A Sentinel reader, a decent, if somewhat gullible chap, was recently in need of some new wheels. He surveyed the offerings at a handful of local car dealerships, at last settling upon a modern vintage used vehicle that had hardly been driven, one with fewer than 8,000 miles on its odometer. To ensure that he was not being taken advantage of, he took the car out on a test spin, driving to a garage run by a good friend of his. His friend, employing his own expertise and the diagnostic tools that in this day and age are at the ready in the arsenal of any true mechanic, pronounced the car fit in every way.
Back at the dealership, the Sentinel reader, having settled upon a purchase price of $22,000, made a down payment of $3,000. It was established that he owed a balance of $19,000, and he was handed a four-page contract, the first page-and-a-half of which he had skimmed over. He had satisfied himself with language that he found in the body of the details and fine print that the contract laid out that he would pay the specified $19,000 remainder over the course of 36 months, which comported with the representation made by the salesman. Satisfied and looking forward to driving about in what was to him a very nice, and almost new, car, he signed the document and drove off the lot. Continue reading →

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The Barstow City Council on Tuesday night voted to place Police Chief Albert Espinoza on paid administrative leave.

San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department personnel on Monday moved in on a cockfighting operation in Yucaipa, detaining 38 observers or participants, of whom two were arrested and charged. In addition, some 200 gaming cocks were seized, along with money and 25 firearms.
 On January 19, 2025, at approximately 10:02 a.m., deputies from the Yucaipa Station were dispatched to the 32000 block of Avenue E in response to reports of illegal “cockfighting” occurring on the property.
When deputies arrived, approximately 50 vehicles were seen on the property. Shortly thereafter, a large number of those assembled on the property got into a majority of the cars present on property and began to drive away. When deputies attempted to stop one of the vehicles, the driver, later identified as 33-year-old Jose Luis Adame of Riverside, accelerated the car toward a patrol unit. The deputy avoided being struck. When he sought to initiate a traffic stop, a pursuit ensued. The vehicle stopped near 16th Street and Yucaipa Boulevard where Adame and three passengers were taken into custody. Six live roosters were found in the rear cargo area. Adame was arrested and his vehicle was impounded.
Deputies detained 33 other people identified as spectators on the property where approximately 250 roosters were kept, and a fighting ring with a scoreboard and steel talons were found. Sheriff’s Aviation observed a subject hiding inside of a truck at the rear of the property. Carlos Romero was found lying down inside the truck with seven live roosters in boxes. He was detained and found to have a large sum of U.S. currency on his person and a hidden Ruger semi-automatic handgun inside the truck.
Adame was arrested for P.C. 245 and CVC 2800.2, and Romero, 36 of Perris, was arrested for PC 597 and PC 29805. Both subjects were booked at Central Detention Center.
The San Bernardino County Rural Task Force responded and authored a search warrant for the property. Additional steel talons were located and approximately 24 firearms were seized from a large safe. Yucaipa City Code Enforcement responded and red tagged several buildings including a trailer on the property. San Bernardino County Animal Control recovered approximately 17 dead roosters, seized eight live roosters, and tagged 61 boxed roosters.

By Mark Gutglueck
In a high risk bid to keep the wraps on the misdirection of federal and state money to a host of the deep-pocketed backers of a good cross section of the region’s politicians, San Bernardino County officials are seeking to intimidate a one-time politician into silence about the details of those monetary diversions.
At the center of the burgeoning scandal is former San Bernardino City Councilman Henry Nickel, who served seven years on the city council from 2013 until 2020, and who staged failed political comebacks in a 2022 run for San Bernardino mayor and another in 2024, when he narrowly lost his bid to re-assume his former place on the council dais representing that city’s Fifth Ward.
Despite his checkered political experience, Nickel yet retains a modicum of reach within the dual-sided realm of politics and government, as he was reelected to his fourth term as a member of the Republican Central Committee in March 2024 and is yet employed in an influential position with San Bernardino County.
Indeed, it is by threatening to relieve Nickel of his job with the county – an analyst in the county’s workforce development division – that some of the more senior members of county staff and a host of the most powerful and politically-well-connected members of San Bernardino County’s business community are hoping they can ensure his silence. Ironically, it is the lattice of interweaving political and business interests that previously supported Nickel in his rise to prominence and propelled him into position to learn many of the hush-hush aspects of those alliances that the political and governmental shotcallers now want to keep from the public. Continue reading →

More than eight years following the passage of Proposition 64, all 24 of San Bernardino County’s municipalities are selling medically-related cannabis products and seven are selling or have cleared the way for the sale of marijuana for intoxicative effect.
The county has come a long way from the days when law enforcement throughout the 20,105-square mile jurisdiction routinely made a practice of arresting and prosecuting marijuana users, and in some cases seeing to it that those trafficking in the substance spent upwards of a decade in state prison.
In the mid-to-late 1960s and into the 1970s, 1980s 1990s and first decade of the Third Millennium, as marijuana use escalated from what it had been among previous generations, San Bernardino County law enforcement under sheriffs Frank Bland, Floyd Tidwell, Dick Williams, Gary Penrod and Rod Hoops, multiple police chiefs of the county’s various cities and district attorneys Lowell Lathrop, Jim Cramer, Dennis Kottmeier, Dennis Stout and Mike Ramos proved as or more committed to enforcing restrictions against marijuana use and sales as their counterparts in any of the Golden State’s 57 other counties. Moreover, the political leadership throughout San Bernardino County, from the board of supervisors to the mayors and council members of all of what are now its 24 municipalities – 22 cities and two incorporated towns – were equally adamant about preventing the proliferation of cannabis. 
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