the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Basin, from which the City of Ridgecrest and its outlying area’s domestic, commercial, industrial and agricultural water users draw a portion of their water, as does the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station, the Searles Valley Mineral Company in Trona and a small number of industrial, commercial and domestic users in Trona.
Historically, the Indian Wells Valley Water Basin experienced roughly 7,000 to 11,000 acre-feet of annual natural water recharge per year. For three decades users of water in the basin have been drafting on average 28,000 to 30,000 acre-feet of water annually.
In 2015, then-California Governor Jerry Brown, in the face of a four-year running drought, mandated water-saving measures throughout the state. Water use in the Indian Wells Valley Water Basin was reduced to under 24,000 acre-feet, which still exceeded the estimated 7,300 acre-feet of recharge by 16,700 acre feet.
In September 2014, Governor Brown signed into law the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which requires local agencies to draft plans to bring groundwater aquifers into balanced levels of pumping and recharge.
Through a joint exercise of powers agreement, the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority was created with Kern County, San Bernardino County, Inyo County, the City of Ridgecrest and the Indian Wells Valley Water District as general members and the United States Navy and the United States Department of the Interior Bureau of Land Management as associate members, with each general member having one voting seat on the authority board and the federal associate members participating in all board discussions, but not having a vote.
The joint powers authority took as its mandate counteracting the overdraft of the aquifer underlying Indian Wells Valley.
The authority retained an engineering consultant, with which the authority and the Indian Wells Valley Water District have sought to derive a strategy for both reducing water use in the valley and increasing groundwater recharge to reach a balance of both that will end the overdraft.  Several different plans, or models, have been contemplated, but as yet have not been implemented. In virtually all of those, San Bernardino County/Trona/Searles Valley are to be provided with substantially less water than the entities in Kern County, which essentially dominate the board of the joint powers authority.
If the water allotments into the future are to be based on historic usage patterns, it is logical that San Bernardino County users will be given less water, since in recent years entities outside of San Bernardino County have made more active use of Indian Wells Valley Water than have domestic and industrial users in Trona and Searles Valley.
According to 2016 water use data, that year 10,253 acre-feet were drafted from the valley’s aquifer, in accordance with severe water use restrictions imposed by the state because of the drought, while roughly 7,650 acre-feet of recharge in the valley’s confines took place. In this way, there was a 2,603 acre-foot deficit from the Indian Wells Valley water table in 2016 alone. The largest water user was the Indian Wells Valley Municipal Water District, which drafted 6,412 acre-feet; the Navy, which used 2,041 acre-feet, was the second largest user; the City of Ridgecrest, which utilized 373 acre-feet, followed; domestic mutual water well operators used 300 acre-feet; well operators in Searles/Trona were the fifth largest users, having drawn 225 acre-feet. Inyokern drafted 102 acre feet. There were a number of de minimis uses, all of which drafted less than ten acre-feet. Their total use was 800 acre-feet.
Stetson Engineers has been designated the water resources manager for Indian Wells Valley.
The authority’s technical and policy advisory committee has made or is currently making a review of five separate overdraft reduction plans or models.
The first model calls for allowing a whopping 28,600 acre-feet to be drawn per year from 2022 to 2029, and dropping that usage pattern by one-tenth a year from 2030 to 2039 until the goal of 7,650 acre-feet is attained. That yearly pumping level would be sustained until 2070.
In a second model, roughly 20,000 acre-feet of drafting would be permitted to occur until 2034 or thereabouts, followed by 12 percent reductions per year for five years thereafter, with the 7,650 acre-foot goal achieved by 2040.
A third contemplated model would be implemented no later than January 2022, setting total pumping at that point until 2029 at 28,600 acre-feet. For the decade of 2030 to 2039 inclusive, ten percent reductions from the 28,600 acre-feet usage pattern would be initiated across the board until the “safe and sustainable” 7,650 acre-feet per year yield is reached, and then maintained through 2070.
The fourth model calls for modified and coordinated agricultural pumping with allocation transfers from farmer to farmer, initiating in January 2022. Rampdowns would occur for five years running until total maximum pumping of 12,000 acre-feet per year was attained as of 2027. That level of water use would be sustained from 2028 through 2070. If that did not match the annual replenishment pattern, further reductions would take place.
The fifth model would involve drastic near-term pumping reductions. San Bernardino County users would be reduced to drafting a minuscule amount of water from the Indian Wells Valley water supply under this scenario. Some have referred to this as a so-called nuclear option that will be implemented if no other options are accepted. Under this plan, pumping reductions would begin in 2022. All agricultural use of water would be ended and Searles Valley Minerals, the primary San Bernardino County user of water from Indian Wells Valley, would be disallowed any access to the aquifer as well. The Indian Wells Valley Water District, the Navy, the City of Ridgecrest, domestic well owners and mutuals, Inyokern, and a handful of domestic users in Searles/Trona would be collectively reduced to drafting no more than a total of 10,000 acre feet per year from 2022 to 2034.
Under the best of circumstances, San Bernardino County-based users could not expect the joint powers authority to come up with a water use restriction regime that will allot them more than 2.22 percent of the valley’s water.
Some advocates for San Bernardino County are alarmed by that prospect.
Virtually all of the other competing interests in Indian Wells Valley are progressing toward establishing into-perpetuity water drafting entitlements that far exceed those that San Bernardino County officials are managing to lay claim to for Trona and Searles Valley.
This action, which is taking place far from the county seat of San Bernardino, is happening without the knowledge or conscious regard of the San Bernardino County public. Only a very limited circle within San Bernardino County’s government structure, who have other duties and demands on their time and attention, have focused on this issue. In this way, concern is growing among those sensitive to the issue that the very real interests the county and its residents have in what is essentially an ongoing water rights adjudication process are being given short shrift. To them, the county’s failure to act during this crucial time is resulting in all of the other entities now competing to secure water availability in Indian Wells Valley outhustling San Bernardino County and San Bernardino County-based interests, such that the development, industrial, agricultural and mining potential in that remote end of the county is likely to be foreclosed for years, decades, generations and centuries into the future.
Exacerbating the situation is that Searles Valley Minerals, Inc. is currently owned by Nirma, an Indian company based in Ahmedabad, India. Its owners and management may not be sufficiently aware of the stakes that attend the process involving the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority and the water rights adjudication process to be prompted to timely action.
Bob Page, a principal management analyst with the county who since last summer has been serving in the capacity of the county’s chief elections officer as the interim registrar of voters for San Bernardino County, is the county’s representative on the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority board.
He disputed what he called the “theory” that San Bernardino County is faring poorly in the adjudication process vis-à-vis the Indian Wells Valley Water District, the Navy and the City of Ridgecrest or that the county is outmuscled politically within the context of the authority.
“San Bernardino County does not possess water rights in the basin, nor does it provide water to the nearby community of Trona,” Page pointed out. “Searles Valley Minerals asserts water rights in the basin, pumping water from wells in Ridgecrest and piping it to Trona. As a California Public Utility Commission-regulated water retailer, the company’s subsidiary Searles Domestic Water Co. has accepted the responsibility for ensuring the residents of Trona have a sufficient supply of water.”
Page said, “The county has ensured Trona’s needs are considered in the basin groundwater sustainability plan that is being developed by the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority. This has included appointing the company to seats on both the policy advisory committee and the technical advisory committee, which are helping the authority develop the groundwater sustainability plan. The county has also advised Searles Valley Minerals that it, not the county, is responsible for protecting its water rights.”
Continuing, Page said, “In no way has the county ignored or neglected the county’s interests or those of our residents. San Bernardino County has been actively engaged continuously since 2015 in efforts to bring water use in the basin into balance. This includes the negotiation of the agreement that formed the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority in July 2016. The county is one of the five member agencies of the authority. The goal of the authority and its member agencies is to achieve cost effective sustainable groundwater management that considers the interests and concerns of all of the communities and parties that rely upon the basin for their water supply. At the suggestion of San Bernardino County, the authority’s formation agreement requires a supermajority vote to approve or amend the groundwater sustainability plan to ensure it employs a collaborative approach. Despite the distance between San Bernardino and Ridgecrest, an appointed county representative consistently attends the authority board meetings – primarily in person and on occasion by telephone.”
Page offered, “As background, the State designated the Indian Wells Valley Basin as a critically over-drafted groundwater basin. The amount of water annually pumped from the basin is three to four times more than the natural recharge of the basin from rain and snow melt. As a result, groundwater levels drop one to two feet a year, which in recent years has caused nearly 100 shallow, private wells to go dry. Achieving sustainable water use in the basin by 2040 presents great challenges and will require sacrifices.”
Page said efforts to import water that might be achieved within a decade could attenuate the looming water crisis at the county’s northwest corner.
“The authority is developing a groundwater sustainability plan that considers multiple approaches to achieve water balance, including importation of water, increased reuse of wastewater, treatment of non-potable groundwater and conservation,” Page said. “With supplemental water resources being added by 2025, the authority’s engineering consultant believes that the sustainable amount of water available for use in the basin could be increased from 7,650 acre feet per year to about 12,000 acre feet per year.”
Page continued, “The authority’s engineering consultant has modeled different approaches to allocating that amount of water to pumpers, evaluating the impacts of ramping down water use over different lengths of time. The water allocation to parties will be based upon legal precedent regarding water rights. The authority board has not yet decided which approach it prefers for inclusion in the groundwater sustainability plan.”
-Mark Gutglueck

The jury this morning, Friday, June 7, reportedly reached a unanimous verdict in the capital murder case presented against Charles “Chase” Merritt in Department 1 at the San Bernardino Law and Justice Center since shortly after the outset of 2019.
The defendant is charged with killing all four of the members of the McStay family in February 2010.
Merritt’s trial lasted five months, with opening statements having commenced on January 7.  Jurors had been deliberating the case since May 30.
The verdict is scheduled to be announced by the jury forewoman at 10 a.m. on Monday, June 10, according to San Bernardino County Superior Court Risk and Safety and Media Relations Administrator Dennis B. Smith.

Back in the 1930s, a 47-acre parcel was set aside for recreation by the federal Work Projects Administration and it was given the designation Eastside Park. Its borders were from San Bernardino Road to Foothill Blvd, and from east of what was then the hospital campus’s eastern boundary to the Santa Fe Railroad spur track. It was during that time that Harold Stewart was asked by San Antonio Community Hospital if it could have five acres of the park. Mr. Stewart, who was president of both the Stewart Citrus Association, and the Upland Lemon Growers Association, spent 24 years on the advisory board for the Upland branch of the Bank of America and 15 years with the San Bernardino County Farm Bureau, and was also president for 10 of the 25 years he served on the board of directors for San Antonio Community Hospital. As importantly in the context we are considering, he had spent more than 30 years on the board of directors for the San Antonio Water Company, which appears to have owned the set-aside for the park.
So, when San Antonio Community Hospital in the late 1930s asked the San Antonio Water Company to carve out five acres of Eastside Park, Mr. Stewart, representing both boards, obliged the hospital with the sale of not just five of the park’s acres nearest to the hospital campus but ten, at $350 an acre.
After the end of World War II, in 1947, the German field canon that had been trained on our Doughboys during World War I and which Upland city leaders had secured and placed at Second Avenue and ‘’D’’ Street as a testament to the bravery of our war veterans was moved to the park to memorialize both World War I and World War II veterans. It was shortly thereafter that the park was rechristened Memorial Park.
Later, city rulers in their infinite wisdom or dubious lack thereof took other land: for the Hospital Parkway, a street from Foothill Blvd. to the San Antonio Community Hospital parking lot, for the Landecena Building, for the Upland Animal Shelter, and for the Gretzky Hockey Rink, which became the Scheu YMCA, with its $4 million dollar, 4.29 acre expansion for a swimming pool. These have all cut chunks out of the park, detracting from the grandeur our forefathers envisioned for it.
The YMCA has a 55-year lease agreement with an option for a 2-to-5 year extension. The YMCA pays the city $1,610 a month with an increase of 10 percent every five years. I don’t know how much those leasing other buildings in the park are charged, but park acreage is valuable income for a poor city. As far as I can tell, this is correct information.
If that’s the case, then what chunk will be next? Especially since the so-called Medical Hub is ever expanding and plans for a sports park at the 210 Freeway and north of 16^th Street have been discussed, it appears to me that Memorial Park will get smaller and smaller until it is just a lovely little area in which to sit and reflect or wait for an appointment, while the park’s recreation areas will have been moved northwest into the last available land that has remained barren until recently, the remnants of quarry property next to a heavily-traveled freeway from which tons of vehicle exhaust emanate daily, an environs where I do not believe it advisable for children, or anyone for that matter, to be recreating.
You might not know about Mayor John Pomierski changing the zoning of Pioneer Park next to Pioneer Junior High on 18^th Street to eliminate that park land and allow housing to be built around the original Chaffey Communities Cultural Center. Mayor Pomierski, subsequently disgraced with a conviction for bribetaking in his role as Upland’s highest political office holder, carried this elimination of Pioneer Park with the support of then Planning Commissioner and later City Councilwoman Carol Timm and one-time City Councilman Dave Stevens. Pioneer Park can be found on the 2010 Chamber of Commerce maps.
This brings us to today’s lawsuits involving 4.6 acres of Memorial Park. The arrangement was made behind closed doors between San Antonio Regional Hospital and the city, before the current council was sworn in. The council, as it was formerly composed, attempted to impose that land grab of our precious park property through what is called a validation action, meaning we have all been passively sued by the city and unless we respond to the lawsuit as active defendants and declare our grounds for resisting the park land sell off, the use of that property for recreational purposes will be lost forever. This validation lawsuit was in reality the city’s way of intimidating its own citizens to keep them from challenging City Hall over having made the park sale without doing what was legally required of it under California law, which is to have held a vote of the city’s residents on whether they wanted to give up that park land, which under the law and by the principles of fairness and rectitude, they are entitled to enjoy.
Marian Nichols is a lifelong Upland resident. Her father was Upland’s  former assistant city engineer and chief building inspector.

Within days of one another toward the end of last month, two further indications of the brutalization and/or malicious neglect of inmates in the care of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department publicly surfaced.
On Wednesday May 22, the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office criminally charged former Sheriff’s Deputy Luke Van Ginkel, 22, with assaulting and threatening an inmate in December 2018. Also charged in the matter was inmate Alex Garcia, 40. A third individual criminally charged in the incident relating to Van Ginkel and Garcia was Deputy Arthur Enriquez, 33.
The sheriff’s department acknowledges having received credible accounts to indicate that on at least two separate occasions since Van Ginkel began working as a guard at West Valley Detention Center he engaged in action that crossed the line into criminal conduct.
On December 31, 2018, an inmate assaulted by Garcia lodged a grievance alleging maltreatment and staff misconduct relating to his beating.
According to the department, “During that same shift, a sergeant received the grievance and began the initial investigation. This initial investigation revealed alleged criminal misconduct involving deputies facilitating an assault on an inmate by another inmate.”
The department maintains that as of January 2, 2019, “The specialized investigations division began a criminal investigation, which involved interviewing more than 100 witnesses, reviewing extensive video and audio recordings, as well as collecting other evidence.”
Ultimately, according to the department, sheriff’s deputies Van Ginkel and Enriquez “were identified as the involved suspects. Van Ginkel was placed on administrative leave on January 3, 2019. He was hired on July 8, 2017 and started at the West Valley Detention Center on December 16, 2017. As of April 1, 2019, Van Ginkel no longer works for the sheriff’s department. Enriquez was also placed on administrative leave on January 5, 2019. He was hired on January 7, 2017 and started at the West Valley Detentions Center on July 22, 2017.”
There is yet no word as whether the union representing sheriff’s department personnel, the San Bernardino County’s Safety Employees Benefit Association, will intervene in an effort to reverse Van Ginkel’s firing. Van Ginkel attended Upland High School and graduated in 2015.
It is unclear whether Enriquez is yet employed with the department.
In the action taken by the district attorney’s office on May 22, Van Ginkel is charged with a violation of Penal Code Sections 422(a) – engaging in criminal threats and 245(a)(4) – assault by means of force likely to result in great bodily injury.
On December 24, 2018, according to the district attorney’s office, Van Ginkel told an inmate, Jose Angel Carillo, he was going to kill him.
The district attorney’s office further alleges that Van Ginkel subsequently set up a fight between Garcia, who is jailed on a murder charge, and Richard Freeman, who is likewise in custody on suspicion of murder. The fight took place on December 31.
Enriquez is charged with Penal Code 32 – accessory to a crime. Enriquez allegedly sought to deter the investigation in Van Ginkel’s action by filing a false report and making misrepresentations to investigators. Garcia, who assisted Van Ginkel in perpetrating the assault, according to the district attorney’s office, was charged with Penal Code 245(a)(4) – assault by means of force likely to result in great bodily injury.
Van Ginkel has his defenders, who say he is really a nice guy who only gets mean if he has a little too much sugar. He is scheduled for arraignment on June 17 before Judge Dan Detienne.
Enriquez is scheduled for arraignment on June 17 before Judge Dan Detienne.
Perry Belden, who was formerly an inmate at the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department jail in Joshua Tree, has filed a federal lawsuit alleging the neglect of his jailers while he was in custody led to the loss of both of his legs and his hand.
Belden’s ordeal began shortly after he was was taken into custody on March 27, 2018, in the aftermath of a March 16, 2018 incident at the Twentynine Palms home of his mother and stepfather. On the earlier day, Belden’s mother, Robin Olds, summoned the sheriff’s department when a fight broke out between Belden and his stepfather. Before officers arrived, Belden, who had previous convictions for obstructing a police office and grand theft, and was addicted to heroin, left the scene.
According to documents filed with the court, the sheriff’s department obtained a bench warrant for Belden’s arrest and deputies instituted a search for him, including returning to Olds’ home on no fewer than eight occasions to see if they could effectuate his arrest. Belden’s status as a known drug addict with previous arrests and convictions for theft and resisting arrest prompted a concerted effort to bring him into custody. Belden, who was lying low at an associate’s home, became aware of the warrant for his arrest and resigned himself to surrendering to authorities on March 27, 2018, having his mother tell the sheriff’s department where he was. Instead of responding as Olds and Belden believed was their understanding by coming to the residence where Belden was in order to take him into custody without incident, the deputies arrived en masse and armed with assault weapons. Belden took refuge in the attic of the home, whereupon the deputies fired a pepper spray bomb into the attic, at which point Belden plunged through the ceiling, injuring himself in the fall. According to court papers, the deputies then twice employed a stun gun on Belden when he was sprawled on the floor.
Because of his injuries, Belden was initially transported by deputies to the Hi-Desert Medical Center. Disclosure that Belden was a heroin addict was made at that point to both Hi-Desert Medical Center personnel and his jailers. Belden was prescribed Klonopin to prevent withdrawal-induced seizures. According to the lawsuit, the department was on notice that Belden’s vital signs were to be monitored. Without regard to what they had been told, the deputies transported Belden to the Morongo Basin jail, which lacked even rudimentary medical facilities and had no trained medical personnel on staff. No medication was provided to Belden while he was incarcerated in the Morongo Basin jail.
During his arraignment at the Joshua Tree Courthouse on April 2, Olds said Belden “looked like death.” When Belden told the escorting deputies that he was feeling weak and ill, they responded that was what happened to “crackheads” who were out of crack and he would just have to “suck it up.” When he was unable to walk on his own power, the deputies dragged him into the courtroom. Judge Bert L. Swift made no note of the circumstance either on or off the record, and took no action to ensure that Belden’s medical condition was looked into. Belden entered a plea to assault and vandalism, the vandalism being that related to his having fallen through the ceiling of the home where he was taken into custody.
“Perry took the first plea deal offered to him because he wanted to get out of local custody,” according to Belden’s suit.
On April 3, Belden was transferred to the West Valley Detention Center, where on the following morning his condition had grown to such a critical state that personnel there recognized his life was in danger. He was transported to the Arrowhead Medical Center, where it was in short order determined that Belden was suffering from septic shock brought on by unattended infections, and was experiencing renal failure. To prevent the gangrene in his limbs from spreading further, doctors were obliged to amputate both his legs and left hand. His right hand was saved, but is now seriously deformed.
The county was served with the lawsuit on May 24. Neither the county nor Judge Swift, who is an employee of the State of California, were willing to comment on the litigation.

By Count Friedrich von Olsen

You can say that today’s column is for the birds, which is my effort to induce the publisher of the Sentinel to bring back his wildlife column, which has been sorely missed all these months while coverage of the Charles Merritt murder trial has been ongoing…
A ruby-throated hummingbird weighs less than 0.2 ounces, if you can believe that. It beats its wings over fifty-two times in one second to hover.  This enables this cute little critter to to suck nectar from flowers…
The rufous hummingbird is a migratory animal, the smallest migrant bird known to man, at only four inches long. Despite its paltry length, on a yearly basis it will make a sojourn of as far as 3,800 miles…
The slowest carinate bird is the American woodcock, which flies along at five miles per hour. For short periods of time, a hummingbird can move at zero miles per hour. In fact, on occasion hummingbirds will fly backwards,  registering a negative speed…
The fastest known speed of a bird in level flight is that of either the spine-tailed swift or the merganser, which is a type of duck, both of which have been clocked at one hundred miles per hour…
This one is hard to believe, but it is claimed that the jet larid is capable of staying aloft for as long as three years without landing. It is nothing for one of these to simply fly across the ocean. Swifts will spend way more of their lives in flight than they will nesting or perched or on the ground. It should go without saying that these types of birds are capable of sleep while they are in the air, doing so by gliding on air currents with their wings extended…
A group of crows is called a murder or congress. A bunch of owls is named a parliament, wisdom, or study. A collection of flamingos is referred to as a flamboyance…
Birds sense winter is coming on through changes in hormones that cause them to add more fat, the change in the length of the day, and by sensing minute changes in atmospheric pressure…
The bald eagle builds the biggest tree nest of all birds, measuring around nine feet across. The biggest nest ever found was nearly ten feet wide and weighed close to three tons. Vervain hummingbirds build the smallest nests of all birds, measure 3/4 of an inch…
Woodcocks and lots of ducks have their eyes placed at the perimeters of their heads such that they possess a 360-degree field of vision. This makes them see all things, either moving or flying around them…
The arrangement of a bird’s blood vessels cools the blood going into its legs and feet and warms the blood coming back in, so that when standing on ice, birds don’t lose an excessive amount of heat from their bodies…
The larger the bird, generally the more years it will live.  The big albatross, for instance, will live for up to eighty years…
Gentoo penguins appear to be the quickest swimming birds, reaching speeds of twenty-two miles per hour. This speed is more than that attained by some land animals. Emperor penguins will remain submerged in incredibly cold water for up to eighteen minutes…

Born on October 24, 1902 in Mesa, Arizona, when the Grand Canyon State was still a territory, Ilif Ross Dana was the son of Franklin J. and Florence A. Babbitt Dana. He graduated from Mesa Union High School in 1920 and attended the University of Missouri School of Journalism at Columbia, Missouri for the 1920-to-1921 term.
Ross Dana and Gladys Gibson were married in Phoenix, Arizona on August 27, 1921. They had three children, I. Ross, Jr., Catherine (later Mrs. Shaw) and Pat (later Mrs. Cooley). Gladys Dana died in 1972 and in 1975 Mr. Dana married Elizabeth Hales Hammel of Lucerne Valley.
While in Arizona during 1921 and 1922, Dana was the editor of the Herald in Snowflake, Arizona.
He thereafter moved to Glendora, where he was the editor and publisher of the Glendora Press until 1944. During those two decades he was active in civic affairs. He was a member of the Glendora Chamber of Commerce and was its president in 1932. He heavily involved with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, serving as the bishop of the Baldwin Park Ward and president of the Pasadena Stake.
He entered the engineering and highway construction business in 1946, forming what became Dana, Inc. at Big Bear Lake, where in 1947 and 1948 he was president of the Big Bear Lake Chamber of Commerce. In 1947 he expanded his business operation to Apple Valley to fulfill continuing contracts to grade and pave over 600 miles of streets in Apple Valley, Hesperia, Lucerne Valley and Victorville. He later set up residence in Apple Valley.
He was the president of the Apple Valley Kiwanis Club in 1955 and was the lieutenant governor of the Kiwanis International, Division 28, in 1957.
In 1958 the board of supervisors appointed Dana to the county flood control district’s Zone IV Advisory Committee. He served on that committee until December 1959.
In 1960 he was named “Outstanding Citizen of Apple Valley.”
That year he was elected to the board of supervisors in the First Supervisorial District, succeeding Magda Lawson of Needles, overseeing the entirety of the county’s desert expanse.
He participated in efforts that involved coordination between county, state and federal officials with regard to the improvement of recreational amenities along the Colorado River. He was an active participant in the county’s negotiations with the Knott family to lease land in the outer Barstow area for the operation of the Calico Ghost Town attraction.
In July 1963, Dana stepped into a bit of controversy when he did not immediately support a move, championed by his board colleagues Nancy Smith and Wesley Break, to enact specifically-worded restrictions on the placement of billboards along the county’s highways. Smith’s and Break’s proposal ran counter to the United Outdoor Advertising Company’s proposed amendment to the county’s billboard ordinance that would allow 1,000 feet on each side of a business on the freeway to host billboards, instead of the 500 feet that was then the county policy.
Dana won reelection in 1964, after which his board colleagues named a county park after him and designated him to serve as chairman of the board from 1964 to 1966.
During Dana’s term of office as First District supervisor, he utilized the 1911 Act in furthering the provision of infrastructure within his district. Other districts have since  benefited from the 1911 Act in the improvement of roads, sewers, flood control facilities, water systems, etc.  He strongly supported various flood control improvements such as the 29 Palms Flood Channel, Mojave River Control, the Oro Grande Channel and others.
Dana was active as a member of the County Supervisors Association of California, vice chairman of the Lower Colorado River Land Use Advisory Committee from 1961 to 1964 and a member of the Local Agency Formation Commission.
He retired from the board in 1968, being succeeded by William A. Betterley.
Following his retirement from the board of supervisors, Dana returned to his general engineering contracting company, Dana, Inc., of which he was founder and president, and resumed a more prominent role in the business. He retired from participation in the company’s operations in 1970, leaving it in the hands of his son and son-in-law, to enjoy the more leisurely life of fishing, golf and travel.
Ross Dana died in Victorville on April 15, 1988 and was survived by his wife, Elizabeth, daughters Catherine Shaw and Pat Cooley, a sister, Norma Ramirez, six grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren. His son, I. Ross Jr. predeceased him in October 1985.

A federal lawsuit brought against the County of San Bernardino, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, and the personnel involved in the November 30, 2012 shooting of 33-year-old Clyde Murray was dismissed on May 15, 2009.
Murray, a paroled street gang member who was known to be involved in armed robberies in San Bernardino, Highland and Redlands, was spotted on Thursday November 29, 2012 at the Days Inn at 1386 Highland Avenue in San Bernardino. By 10 pm that evening, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department’s Specialized Enforcement Team had set up surveillance at the Days Inn. When Murray emerged from his room at  9:26 a.m. Friday morning, sheriff’s personnel approached him, seeking to take him into custody.
Sheriff’s Detective Joshua Smith opened fire on Murray after Murray did not comply with a demand to show his hands. “Based on the suspect’s actions, an officer-involved shooting occurred,” according to a sheriff’s department statement at the time. “The suspect was found to be in possession of a handgun,” which was later identified as a .45 caliber weapon.
In its finding clearing Smith, the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office found credible witnesses’ indications Murray was reaching for his waistband area when the shooting occurred.
On August 15, 2013, the County of San Bernardino, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department and involved personnel were served with a lawsuit claiming negligence and wrongful death. San Bernardino County retained Attorney Dennis Popka to represent the county’s interests. Popka defended the case for almost six years. The lawsuit filed in state court was dismissed and the plaintiff refiled the case in federal court.
According to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, the public is encouraged “to become informed on civil court cases.” State lawsuits can be reviewed at http://www.sb-court.org/divisions/civil-general-information/court-case.  To review federal lawsuits, an account can be created on www.pacer.gov.  With this account information, cases can be reviewed by any member of the public.
-Mark Gutglueck

Black sedge or black bog rush, which is scientifically known as schoenus nigricans, is a species of sedge which grows in the San Bernardino Mountains and the eastern portion of the San Gabriel Mountains as well as a few other isolated areas in San Bernardino County where there are marshes.
Sedges are flowering plants, which superficially resemble the closely related rushes and the more distantly related grasses.
In addition to its presence locally, black sedge is native to Eurasia, parts of Africa, Australia, and other places in southern North America, including Mexico and the southernmost United States. It occurs nearly exclusively, with an estimated probability of 99 percent, under natural conditions in wetlands and other moist and alkaline habitat, primarily including marshes, calcareous bogs, and wet flatwoods, springs, seeps, peat bogs, heath, and alkali flats.
A perennial plant, schoenus nigricans grows in low, tight clumps eight to 30 inches high, the clumps formed by stems, threadlike leaves bearing wide and dark brown ligules, which are thin outgrowth at the junction of leaf and leafstalk. The stems are squarish, smooth and wiry. The leaf blades are erect, wiry, thin, triangular, and channeled. Their sheaths are dark reddish brown to black.
This plant’s flower cluster consists of a small, flattened set of very dark brown spikelets. The fruit is an achene. Achenes are singularly formed carpels, which contain a single seed inside a hardened seed coat to which the seed does not fully adhere. A carpel is the female reproductive part of the flower, which exists as a modified leave-bearing structure. In the case of black sedge, the coated seed, or nutlet, is a hard, glossy white shell.
It blooms from spring to summer.
Black sedge might first be encountered as clumps of wiry stems and leaves, having blackish long-tipped clusters at the stem tips. Each cluster of blackish spikelets has one very long, stiff, pointed bract, jutting out from below.
From Wikipedia; https://plants.ifas.ufl.edu; the National Biodiversity Network’s website:   https://nbn.org.uk/   and https://howlingpixel.com.

It’s getting warm and the heat is right around the corner. With that said, it’s time to start putting a summer wardrobe together. Start with sandals, then add swimwear and your dresses. A summer dress? Yes, because its effortless and easy-to-wear anywhere you go. They come in colorful prints to solid colored pieces. The lengths are from mini and maxi lengths. Gingham prints are perfect for summer too, and don’t forget the bustier top design dress is great for day or night.  There are floral print maxi dresses that are very popular for summer, along with knit dresses. Lastly, try a nicely loose denim midi dress. Summer is going to be fun, so stay tuned for more refreshing looks.

“A woman has no need to be perfect or even beautiful to wear my dresses. The dress will do all that for her.” -Cristobal Balenciaga