TWENTYNINE PALMS—(December 10) Former Twentynine Palms councilman and mayor Larry Bowden, who was also the Twentynine Palms High School basketball coach, has been chosen to serve as Twentynine Palms interim city manager.
Bowden was one of those considered for the city manager’s spot in June when the city council sacked Joe Guzzetta. At that point the council decided to go with Andy Takata, the one-time town manager of Yucca Valley and city manager of  Banning, who was then serving as interim city manager in Calexico.
In November, Takata abruptly departed to become the chief of staff for San Bernardino County Second District Supervisor Janice Rutherford.
There is only limited prospect that Bowden will remain in the position for more than six months. The city council intends to recruit a permanent city manager, whom they hope to have in place no later than April.
Bowden was the city’s parks and recreation department supervisor.

(December 12) The academic credentials of recently-appointed San Bernardino Valley College President Gloria Fisher have come under question.
Fisher, who places the term doctor before her name and has served 18 months as interim president, had worked for 22 years as an administration of justice instructor at the college before being elevated to the interim position in June 2013.
According to Frank Peterson, an attorney and San Bernardino Valley College instructor who was on the college’s hiring committee when Fisher was hired in 1991, he recommended against granting Fisher the tenure-track position at that time. After Peterson retired in 2006, he filed a lawsuit against the community college district in which he asserted that the San Joaquin College of Law from which Fisher obtained her juris doctor degree in 1986 was unaccredited. Peterson did not prevail in the case, which was aimed at disqualifying Fisher as an instructor.
Leonard Lopez, an assistant professor in the philosophy department, since this summer has questioned Fisher’s credentials along the same lines laid out by Peterson in the context of her lack of qualification as a college president, a post traditionally held by an established educator with a Ph.D. Fisher does not have a bachelor’s degree and she is not a member of the California Bar..
A juris doctor degree is roughly the equivalent of a master’s degree, which is generally considered a six year degree awarded after two years of study that follow the awarding of a four-year bachelor’s degree. A juris doctor degree carries with it no requirement for the submission of a dissertation, as is required with a Ph.D.
Upon appointing Fisher as full college president on November 13, the college district board conferred upon her a doctorate stipend in addition to her annual salary of $186,000. The board revisit that issue and reconfirmed Fisher’s hiring last night.

(December 10)   The San Bernardino County Housing Authority has moved to refinance the $15.7 million arrangement it entered into with Bank of America last year for the 168-unit Andalusia Apartments in Victorville.
The housing authority’s  $16 million loan agreement with Prudential Mortgage Capital Co. at an all-in rate of 4.02 percent supplants the existing  $9.7 million, 6.75 percent-rate loan and  $6 million line of credit with Bank of America.
The change was unanimously approved last week based on the recommendation of the county housing commission. The switch will result in savings of $70,000 annually for the housing authority’s account with regard to the Andalusia property.
The housing authority houses over 30,000 residents countywide. Some 9,100 vouchers issued to in-need residents cover almost $70 million paid annually to the county’s landlords, according to the county.

(December 9)  The Yucaipa City Council has approved the formation of the Yucaipa Community Arts Foundation, which is to be dedicated to raising operating funds for the Yucaipa Performing Arts Center.
Capital is needed for the facility’s construction and subsequent operation,  management and the “broader mission of enhancing the role of the arts in the community.”
The foundation will be a non-profit 501 C (3).
The first order of business, according to a city staff report, is to  establish and register the foundation, set up its financial structure, its budget and  accounting system. Yucaipa Director of Community Development Paul Toomey. estimated that it would cost roughly $2,000 to jumpstart the effort by filing for non-profit status.
The city has already picked out a site for the performing arts center.

(December 12)  The California Supreme Court this week denied a petition by defense attorney Stephen Larson to review Superior Court Judge Michael Smith’s rulings against dismissing criminal charges facing  defendant Jeff Burum in the Colonies Lawsuit Settlement Public Corruption Prosecution  on grounds of improper grand jury instruction and the withholding of exculpatory evidence.
Larson  petitioned the Supreme Court on behalf of Burum  after the 4th District Court of Appeals in Riverside rejected two writs Larson filed in October. Last summer,  Smith dismissed a central conspiracy charge against Burum and former county supervisor Paul Biane, former assistant assessor and sheriff’s deputies union president Jim Erwin, and former Second District supervisorial district chief of staff Mark Kirk, who are also charged in the case, on statute of limitations grounds. .Smith allowed charges pertaining to the misappropriation of public funds and the provision of bribes to public officials to proceed in the case, which Larson had appealed.

By Mark Gutglueck
Eugene Mueller was San Bernardino County’s first and arguably only reformist sheriff.
He was born in Chicago on December 12, 1904 to Alfred Mueller, a veteran of the Spanish-American War, and his wife, Clara.
Alfred was wounded in the leg while in battle in the Philippines, which left him disabled for the remainder of his life. To support his parents, who moved to California in 1919, Eugene Mueller went to work at an early age and therefore never received an academic education beyond high school.
He began working as a policeman with the Pasadena Police Department in 1927, walking a beat in his first assignment.  In 1932 he was lent to the Southgate police department, where he reorganized operations and served as police chief for three years. He returned to the Pasadena Police Department in 1935.
While with the Pasadena department, he was given the assignment of escorting the Stanford football team around town during one of its appearances at the Rose Bowl. This led to Mueller’s lifelong association with Stanford as both an athletic scout and a booster.
In 1941, Mueller left Pasadena for Upland, where he had been ofered the assignment of police chief. When he arrived in Upland, he found accommodations for his family, which included his wife Norma, his daughter Marilyn and two sons, Don and Ken, at a citrus grove estate on what is now 20th Street. Concerned about maintaining stability for his children in their educational setting, he committed to remaining in Upland.
While overseeing the Upland force, he made the noteworthy stride of hiring the department’s first minority members, including Felix Quesada. As chief, Mueller involved himself in the rudimentary elements of police work, walking a beat, patrolling and personally investigating crime within his department’s jurisdiction. He was close to his officers and played second base on the department baseball team, and was averred to be a good hitter.
During the late stage of World War II, Mueller traveled to Washington, D.C., where he attended the National Police Academy, bringing back concepts on how to modernize and improve the department.
While in Upland, his children attended Chaffey High School. He created a quarterback’s social club, which entailed Monday morning breakfast meetings of participants. He promoted youth sports programs such as Golden Gloves. As a scout for Stanford, he recruited three Chaffey High gridiron standouts for the Stanford football team: Jim Vick, Jim Hayes and Don Lucas.
In 1950, Mueller ran for San Bernardino county sheriff against incumbent Jim Stocker and another challenger, former sheriff Emmet Shay in the June primary. After qualifying for a run off against Stocker, Mueller prevailed by 992 votes in what was the closest election for county sheriff in San Bernardino County history. Out of 85,362 votes cast with all but three of the county’s precincts accounted for, 43,177 votes went to Mueller and 42,185 votes were captured by Stocker.
The impetus for Mueller’s candidacy had been his backers’ call for him to make inroads with regards to what the Los Angeles Daily News had exposed as a $3 million vice ring operating in San Bernardino County in which none of the major principals had been indicted  and of which only a single pimp had been arrested.
As the newly elected sheriff, Mueller inherited an organization with a checkered past, conflicting loyalties, and questionable alliances, political, legal and moral. For generations those in power and those with money had been able to utilize the sheriff’s department much like a private security force to protect their interests first and those of the public second. Protection rackets were an inherent part of the system. Houses of ill repute flourished throughout the county unmolested, as did gambling enterprises. Law enforcement officers were paid to look the other way, if they were not invited to outright participate in illicit enterprises directly or indirectly.
Gambling houses and bookmaking operations operated with seeming impunity in San Bernardino County throughout the 1940s and into the first year of the 1950s. Occasional raids on such enterprises were staged by Stocker and his men, but reports on the activity were not consistently provided to the district attorney’s office and the gaming operations carried on.
Mueller set his sights first on these elements of the county’s vice activity, seeking to spur his department into action.
Upon coming into office in 1951, Mueller undertook what would be described in the press as “a sweeping shake-up of his office.”  Mueller said the changes were being made “to bring about closer supervision, thereby ensuring greater efficiency, and to broaden deputies with a wider orientation of duties in various areas.”
He had some success in changing the complexion and tenor of his department’s operations, but felt his deputies were not moving with the alacrity he envisioned was necessary to achieve the goals he had set out for the department. In response, he moved to reorganize the department’s command structure, demoting five people holding administrative echelon positions, including 69-year-old undersheriff  Harry R. Heap, whom Mueller perceived as being too lackluster in his performance.  Heap was reduced in rank to chief investigator.
Mueller settled upon the one senior administrator under Stocker in whom he saw the most promise, Ray Deakins, as his best bet for serving him in the role of second-in-command. Thus, Deakins became undersheriff. Mueller further used his authority and autonomy as sheriff to promote those men in the department he felt made the best fit with his goals and management style.
He created the office of acting chief of detectives in the bureau of investigations and installed deputy L.L. “Zeke” Eblen in that post.  He named lieutenant James M. Holloway chief of the administrative intelligence squad, to be assisted by detective lieutenants Robert Graefe and James Willis. He put inspector H.C. English in charge of all uniformed patrol deputies and their activities, jail operations, the department’s substations and its rescue operations. He further created the office of chief of plans and training, assigning captain Lester Liess to oversee it.
But the series of changes Mueller instituted touched the lives of roughly two of every five of his deputies and his approach triggered protests and grumbling. And his challenge to Heap’s turf  as well as to two of the other five members of the department he demoted resulted in official appeal filings with the San Bernardino County Civil Service Commission.
Relatively early on, the new sheriff would get a glimpse of what he was up against. Ten months into Mueller’s tenure as sheriff, in November 1951, George C. Fitzwatter, who was then 66 years old, was arrested and charged with collecting money under false pretenses. Fitzwater had been the local coordinator for a pension collective. He was accused of bilking Lawrence Harpham, the proprietor of an establishment near Colton and just north of the Riverside County line, of $350.  Fitzwater was arrested after Mueller’s deputies raided Harpham’s gaming house on November 10, 1951 and an outraged Harpham told them they were making a mistake. He then explained that he had paid “fix” money to Fitzwater with the understanding that $150 of the money would be kept by Fitzwater and the other $200 would be paid to Deakins, the acting undersheriff. The purpose of his payment, Harpham thought, was to keep his gambling operation from being raided.
The event was a learning experience for all involved. Hapham and other gambling house operators learned that Mueller and Deakins’ enforcement of the law was not subject to monetary influence as had apparently been the case during the Stocker  administration when Heap was undersheriff. And Mueller and Deakins learned something about why their vice suppression operations were less effective than they intended.
Meanwhile, Mueller’s reassignment of deputies to different duty stations, ones that were in some cases a hundred miles or more away from their previous assignments, rankled some of his men. Mueller was dealing with the reality of the sheer size of the county, from its northeast corner where the Inyo County line meets the Nevada border to Carbon Canyon near Chino Hills in the southwest and from Trona at the county’s northwest corner nestled against Inyo and Kern counties at the gateway into Death Valley down to San Timoteo Canyon along the frontier with Riverside County and everything in between. At, 20,014 square miles, San Bernardino County is a land mass larger than New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island combined. Mueller wanted his men to familiarize themselves with all aspects of the county, from its desolate and seemingly boundless expanse of desert to its snow capped peaks in the San Bernardino and Angeles Mountains as well as its agricultural zones, its railroad towns such as Needles, Barstow and Colton, its stretches of lonesome highway and its urban centers such as San Bernardino, Ontario and Redlands.  Working counter to Mueller was not simply the inbred corruption he detested, but the very geography of the county itself.
The challenges to Mueller’s department reorganization were eventually heard by the civil service commission.
Heap, the dean of the department as he approached his 70th year, was reinstated as undersheriff, though only temporarily. In reinstating Heap, the commission took into consideration that he was scheduled to retire within two months, while recognizing that Mueller was looking for more dynamic leadership for his department. “The big issue seemed to be that Heap had outlived his usefulness and lacked in initiative and administrative ability,” the civil service commission’s finding stated. “This may be true but little or no evidence was submitted to substantiate the sheriff’s position.”
The other two department members who had contested Mueller’s action were Roy Cornelison, the former Fontana substation captain who had been replaced in that assignment by sergeant J. M. Staudemmayer and  transferred to the central division in San Bernardino as a patrol deputy, and P. T. Coleman, who had been relieved of his post as resident deputy in Trona and was likewise sent back to San Bernardino to do patrol work.
The commission approved the one-grade demotion of Roy Cornelison, whom the commission characterized as using “poor judgment” at times. The commission further found that occasionally Connelison’s “conduct, manners and language were unbecoming a substation captain.”
The commission approved the demotion of Coleman from resident to patrol deputy, finding there was evidence “of conduct unbecoming an officer, poor judgment while on duty and poor public relations over a long period of time which did not enhance the prestige of the sheriff’s office in the minds of a substantial number of citizens in the Trona-Argus desert area.”
A citizens’ group formed to fight the changes and, utilizing representatives from a number of the communities around the county, lodged assertions with the commission that civil service regulations were not being followed by the new sheriff. Mueller was able to allay those concerns with the commission and most of the public.
Emblematic of how the new ethos Mueller advocated did not sit well with at least some of his men was the dissolution of the sheriff’s posse. Mueller rode horses, but was not a devout equestrian. On the other hand, his predecessor, Stocker, had the reputation and mindset of a cowboy. Stocker had founded in 1947 the sheriff’s mounted posse, a throwback to the days of old. The posse consisted of horsemen sworn in by Stocker, who were in a perpetual stand-by status, ready to be called out to search the county’s considerable expanses for fleeing criminals, jail or prison escapees, lost hikers or hunters or fishermen or for any rescue operation where they might be useful.
Mueller, though appreciative of the posse in concept, had not put as high of a priority on its contributions as Stocker and, busy with other matters, did not get around to swearing the posse in until four months after he took office. The posse members, who yet counted Stocker among them, took this as a slight. Claiming that politics was not involved, the horsemen disbanded the posse, saying Mueller had allowed it to “drift.” In its place, they immediately formed a new riding club – the San Bernardino County Rangers.
Mueller then did some maneuvering of his own, creating the sheriff’s reserve mounted posse and forming the sheriff’s reserve motorcycle posse, with 30 members chartered to assist with traffic emergencies, search and rescue and forest fire response.
Following Heap’s retirement, Mueller was able to assert authority over the department he headed.
Mueller assigned a deputy to do occasional patrol of Lake Arrowhead to discourage reckless speeding by boaters there.
One facet of Mueller’s direction of the department that distinguishes him from both his predecessors and his successors is the sartorial standard he set for the department. He insisted that his men adopt uniforms that were reminiscent of the dress regalia of the Marine Corps, complemented by World War II National Park ranger hats, which he believed conveyed an image befitting the esteem he believed the public should have for officers of the law.
Mueller was also the first San Bernardino County sheriff to add women to the ranks of the department and it was under him that the department’s ladies auxiliary was organized.
He participated in and often led department raids, signaling  commencement of the enforcement team’s charge with the call “Geronimo.”
Mueller had an effective way of commanding the attention of his men or others in a crowd who had slipped off into a myriad of separate private conversations when it was time for him to convey something of importance. He kept a blank bullet in his gun and he would take aim at the ceiling and shoot. The loud report would bring the focus back to him.
On June 29, 1953, the sheriff’s department’s aeronautical unit was formed with the acquisition of the department’s first aircraft. Also in 1953, the sheriff’s reserve emergency unit was organized.
By his fourth year in office, the department had made significant strides in eroding the gambling component of the region’s vice activity.
Nevertheless, Mueller never fully recovered politically from the dissension that was sowed in the ranks over his effort to change the culture of the force under his command. In 1954, Frank Bland, exploiting some of the deputies’ expressions of discontent over their transfers and the newfangled way of running the department Mueller represented, challenged him in the sheriff’s race. Bland, a railroad policeman and detective from Needles who had joined the Needles Police Department and had risen through the ranks to become police chief there, was like Mueller, a graduate of the National Police Academy.  Bland campaigned on three issues: He charged Mueller with being a city slicker from Upland who had neglected the more remote and rustic areas of the county. Bland vowed to close down all of the pinball parlors around the county where youngsters were squandering too much of their time, he claimed, instead of staying home and doing their chores and homework. And he vowed to close down the houses of ill-repute which proliferated at various spots of the far flung county along its myriad of highways and outback reaches.
Mueller was one of the first San Bernardino politicians to be buried under the avalanche of a negative campaign. In addition to being attacked for slighting the county’s backwaters, he was attacked for dressing his deputies in fancy and overly flamboyant uniforms.
Ultimately, too much reform too soon undid Mueller politically in San Bernardino County. Elected at the halfway mark of the Twentieth Century, Mueller gamely attempted to modernize and professionalize a department that yet had one foot firmly planted in what was at least the mystique if not the reality of the ”Old West.” Moreover, the wide open lawlessness of the unbridled frontier that was much of San Bernardino County resisted the regulation and order he was seeking to impose. He lost convincingly to Bland 20,926 to 16,591 in a head-to-head, two-man race held in June 1954, during that year’s California primary election.
Bland’s victory that year was the first of seven successive electoral victories he racked up, allowing him to serve a record 28 years as sheriff in San Bernardino County. A horseman, Bland was able to pool the support of Stocker and utilize the discontent over Mueller’s reforms to canter to victory, posing as a reformer of sorts and creating in the process a political machine that has outlived him and survives to this day. Each sheriff that has succeeded him – Floyd Tidwell, Dick Williams, Gary Penrod, Rod Hoops and the current incumbent John McMahon – did so with the assistance of the political machine Bland created. Each of those sheriffs came into office with the political endorsement of his predecessor. And though Bland initially made good on his commitment to take a stand against vice and in particular close down some of the houses of prostitution in the county, in time that effort lapsed. In 1966, information surfaced that Bland himself had pilfered thousands of dollars from a fund that had been set up to provide his deputies working the vice/narcotics detail with money for drug buys, place bets with bookies or make the monetary exchanges needed to arrest  pimps and prostitutes. Despite the revelation, Bland remained in office and was never molested by the district attorney as he was often returned to office without electoral challenge or was able to bury the negative publicity under an avalanche of positive sounding mailers and handbills and gain re-election when he was opposed.
In 1978, Bland again dodged a mortal bullet when a scandal enveloped his campaign that showed 24 years after his maiden campaign for sheriff based upon eradicating the county of the scourge of prostitution Bland’s department had become mired in questionable ties with ladies of the evening. At a Bland campaign fundraiser in April of that year at Sweeten Hall in Rancho Cucamonga, donors and others in attendance with Bland were offered the services of prostitutes inside a trailer within the hall’s parking lot. A bust of the proceedings corralled a couple of the girls, a member of the sheriff’s department and one of Bland’s supporters. The ensuing case was prosecuted by deputy district attorney Bill Parker, leading to revelations about the matter that came too late to prevent Bland from being elected to serve a seventh term.
In 1982, Bland, then 69, chose not to seek reelection to an eighth term as he was mired in controversy relating to sheriff’s officers helping themselves to stolen property that had been recovered by his department. Instead, he handed off the reins to his second-in-command, undersheriff Floyd Tidwell.
To this day, Mueller has a legitimate claim to having been the leading reformist sheriff in San Bernardino County history.
Mueller’s work as a lawman did not end with his defeat in the 1954 election. In 1955, California Governor Goodwin Knight appointed Mueller to work with attorney Jim Cox on rooting out racketeering in boxing.
Meanwhile, in Culver City in Los Angeles County,  a laissez-faire atmosphere with regard to vice had persisted for some time. Gambling in particular was a wide-open phenomenon there, and the atmosphere of tolerance was at one with the political leadership of the time. But in 1956, Culver City Mayor Harold Shields, who had reformist leanings, was able, with three other successful reformist council candidates,  to get control of the city’s reins of power. Together, they eased police chief W. N. Hildebrand, who had a modus vivendi with the gaming interests in town, toward the door. Hildebrand would become eligible for a disability retirement on June 11, 1956 and that was the date set for his retirement.
Shields conferred with then-Los Angeles Police Chief William Parker, asking for his recommendation as to a replacement for Hildebrand, in particular someone who would aggressively step up enforcement against gaming and bookmaking operations. Parker suggested Mueller. Shields then prevailed upon Mueller to leave his Sacramento assignment and become police chief in Culver City.
Mueller lit into the city’s illicit gaming establishment.
“Some of it moved out when the mobsters heard I was coming and we took care of the rest,” Mueller later said.
Mueller remained as Culver City police chief for thirteen-and-one-half years, retiring on January 1, 1970.
One noteworthy change Mueller made toward the end of his career was that he lightened up on his requirement that the officers under his command wear officious looking uniforms. By 1969, Mueller had changed the dress code for Culver City police officers to allow them to wear typical street clothes with the sole requirement that they wear only one common item of apparel –  a gold blazer with a pocket insignia identifying the wearer as a policeman.
Sometime prior to his retirement, Mueller sat down for an interview with the Los Angeles Times, at which he sized up the challenges facing society, vis a vis cops vs. crooks.
“There is far too much sympathy for the criminal and not enough for the victim,” he said. “The bleeding hearts talk of the ‘poor fellow’ -and they’re not referring to the victim, but the criminal All judges need to get a little tougher. There must be a day of atonement for the commission of a crime. The individual must be held responsible for his actions. Otherwise there is chaos.”
The mission of a police department administrator should be, he said, “toward increasing the professionalism of policemen, through selection, training and improved human relations.”
Mueller died in 1977.

By Diane Dragotto Williams
Wildhaven Ranch, though over 5,000 feet in altitude, has had its share of stray pelicans often blown off course.  These distinctive birds of North America, with their oversized orange-salmon bill and vast wingspan of 8 to 9 feet are one of the largest waterbirds, standing 4 feet tall! Pelecanus Erythrorhynchos winters in California looking for lakes as they migrate, causing unexpected visits in our mountains as they are caught up in a storm.  Clumsy on land, the pelican is a good swimmer and graceful in flight as they fly in flocks, with their necks bent back on their bodies. Using its long neck and expandable pouch, the pelican catches its fish by scooping up water, holding its head up and draining out the water, while swallowing its prey!  Eating up to 3 pounds of fish a day, its pouch can hold up to 3 gallons of water! Another pound of crayfish and amphibians can also be speared for meals.
Its plumage is almost entirely white, except for black primary and secondary feathered edges, sometimes visible only in flight.  Pelican groups of a dozen or more will work communally by herding fish into shallow inland lakes.  Making their summer home near inland lakes, they then prefer to forage alone, or may steal fish from other waterbirds.  Their nests are made of built-up dirt with twig, stick and reed debris, holding 1-2 dull or chalky white eggs.  The young often grow up in pods, in colonies where an abundance of pelicans provide protection. Colony predators include foxes, coyotes and large avians.  Young pelicans are sometimes hunted by great horned owls and bald eagles.  Avian interlopers will be met by aggression with jabs of their enormous pelican bills. But mammals usually force pelicans to abandon their nests.
Soaring high on thermals, pelicans fly in a straight line or V formation, migrating across the western, southwestern and Gulf Coast states into Canada, and as far as Central and South America.  Braving storms, weather changes, different topography and sometimes toxic waters has made this striking aquatic bird quite a survivor.   At Wildhaven Ranch, visits from White American Pelicans gave us great amusement as we watched our guests easily consume pounds of fish, only to wait patiently for more to materialize! They always left with a smile on their beaks!
Wildhaven Ranch is a wildlife sanctuary in the San Bernardino Mountains specializing in educating the public about wildlife in our ecosystem. Visit them at www.wildhavenranch.org or call for tours at (909) 337-7389.

You can download a PDF of the December 5 San Bernardino County Sentinel by clicking on the portal below.

Sentinel 12-05-14

(December 2) San Bernardino County District Attorney has laid the groundwork for a 2018 run for California Attorney General.
A recent addition to the internet, the website http://www.joinmikeramos.com/ heralds Ramos’s 2018 bid, providing visitors to the site with information about Ramos’s philosophy, history and stated accomplishments.
The website celebrates Ramos as a prosecutor “seeking justice for victims. Mike Ramos is working every day to get things done on the issues that matter most to victims of crime and their family members.”
In this regard, Ramos is represented as a bulwark against unlawful gang activity. As San Bernardino County’s top prosecutor, Ramos is quoted: “The rise of criminal streets gangs in this county is a real threat to our communities, but I refuse to allow these local terrorists to determine how we live our daily lives. Coming down hard on gang crime and keeping our citizens safe will always be an important mission of this office.”
The website invites those interested to get involved in the campaign by taking action and donating to his campaign war chest. “Together, we can make great strides addressing issues that impact public safety.,” the web site states. “The strength of any campaign is in the power of the people who come together because they believe in something bigger, something achievable. Together, anything is possible.”
A link on the website allows donors to make contributions by credit card.
On the page’s biographical link, the reader is informed that Ramos was first elected in 2002, and that he was “innovative and persistent in his fight to protect victims’ rights” from the outset of his tenure in office and assumed chairmanship of the “Death Penalty Initiative Reform Committee,” a collective effort to prevent the death penalty from being banned in California and instead “speed up the execution of the 733 prisoners California holds on its death row at San Quentin.”
The website further states that “Mike has also been an outspoken advocate against Human Trafficking at the local and state level” and that he “campaigned heavily in favor of Proposition 35 which voters overwhelmingly passed in 2012” and created a Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit. In an effort to further reduce the demand for victims of human trafficking, he also began releasing the names and photographs of defendants convicted of solicitation in San Bernardino County.
One of the site’s webpages touts Ramos’s efforts at gang affiliation prevention.
“I know from my years in law enforcement in and out of the courtroom, that if we only focus on adult offenders, we will never effectively address the crime problem,” Ramos states on the webpage. “Most adult criminals started by getting into trouble as juveniles and eventually dropping out of school. It is in those early years when we have the best chance of steering them back on course. A ten percent increase in graduation rates would reduce murder and assault rates by about twenty percent. The San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office takes truancy very seriously. We know that it is often the “gateway” to juvenile delinquency and, later, more serious adult crime. Making sure that kids go to school and stay in school is very important to me for two reasons.”
The quotation of Ramos continued, “One is because as district attorney of San Bernardino County I want kids to stay out of trouble and out of the court system. The best way to do this is by making sure kids stay in school. The second reason is that, since I served seven years on the Redlands’ School Board, I know how important a good education is to a child’s future. Successful students generally make productive, law-abiding citizens in the long run. If we don’t invest in education programs now, we’ll have to pay more to incarcerate later.”
In a video posted on the website, Ramos said he was opposed to Proposition 47, which reduced drug possession crimes from felonies to misdemeanors because it “takes away the initiative for people to attend drug programs.” Proposition 47, Ramos said, amounts to “a get out of jail free card. This approach is not the answer.”
Ramos’s declaration of his intent to run for state attorney general comes four years before that election will be held. He was reelected to a fourth term in office as San Bernardino County District Attorney in June. Kamala Harris was reelected California Attorney General this year as well. Under California’s term limits, she cannot seek reelection in 2018.
In addition to his early declaration of candidacy, Ramos embodies other potential strengths as a candidate for state attorney general. He is a Hispanic Republican, a relative rarity in California. His ethnic identification could attenuate the advantage a Democratic opponent might otherwise have over him in 2018, given that an overwhelming number of Latino voters in California are registered Democrats. And while Republicans are the state’s minority party, he has built political bridges to the Democrats, in particular Harris and Governor Jerry Brown, the former attorney general, whose office co-prosecuted with the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office some high profile cases. Ramos and Harris endorsed one another in this year’s election.

(December 3)  San Bernardino Mayor Carey Davis will be without a chief of staff as of January 1, pursuant to a vote of the San Bernardino City Council on Monday.
The council voted 5-2 against renewing the city’s contract with the consulting firm MICA-PR to serve in the capacity of chief of staff. MICA-PR is owned and managed by Michael McKinney, such that McKinney for the past eight months, since shortly after Davis assumed office in March, has been the de facto chief of staff.
Only council members Rikke Van Johnson and Virginia Marquez, the two members of the council remaining strongly aligned with Davis, voted to extend MICA-PR’s contract. The city’s contract with MICA-PR, at an annual rate of $125,000, ran until December 31, with two one-year extension options.
Davis’s reliance on McKinney for guidance thus far in his tenure as mayor has created some difficulty for Davis, who has enjoyed reasonably good relations with the rest of the council otherwise.
McKinney is not an uncontroversial figure. Through MICA-PR, he was involved, along with entrepreneur Scott Beard, in a 2013 effort to recall the entirety of the San Bernardino City Council and city attorney James Penman. That effort failed to qualify recall questions against then-mayor Pat Morris, Johnson, Marquez, councilman Fred Shorett, and then-councilmen Robert Jenkins and Chas Kelley, but did get adequate valid signatures on petitions to force recall questions against councilwoman Wendy McCammack and councilman John Valdivia, as well as Penman. The committee that sponsored the recall, San Bernardino Residents for Responsible Government, founded by Beard and directed by McKinney, raised and spent over $154,000, much of it put up by Beard, on the recall. The recall question against Valdivia failed but McCammack and Penman were removed from office.
Despite being recalled in the November 2013 municipal election. McCammack placed first among ten candidates vying for mayor that year. Davis finished second. With no single candidate garnering a majority of the vote, a runoff was held. McKinney served as Davis’ political consultant during that campaign. Davis defeated McCammack in the runoff election, which was held in February.
The affable Davis, an accountant, was a political neophyte unacquainted with the rough-and-tumble of politics, holding office or the bare-knuckled nature nor the subtleties of governance. He turned to McKinney, who had been largely responsible for his successful campaign, for guidance. Originally McKinney was brought in, under the guise of MICA-PR, on a purchase order that does not require a council vote and subsequently was given the contract through December 31, which the Council supported on a 4-1 vote with 2 absences. In agreeing to the contract, the council signed on to the rather uncommon arrangement of hiring his firm in the capacity of chief of staff.
McKinney, whose affiliation with Beard is no secret, ruffled feathers from the outset. In the first several months he was in office, Davis enjoyed a honeymoon with the new council, which included newcomers Henry Nickel, Benito Barrios and Jim Mulvihill. Indeed, Davis, who leads the council but is not empowered to vote, headed a coalition that numbered Mulvihill, Shorett, Johnson and Marquez as firm and fast members on practically all issues and Nickel and Barrios on a majority of issues.
In recent months, however, informed sources tell the Sentinel, McKinney’s abrasiveness has offended more and more members of the council and, according to one of those sources, he has “run roughshod” over city manager Alan Parker. He has burned bridges with the city council members one by one, to the point that Davis’s authority has eroded and the council is exerting its own influence.
One example of the contretemps that now exists between McKinney and various city officials is his effort to keep the city contracted with Westbound Communications for public relations services. The consensus of the council and city administration was that the city should get out from underneath its existing sole-source vendor relationship with Westbound, an Orange County-based public relations firm, which employs Carrie Gilbreth to oversee its work in San Bernardino on behalf of the city. Sentiment appeared to be running in favor of a competitively-bid and analyzed contract. One of the key points in reconsidering what firm the city should be using is that a local firm headquartered in San Bernardino would have a deeper understanding of the city, the region and local and regional politics. McKinney intervened when an effort was made to hold a request for qualifications (RFQ) recruitment process for public relations services going forward. McKinney, in an effort to keep the city contract with Westbound, with its corporate offices in the city of Orange, and Gilbreth intact, substituted in a less exacting request for proposals (RFP) recruitment process for the continuation of the public relations contract. The city council demanded recision of the RFP and demanded the RFQ be issued per the council’s order and an RFQ was reissued. Responses were received by the city and city manager Parker was said to have been holding back on a staff review of the responses until McKinney’s future status with the city was made clear.
In the run-up to Monday’s vote on renewing MICA-PR/McKinney’s contract, things became testy. Beard apparently threatened some council members, Nickel among them, with an electoral opposition effort if they did not vote to keep McKinney in place as Davis’s advisor.
Fred Shorett, who was considered to be Davis’s biggest ally on the council, was the councilman leading the charge to end McKinney’s contract.
Davis has been described as something of a fish out of water when he must function within a political context without the benefit of McKinney’s guidance and talking points. The growing rift between the mayor and the council, which ironically came about because of the Davis’s close association with McKinney, foreshadows a difficult time for Davis.