(November 12)  The county board of supervisors this month augmented by $16,110 its previously approved program of providing probationers and juvenile offenders overseen by the probation department with prepaid gift cards.
Based upon a recommendation by county chief probation officer Michelle Scray Brown and presented by deputy chief probation officer Scott Frymire, the board okayed the additional expenditure in a total amount not to exceed $16,110 as a means to “maintain public safety and provide for the health and social services needs of county residents.
According to Frymire, “Each year, the probation department provides probationers and juveniles with a variety of prepaid cards as incentive and supportive devices. The use of prepaid cards allows the probation department to reward juveniles for good behavior and to assist probationers in attending mandatory meetings by supplying bus passes. The probation department also uses prepaid gift cards to assist juvenile probationers in the Independent Living Program. This program provides basic life skills, career exploration and job readiness preparation for probation youth who have been in out-of-home placement. In this program, the youth learn skills that prepare them to transition to adulthood and living on their own.”
In June, the board of supervisors approved the probation department’s request to purchase $250,865 of prepaid cards for 2014-15.  Frymire said an uptick in the number of juvenile offenders involved in the rehabilitation program has necessitated an increase in the funding. “This request for an additional $16,110 addresses immediate needs due to more participation in Independent Living Program classes and a greater than anticipated need for bus passes in the general juvenile population,” he said. “The probation department seeks approval to purchase additional prepaid gift cards during the remainder of 2014-15 from the following vendors: $600 for 120 $5 cards from Jamba; $850 for 170 $5 cards from Starbucks: $1,300 for 260 $5 cards from McDonald’s; $1,300 for 260 $5 cards from In and Out;  $550 for 110 $5 cards from Del Taco; $600 for 60 $10 cards from Walmart; $600 for 120 $5 cards from Subway; $600 for 120 $5 cards from Coldstone; $260 for 52 cards from Carl’s Jr. and $6.150 for 150 $41 monthly bus passes from OmniTrans and $1,400 for 100 $14 weekly passes from OmniTrans.

By Diane Dragotto Williams
There is an animal in the forest who is highly misunderstood and greatly feared, and that is the mountain lion. Being known for its prowess and hunting skills, the cat lives a solitary life and is a trophy game animal in many states.  Yet mystery surrounds the life and nature of this marvelous creature.  Powerful enough to take down its prey in short order, this feline is a formidable predator.  However, in our urban environment, it struggles to stay alive.
The cougar (Puma concolor), also known as the puma, mountain lion, panther, or catamount, is a large cat of the family Felidae native to the Americas and the greatest of any large wild terrestrial mammal in the Western Hemisphere.  Mountain lion males can weigh up to 220 lbs and females can weigh up to 140 lbs. Adult cougars stand about 24 to 35 in tall at the shoulders. Adult males are around 8 ft long nose-to-tail and females average 7 ft.  Of this length, about 25 to 37 inches, is the length of the tail. Cougars use their long tails for balance, maneuvering rocky outcroppings and mountains, as well as, warmth for a cold winter’s night in high altitudes.
Tawny in color, and sleek of body, this feline is easily recognized in the wild.  Its powerful forequarters, neck, and jaw serve to grasp and hold large prey. It has five retractable claws on its forepaws four on its hind paws. The larger front feet and claws are designed to clutch prey.  Cougars are well known for their screams but sometimes they hiss, growl, purr, as well as chirp and whistle.
An excellent stalk-and-ambush predator, the cougar pursues a wide variety of prey. It stalks through brush and trees, across ledges, or other covered spots, before delivering a powerful leap onto the back of its prey and a suffocating neck bite. The cougar is capable of breaking the neck of some of its smaller prey with a strong bite and momentum bearing the animal to the ground.  It’s not unusual for a cougar to bury its kill, and return to feed on it over a number of days.  Large prey can last a cougar every one or two weeks. However, during the raising of young, kills every three days are normal.
Female cougars are fiercely protective of their kittens, and have been seen to successfully fight off animals as large as American black bears in their defense. Males are not a part of the process of rearing the young and are chased away soon after courtship. Litters between one and six cubs are denned in caves or rock alcoves. Young lions are expected to be on their own by the second year.
California prey includes deer and bighorn sheep, as well as cattle, horses and sheep. This cat prefers habitats with dense underbrush and rocky areas for stalking, but can also live in open areas. The cougar is territorial and survives at low population densities. Individual territory sizes depend on terrain, vegetation, and abundance of prey. Life expectancy can range from 8 to 13 years in the wild. However, in areas where large prey like deer and big horn sheep are scarce, many yearlings cannot survive, starving to death. It is not unusual for sanctuaries like Wildhaven Ranch to receive spottings of young lions found in pools in the desert drinking water and hoping to capture prey at the “watering hole”.  We have great compassion for these incredible creatures of the wild. We promote the understanding that these cats are not dangerous to man, unless confronted, or if the human runs or “looks like” prey on the run. Reclusive and avoiding people, fatal attacks on humans are rare, and are a gift of beauty!
Contact Wildhaven Ranch for wildlife tours at (909)337-7389 or visit their website at www.wildhavenranch.org.

By clicking on the portal below, you can download a PDF of the November 14 edition of the San Bernardino County Sentinel.

Sentinel 11-14-14

(November 14)   By Mark Gutglueck
District Attorney Mike Ramos is maneuvering to create a third assistant district attorney  position in his department, into which he intends to promote his live-in mistress, multiple sources within the district attorney’s office have told the Sentinel.
Ramos’s move, coming just after last week’s 2014 General Election, and six months after Ramos was himself reelected to a fourth term as the county’s top prosecutor in the June primary election, has shocked and angered a wide cross section of the professionals employed by the office he heads. While several of those prosecutors expressed themselves in strong terms while commenting about the situation off the record, none was willing to speak for attribution, given the absolute authority the district attorney has in operating his office.
Ramos’ effort to promote Mary Ashley to the assistant district attorney’s post has been taken as a particular insult to five of the department’s most seasoned and advanced prosecutors, each of whom has considerably more courtroom and supervisory experience than Ashley.
One venerable prosecutor with 37 years in the office, John Kochis, who was widely viewed by his colleagues to be the most logical candidate for promotion to an open assistant district attorney’s position were such a position to emerge, put in for retirement when word of Ashley’s pending ascendency shot through the office two weeks ago. His last day with the department is today.
Members of the prosecutor’s office said Ashley, who was hired as a deputy prosecutor under former district attorney Dennis Stout in 1998, did reasonably competent work in prosecuting sexual crimes against children as well as crimes involving violence against women and children after she was assigned to head the Victorville office of the district attorney’s newly-formed Family Violence Unit in 2004. She remained in that capacity until 2007.
At that time, Ashley bounded, at Ramos’s apparent direction, over more than two dozen of her colleagues with greater and more varied prosecutorial experience when she was promoted to supervising deputy district attorney overseeing selected prosecutions in the San Bernardino,  Victorville and Joshua Tree offices.
Members of the office report that at that stage Ashley was believed to have been involved in a casual but non-exclusive physical relationship with Ramos, who since he had become district attorney in 2003, had extramarital affairs with no fewer than eight of his department’s employees. Adverse publicity about Ramos’s dalliances had proven problematic for Ramos as well as the county, which in 2009 paid the Santa Monica-based legal firm Curiale Hirschfield Kraemer $140,000 to conduct an investigation into the circumstances pertaining to just one of those, a tryst with former district attorney’s office evidence technician Cheryl Ristow.
Accordingly, Ramos attempted to be discrete about his relationship with Ashley as it was intensifying in the late 2011/early 2012 time frame. As it turned out however, the affair was exposed when Ashley sent a cellular phone text message to another member of the office, deputy district attorney Suzanne Patton, telling her that Ramos was at her residence. Word of Ramos’s liaison with Ashley leaked out from there, spreading to numerous other members of the district attorney’s office, as well as among several judges.
By Summer 2012, office members report, the relationship between Ramos and Ashley had progressed to the point that Ramos was cohabiting with Ashley and he filed for divorce from his wife of nearly three decades. Simultaneously, Ramos was seeking to groom Ashley for further advancement, giving her the prestigious assignment of carrying out the office’s  evaluations of officer involved shootings.
Simultaneously,  Dennis Christy, who had long served as assistant district attorney, was moving toward retirement.  Ramos stood by an earlier commitment that had been made to promote Gary Roth, who had held a wealth of assignments throughout the office and was at that time serving in Victorville as the chief deputy district attorney in the county’s desert division, to assistant district attorney. In turn, it was widely expected throughout the office that supervising deputy district attorney Richard Young, who was then overseeing the Fontana prosecutor’s division, would be tapped to succeed Roth. Young for the previous half decade had been entrusted with several top-tier and high profile prosecutorial assignments, including murder and manslaughter cases, the review of officer involved shootings and delicate matters such as those involving trafficking in child pornography and accusations that a teacher had employed sexual battery perpetrated by some of his students against other students as a classroom disciplinary tool. Moreover, Young had cultivated what appeared to be a strong professional relationship with Ramos by supporting him politically in years past and endorsing other politicians with whom Ramos was aligned.
On July 18, 2012 however, whatever expectations Young had of immediate promotion were dashed when Ramos, in an interoffice memo to all district attorney’s staff, announced that Ashley was being promoted to the position of chief deputy district attorney, effective September 6, 2012.
“Mary will be replacing Gary Roth as the chief deputy district attorney in the desert division,” the memo stated.
Members of the district attorney’s office drew an immediate connection between Ashley’s promotion and her relationship with Ramos.  Resentment over her advancement in the office has simmered since, due to the perception that Ramos has created a standard under which competence, dedication, expertise and merit are secondary criteria to maintaining a personal relationship with him. Indications that resentment is boiling over emerged late last week as members of the office began to lash out at their boss In private conversations, precipitated by the announcement of Kochis’s abrupt decision to retire.
While many prosecutors in the course of their conversations with the Sentinel opined that Kochis was the currently employed prosecutor most deserving of being elevated to assistant district attorney, more than twenty other prosecutors, lead prosecutors, supervising prosecutors and chief deputy prosecutors with the office were identified as having prosecutorial, leadership, managerial and organizational talent that exceeded that of Ashley, which rendered them better suited than her to assume the newly created assistant district attorney post. Those mentioned in this regard were: Michael Abney, Bruce Brown, Rob Brown, Terry Brown, Bob Bulloch, Lewis Cope, Michelle Daly, Gary Fagan, Charles Feibush, Joseph Gaetano, Clark Hansen III, Grover Merritt, Kathy Norman, Maureen O’Connell, Doug Poston, James Secord, Reza Sadeghi, Kevin Smith, Denise Trager-Dvorak, Charles Umeda, Ron Webster, Simon Umschied and Richard Young.
Resentment over Ramos’s choice of Ashley is particularly keen among those members of the office assigned to the courthouses in Victorville and Joshua Tree. This is primarily because, her colleagues say, while working in those divisions, Ashley, who was then married to another prosecutor in the office, former deputy district attorney Alex Martinez, initiated an affair with J. David Mazurek, who was formerly a deputy district attorney before he was elevated to a Superior Court judgeship in 2006.  Ultimately, the affair ended badly, with Mazurek divorcing his wife and Ashley’s marriage to Martinez breaking up. Martinez was elevated to the bench in 2010. The relationship between Mazurek and Ashley proved somewhat nettlesome for the court when Ashley was overseeing a district attorney’s prosecution unit in Joshua Tree, where Mazurek sat as a judge, requiring the expurgating intervention of then-assistant presiding judge Michael Welch.  Among some of her colleagues, particularly woman, Ashley was perceived as a climber who was not above utilizing her sexuality to ingratiate herself with the men in the office or the legal community to advance professionally.
Judge Martinez told the Sentinel, “I will have no comment on issues related to the district attorney’s office.”
Bailiffs at the San Bernardino Justice Center, where Judge Mazurek is now assigned, prevented the Sentinel from accessing him for an interview.
That Ashley is now consolidating her position through an intimate relationship with her boss has damaged the morale and esprit de corps of the district attorney’s office. Many office members were dumbfounded by the memo Ramos issued in which he announced his planned reorganization of the office, including creating the third assistant district attorney’s position to augment current assistant district attorneys Mike Fermin and Gary Roth, and his intention of inserting Ashley into the new post. Those that contacted the Sentinel to alert it to Ramos’s move, as well as members of the office contacted by the Sentinel subsequently, while expressing consternation and dismay privately, refused to speak for the record over concern that voicing such pointed criticism of Ramos and the woman he is appointing to a senior position in the office would harm them professionally.
A recently retired deputy district attorney, Sharon Caldwell, was not so reticent. She spoke openly about the damage Ramos had wreaked upon the office by his reported sexual liaisons, his earlier promotion of Ashley and his latest move to elevate her to assistant district attorney.
“There is no denying his reported rampant womanizing has impacted the office,” Caldwell said. “There are many qualified women who have been working there for years and have impeccable credentials who will not put their names in for promotion because they don’t want to be perceived as having advanced because they were sleeping with Mike Ramos. This is horrific cronyism. As district attorney, he is notorious for promoting people who are not qualified. The people of San Bernardino County deserve much better.”
Ashley was promoted well beyond her level of competence when she was made chief deputy district attorney, Caldwell said.
“She is an embarrassment,” Caldwell said. “She has been an absentee chief deputy. Her idea of leading is to bring cookies and cupcakes for the people in the office. She skips meetings, which is unheard of in an organization like the prosecutor’s office. She is not dealing with the job.”
The most recent decision to promote Ashley was “colossally stupid,” Caldwell said, given her demonstrated lack of judgment and disregard for the reputation and wellbeing of the office.  “An example of what I base my judgment of her lack of judgment on was when she was reported to have a dating relationship with Judge Mazurek while supervising prosecutors appearing in his courtroom while they were both in Morongo [i.e., working at the Joshua Tree Courthouse].  They had this relationship while she was supervising the prosecutors who were coming before him every day.  We are talking about hundreds of cases during that period. She and he had the obligation to inform the parties who were being prosecuted that she and the judge were in a dating relationship. To my knowledge, that disclosure was never made. I don’t know what would happen if counsel for those defendants who were convicted took that up. It potentially could compromise hundreds of cases. It is hard to believe that Mike Ramos did not know about this. He’s promoting her anyway.”
The vast majority of the office’s employees disapprove of many aspects of  Ramos’s comportment and are disturbed by his unabashed promotion of his girlfriend, Caldwell said.  “Most everyone knows about them [i.e., Ramos and Ashley],” Caldwell said. “I don’t know anyone in the office who likes it. But no one is going to say anything publicly. People will not stand up to him just to be shipped to Timbuktu and given terrible assignments. He’s a vindictive tyrant.”
She continued, “Ramos has done one outrageous thing after another and nothing has blown up in his face. No one sued him successfully. He just gets bolder and bolder. He thinks he’s bullet-proof. I truly believe that he doesn’t know how bad his decisions are.  The entire DA’s office has devolved under his leadership and he doesn’t care.”
A primary check on Ramos is the board of supervisors, which could closely examine his request to determine if adding a third assistant district attorney position to his staff is truly justified and then inquiring about the qualifications of the individual Ramos intends to tap to fill it, and asking about the relative qualifications of any alternative candidates for the position before agreeing to provide him with the funding to carry it through.
“The Board of Supervisors does not buck Ramos that I have ever seen” Caldwell said. “They’re unwilling to question him.  I believe that they’re afraid that if they do, he might do something to them.  He can file charges against people and let other people do the same conduct and not file.  No one wants Ramos to do to them what he did to [Neil] Derry.”
Former supervisor Neil Derry was criminally charged after district attorney’s office investigators, who were interrogating former supervisor/former county assessor Bill Postmus, obtained a statement from him that he had laundered a campaign contribution from Highland developer Arnold Stubblefield to Derry  through Postmus’s political action committee. Though he was initially charged with two felonies in that case, Derry stuck a plea bargain with prosecutors in which he was convicted of a misdemeanor campaign reporting violation. That conviction, which was widely trumpeted by his opponent, was a key factor in Derry’s defeat in his run for reelection.
Despite her low estimation of Ramos’s ethics and managerial ability, Caldwell said he was highly skilled in misleading the public.
“Ramos filed for divorce some time ago and was thereafter seen publicly with Mary Ashley,” Caldwell said. “I believe when Ramos felt that he would draw at least one opponent in his bid for re-election, he abandoned the divorce proceeding so that he could sell to the voters that he is a devoted family man married for decades.  I told people then that should he win re-election, he would dump his wife and resume his relationship with Mary Ashley.  He got reelected and now he’s refiled for divorce and he’s reported to have rekindled his relationship with Mary. He fooled the voters again.”
David Wert, the spokesman for the board of supervisors, told the Sentinel, “The district attorney has notified the board of supervisors that he plans to reorganize his department  in response to court closures and his proposal would come to the board perhaps as soon as November 18.”
The reorganization is scheduled to be done very quietly as part of an item on the agenda that does not reference the district attorney’s office but rather several of the county’s park and recreation districts, county service areas, the county flood control district, the county industrial development authority, its joint emergency medical agency, its economic and community development corporations, its in-home supportive services agency and the county fire protection district. In one of the attachments to this item, the first quarter budget report, buried on page 59 under the heading “County Positions Action” is notation that a chief deputy district attorney position – the one currently held by Kochis – is to be deleted and that an assistant district attorney position is to be added. The position is to pay $192,150 in salary.  Also shown is that the position will represent a total annual cost to the county of $315,039, which means that Ashley will receive $122,889 in benefits annually in addition to her salary.
The Sentinel made inquiries with the board members to ascertain what information they had been provided with regard to Ramos’s proposed reorganization, including his intention to appoint Ashley to the newly created assistant district attorney’s position.
Don Holland, one of First District supervisor Robert Lovingood’s field representatives, told the Sentinel Lovingood’s office would have no comment on Ramos’s proposal at this time.
Scott Vanhorne, the communications director for Second District Supervisor and Board Chairwoman Janice Rutherford said on November 12 that it was his understanding that Ramos had provided a justification for the reorganization “based upon caseload increases because of the court realignment.”
As to whom Ramos would designate to fill the role of the newly created assistant district attorney, Vanhorne said, “We haven’t got that information. District Attorney is an independently elected office. What he does within his office with his staff is in his realm. The board cannot tell him what staff to put in what positions.”
The board would be able to exercise some discretion with regard to determining whether the new position should be funded, irrespective of who fills it, Vanhorne said. “When it comes to budget requests for additional funding for staff, whether it be the sheriff, the DA, the assessor or treasurer, the board takes a look at it to see whether it wants to approve additional monies for staffing.”
Vanhorne said that Rutherford and the other supervisors have “probably spoken to the district attorney about this. I do know that (assistant district attorney) Mike Fermin has spoken with district staff about the new staffing needs the DA has.”
Precisely how the reorganization Ramos is proposing shapes up is not known to the board at this point, Vanhorne said.
“No one has seen what is going before the board,” he said.
There are two legal considerations why Ramos’s promotion of Ashley might be ill-advised and legally problematic.
One of those is the legal precedent set in the case Edna Miller et al v. Department of Corrections, which resulted in a precedent setting ruling by the California Supreme Court relating to favoritism to a governmental employee based on a relationship with her boss.
In Miller v. Department of Corrections, two former employees of the Valley State Prison for Women, Edna Miller and Frances Mackey, claimed that the warden of the prison at which they were employed accorded unwarranted favorable treatment to numerous female employees with whom the warden was having sexual affairs and that such conduct constituted sexual harassment in violation of the California Fair Employment and Housing Act.  The California Supreme Court ruled that employees passed over as Miller and Mackey were had grounds to sue the state and the Department of Corrections for both income lost and punitive damages.
The other legal consideration is Government Code Section 1090, which reads: “Members of the Legislature, state, county, district, judicial district, and city officers or employees shall not be financially interested in any contract made by them in their official capacity, or by any body or board of which they are members. Nor shall state, county, district, judicial district, and city officers or employees be purchasers at any sale or vendors at any purchase made by them in their official capacity.”
To the extent that Ramos and Ashley have created a household together and have commingled their finances, any increase made to Ashley’s pay upon a recommendation or action by Ramos in his elected and official capacity would appear to run afoul of Government Code Section 1090.
District attorney’s office spokesman Christopher Lee did not respond to telephonic and written requests from the Sentinel for input for this article and requested interviews with Ramos and Ashley were not granted.

(November 13)  A development agreement for a 3,264-bed prison that will handle the overflow inmate population in Los Angeles County’s jails will come before the Adelanto City Council for a vote on November 19.
Orange County developer Buck Johns and Corrections Corporation of America Founder Doctor Crants of Nashville, Tennessee in May presented the plan to alleviate crowding in Los Angeles County’s detention facilities to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Johns and Crants told the board the project would save Los Angeles County $674 million in capital costs and could be in place to receive inmates in two years.
Johns and Crants are asking Los Angeles County for no capital contributions toward the project, but want a commitment from the county that it will house its overflow inmates there for 20 years at a cost of $88 per inmate per day, or roughly $104 million per year.
The project proposal is the marriage of two needs on either side of the Los Angeles/San Bernardino County line.
Los Angeles County, the largest county population-wise in California, has been hit particularly hard by the mandates in Assembly Bill 109, legislation aimed at closing California’s so-called “revolving door” of low-level inmates cycling in and out of state prisons. Assembly Bill 109 was drafted in an effort to comply with a U.S. Supreme Court order to reduce the number of inmates in the state’s 33 prisons to 137.5 percent of original design capacity. The law sent inmates deemed low risk – those who were convicted of non-violent offenses – back to the county where they were convicted for incarceration.
Adelanto, which is San Bernardino County’s sixth smallest city population-wise at 31,765 residents, is also one of its most cash-strapped municipalities, with little in the way of sales tax revenue-generating commercial development. Last year the city council declared it was in a state of fiscal emergency, but its residents have refused to consent to impose on themselves a tax that city officials say is needed to stave off bankruptcy.
Johns and Crants are proposing that the $332 million cost of constructing the jail, which is to be located on 160 acres on Adelanto’s eastern boundary next to the existing federal correctional facility in Victorville, be defrayed with bonds issued by a public finance authority or other agency. The city of Adelanto would own it. Once operating, Johns and Crants say, it would generate enough revenue to debt service the bonds and would provide the city with water and sewer connection fees of  $11,317,482, development impact fees of $3,713,750, public schools impact fees $215,220, and engineering department fees of $91,046. In addition, Johns and Crants, maintain, the project would involve off-site infrastructure installation expenditures of $5,734,000 that would be of tremendous future benefit to the city and would create an estimated 3,769 construction jobs and an estimated 1.250 permanent jobs once the facility is in place.
Thus, Johns and Crants have touted the project as one that will not require the city to put up any funding toward the project, nor require that it put its credit on the line for the project to be completed.
There was something of a Catch-22 that held up progress toward the closing of a deal to get the project under way during the summer. The city of Adelanto wanted Los Angeles County to make a two decade-long commitment to housing its inmates at the facility before proceeding. Los Angeles County wanted Adelanto to commit to building, owning and running the jail before it gave its commitment.
Johns and Crants turned a corner on resolving that stalemate when the Adelanto Planning Commission on November 4 endorsed the project and gave its recommendation to the city council that it approve the development agreement.  The council is now set to consider it on November 19.
While the council’s approval appears likely, a new challenge to the project has emerged in the form of opposition by activist Victoria Mena, a former Adelanto resident and current public administration graduate student at the University of Washington. Mena, in conjunction with a group calling itself Defund Detention, maintains that California residents in general are opposed to the construction of more jails and are against the proliferation of privately-run detention facilities and that Adelanto residents want no more jails, prisons or detention facilities built in their community, which already is host to the county sheriff’s department’s High Desert Detention Center. She asserts that California residents, in passing Proposition 47, which is aimed at reducing property and drug crimes from a felony to a misdemeanor in order to reduce jail crowding. have initiated a trend against detention facility construction.
Moreover, Mena has seized upon the consideration that on the very night the planning commission made its recommendation to the city council, three of those council members – Mayor Kari Thomas, councilmen Steve Baisden and Charles Valvo – lost their bids for reelection in this year’s November 4 municipal election and will be leaving office as a consequence in December. She wants the decision on the jail postponed until the three new city council members are seated. She contends the newly composed council will not approve the development proposal.
Mena is working with the Defund Detention group to hold rallies and otherwise lobby the council to hold off on the November 19 vote, which has already been placed on the council agenda by city staff. She maintains the new council will reflect resident sentiment against the jail facility, based in large measure on assertions that warehousing large numbers of criminals in the community will compromise public safety.
Johns this week told the Sentinel that the project as planned will have safeguards built into it to ensure the safety and security of the community. Documentation Johns provided showed that by agreement with Los Angeles County only inmates serving time for “non-violent, non-serious, non-sexual crimes” will be housed in Adelanto and furthermore “no inmate with a prior conviction for a serious or violent crime” will be imprisoned there.
Johns told the Sentinel the planning commission had already looked at the safety issues. “They did not want the Los Angeles County inmates  who will be held there released into San Bernardino County. The agreement covers that. Once their sentence is served and their time is done, they will be put on a bus and taken back to Los Angeles and will be released from the L.A. Men’s Central Jail.  We have satisfied the responsible authorities on that question. We got a unanimous vote of approval from the planning commission.”
Johns said he and Crants have made substantial progress toward getting the project approved but that they are not there yet.  “Los Angeles County is not going to take any substantive action until we get the approval to build,” Johns said.
Johns said he is relatively confident the city council will see the benefit of approving the project.  “By the terms and conditions of approval, this will spin off approximately $1.2 million per year to the city of Adelanto and it will create 5,000 construction and permanent jobs,” he said.
Johns said he is aware of Mena and Defund Detention.
“I know a little about them and what they are saying but I don’t know who they are,” he said. He had not met Mena, Johns said. “I know some of the local people have talked to her. They know who she is. She is said to be an activist and a community organizer.  She needs to make her case with the city council. I am going to make our case. I think we will win because this project will bring the city of Adelanto two of the things it desperately needs, revenue and employment,” Johns said.

(November 14)  The Book of Matthew says that “No man can serve two masters.” The Book of Mark counsels “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is God’s.” The lawmakers and the lawgivers say that the law should be obeyed, no matter what. But what is one to do when two different levels of government give two commands which contradict one another, such that only one can be obeyed?  On Monday, at 10:30 a.m. at Rancho Cucamonga’s West Valley Courthouse in Division R-9, Judge Jon Ferguson will oversee an attempt to answer that question.
Coming before Ferguson is Fernand Bogman, who has been charged criminally under the Upland Municipal Code with letting his lawn die.  Bogman will not come to court armed with an argument that he did not do as he is charged. He acknowledges his lawn has turned brown.
Nevertheless, he insists he is, given the totality of the circumstance, innocent and acting out of principle and in compliance with the state of California’s dictates. Moreover, Bogman asserts, when he attempted to comply with the city of Upland’s demands, City Hall evaded and ultimately would not answer his well-intentioned inquiries that would have allowed him to make compliance.
“My yard is well maintained,” Bogman said. “Starting in August of 2012, I stopped watering my lawn. California was in the middle of a drought. I continued to water my trees and plants and shrubs. Upland is located in a desert. Grass is not a native plant in Southern California. Growing grass here is fine if there is sufficient water. But ethically, morally and legally, to pour buckets and buckets of water on grass is wrong.”
In 2013, the city notified Bogman that he was out of compliance with the city code and would need to “abate” the situation. Initially he was told that he needed to resume watering his yard. But Bogman learned on his own that he did not necessarily have to have grass as a component of his yard’s landscaping and he began looking into replacing it with drought-resistant plants and vegetation that are native to California. He approached Jeff Zwack, Upland’s director of community development, to ascertain which plants the city would deem acceptable for domestic landscaping.
“I asked him to give me a definition of drought tolerant landscaping that would be acceptable to them,” Bogman said. “He said I should come up with something and they would let me know if it was acceptable. The city doesn’t know how to define drought tolerant landscaping. If the city doesn’t know what is acceptable to them, how do they expect us to know?”
The city’s failure in this regard and its insistence on a formula of more watering exacerbated the problem, Bogman said. “It is up to the city to come up with the proper code to implement their policy, which they are not doing,” he said. “All of the city’s officials do not accept my present landscaping. Some say they will accept the drought tolerant landscaping but the others will not let me put it in. Drought tolerant landscaping using native California plants requires that they develop a root system. You must give them some water and the root system will grow, but if you give them too much water the root system will not grow properly. The idea is to conserve water and the city people are telling me to use more water.”
Bogman said the city’s failure to understand this principle is on display on several city-owned properties, including at the Civic Center containing City Hall and the Upland Library. “Go to City Hall,” Bogman said. “Look at other city properties . There is bare ground there. There is no landscaping. So the city is in violation of its own rules.”
The city initiated proceedings against Bogman under its administrative citation authority in August 2013. The matter has now proceeded to court. Technically, the city of Upland and its prosecutor, Dan Peelman, have charged Bogman with  a violation of Upland Municipal Code Section  M8.12.020(D), maintaining nuisance landscaping. Peelman has also charged Bogman with a violation of Upland Municipal Code Section  M12.24.130, maintaining a nuisance parkway. In Upland, parkways are owned by the city but the municipal code requires that the most proximate landowner maintain them.
With regard to the second charge, Bogman maintains that he actually watered and attempted to save the tree in question, which is located on city property in front of the sidewalk in front of his house, but that some unknown condition beyond his control such as blight had infested it. He contends it was the city which neglected its own tree that caused it to expire. He said he believes it is the city’s responsibility to remove it and replace it, if replacement is deemed appropriate.
Bogman said, “The governor has declared a state emergency because of the drought, which is in its third year. We are not allowed to waste water, but the city requires us to spray enough water on the ground to maintain a green lawn. There is a contradiction there. What is more important, the welfare of the state as a whole or keeping up appearances? Don’t forget, we live here in a desert area. The Inland Empire is a desert that has been reclaimed. We can have grass here and people obviously do, but only by using massive amounts of water. In a drought, continuing to do that is immoral, in my opinion. I consider myself a good citizen. I consider myself a responsible citizen. The city of Upland is saying I am a bad citizen. I will go to court on Monday and let 12 other citizens of the state of California decide.”
Councilman Glenn Bozar said he questioned “why the city is handling this in this way. Look at what the governor [Jerry Brown]  did with his mansion up in Sacramento. He let his lawn go brown. There were pictures of it in newspapers all over the state. Taking this guy [Bogman] to court seems to me a peculiar way of doing this.”
Mayor Ray Musser told the Sentinel, “The problem is that this has gone on for months and months and there has been no cooperation. Had he [Bogman] just cooperated and been reasonable, there would not have been a problem.”
Musser acknowledged that some of the landscaping at the Upland Civic Center had been neglected.
“The city doesn’t have anything in the budget to improve our landscaping there at this time,” Musser said, in acknowledging the city is not in compliance with its own code. “What we hope to do is get together with a church group who will adopt that and when they come up with something that is acceptable, we will have that relandscaped at no cost to the city.”
With regard to drought resistant landscaping, Musser said, “When I first saw it, I didn’t like it. But now that I’ve seen more of it, it’s okay. It doesn’t look as nice as grass, which I prefer, but drought friendly plants are starting to grow on me, especially with how precious water is.”
Musser said he had personally gone to Bogman’s home with a city staff member to survey it. “The way he is keeping his plants and shrubs green  as best as he can looks nice, but his lawn is completely dead,” Musser said. “If he is putting in some water saving method, let’s finish it out is all we are saying.”

(November 12)  Congressman Paul Cook, who had previously gone on record as opposing the Cadiz Water Project, in September wrote a letter to Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, recommending against any further environmental review of the project.
Cook’s action angered and disappointed environmentalists who had previously endorsed him and his continued tenure in office.
Known by the abbreviated name Cadiz Water Project, the Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery, and Storage Project  is a proposal by proponent Los Angeles-based Cadiz, Inc.  to extract an average of 50,000 acre-feet of water from the East Mojave Desert annually and convey it via pipeline to Orange and Los Angeles counties for use there.
The Santa Ana Margarita Water District in Orange County, which lies 217 miles from the project area and which has contracted with Cadiz, Inc. to purchase one-fifth of the desert water, assumed lead agency status with regard to approval of the project and its environmental certification, including acceptance of the environmental impact report for the undertaking.  Santa Margarita gave approval to the plan in July 2012. The county of San Bernardino, which contemplated challenging Santa Ana Margarita’s role overseeing the project, ultimately laid aside its authority as lead agency and in October 2012 accepted a water use monitoring plan for the project which gave Cadiz, Inc. procedural clearance to move forward with the project.
A series of nine environmental suits against the project ensued, including six that were remanded to Orange County Superior Court to be heard jointly. Environmentalists and residents of the East Mojave enlisted Cook’s support in opposing the project. As the member of Congress representing the East Mojave, Cook in June 2013 called for a federal review of the undertaking.
In a letter dated June 12, 2013 to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, Cook stated, “I am writing to request a reevaluation of the impact the Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery, and Storage Project will have on my constituents in the 8th District of California. The Cadiz Project, as it currently stands, is likely to impact San Bernardino County’s water resources, harming ranchers, rural communities, East Mojave landowners, and the National Chloride Company of America’s brine mining operation on Bristol Dry Lake. Moreover, the aggressive project pumping could harm the springs of the Mojave National Preserve and regional air quality, while exporting precious water resources out of San Bernardino County to ratepayers in Los Angeles and Orange counties.”
Cook’s 2013 letter continued, “In order to ensure this project won’t adversely affect my district, I respectfully request the Cadiz Project be subject to a National Environmental Policy Act review.  I request that the United States Geologic Survey conduct an updated analysis of the hydrologic features of the project area and that any new or revised Cadiz Project proposals adhere to the principle of sustainable yield, meaning no more water would be pumped out of the aquifer than would be replaced through natural recharge as determined by the United States Geologic Survey. This is intended to protect sustainable water supplies for East Mojave communities and businesses.”
Cook further wrote, “Currently, no federal environmental reviews or approvals have been conducted, despite numerous requests from the Bureau of Land Management that Cadiz Inc. supply them with specific project information relating to the construction of a 43-mile water conveyance pipeline along the Arizona and California Railroad right-of-way.” Cook noted,  “Professional independent reviews have called into question the 32,500 acre-feet per year recharge rate Cadiz Inc. claims will naturally occur. These independent scientists concluded that the actual recharge rate is between 2,000 and 10,000 acre feet per year. There are serious doubts about the validity of the previous environmental studies, specifically the draft environmental impact statement“ for the project. Cook concluded, “This project must be examined thoroughly before it moves forward.”
Two months ago,  15 months after writing that letter, Cook abruptly shifted course.
“Shortly after taking office last year, I wrote to you about the proposed Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project (“project”), which would be located in California’s Eastern Mojave Desert,” Cook wrote Jewell in a letter dated September 16, 2014. “The project will provide an additional 50,000 acre feet of water per year to the state’s dwindling water supply. It is important to me that my constituents and the land itself are protected from significant environmental harm. For that reason, I asked in my previous letter that a federal environmental review be undertaken for the project. Further developments have changed the dynamics surrounding the project, calling into question the need for federal environmental review and signaling a need to allow the project to move forward.
“Recently,” the letter continues, “the Orange County Superior Court denied all six petitions challenging the project’s environmental assessment and upheld the actions of the Santa Margarita Water District and the county of San Bernardino in approving the project.”
“Furthermore,” Cook’s September letter continues, “San Bernardino County suffers from unemployment that far exceeds the national average. The project is expected to employ 1,500 people during every year of construction. Indeed, I have received assurances that 80 percent of the project’s capital cost will be spent in San Bernardino County, and 50 percent of jobs have been dedicated to residents of San Bernardino County, including 10 percent for military veterans.”
Cook’s letter continues, “Project plans specify that San Bernardino County will regulate the extraction of groundwater, and 20 percent of the project water is reserved for county water providers for the next 50 years. Perhaps most importantly, I have reviewed a study of the hydrology in the area; I believe the project to be sustainable in terms of water recharge rates and in avoiding adverse effects on top soil.”
The letter continues, “The project construction is expected to generate close to $1 billion in economic activity and, over the long-term, local governments will receive $6 million per year in new property tax revenues, including $600,000 annually added to the budget of the Needles Unified School District.“
Cook’s letter concludes, “With the court approvals in mind and with so many jobs at stake, I believe further investigation into environmental impacts to be unnecessary. However, as the project moves forward, I will continue to monitor it to ensure that no harm is done to the local environment or water supplies.”
Cook’s letter was written on September 16 while he was engaged in an election campaign against Democratic challenger Bob Conaway. It was not released publicly until November 6, when Cadiz, Inc. did so in conjunction with its strategy to promote the project and stave off further legal challenges, including appeals of the cases in which it prevailed on in Orange County Superior Court.
Ruth Musser Lopez, one of the environmentalists who brought suit against Cadiz, Inc, the Santa Margarita Water District and the county of San Bernardino over the approval of the project in 2012 who was also an unsuccessful candidate for California State Senate in Senate District 16, which encompasses the East Mojave, was highly critical of Cook’s most recent letter.
She said Cook, a Republican, had betrayed the voters he represents by seeking to shut down further environmental review of the project. Musser Lopez, a syndicated columnist whose work has appeared in the Sentinel, said environmental review of the project has been inadequate. She suggested Cook had engaged in underhanded action by withholding the September letter to Jewell while the election was still pending.

(November 10)  The San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office late last week took action on sheriff’s department investigators’ conclusion that it was a business associate who murdered Joseph McStay, his wife and the couple’s two children before burying them in the desert near Apple Valley.
The McStay case baffled investigators in San Diego County, where the McStays lived in a home in Fallbrook until they mysteriously disappeared on February 4, 2010. Investigators said the family appeared to have left their home in northern San Diego County abruptly, leaving food to spoil on the kitchen counter and abandoning the family dogs.
The family’s SUV was found less than a week later near the Mexican border in San Ysidro.  A grainy surveillance video from around the time the family went missing showed a family believed to be the McStays, consisting of two parents and two small children, walking into Mexico. It was assumed on that basis that Joseph McStay had willingly taken refuge in Mexico for some unknown but widely speculated upon reason, taking his family with him.
Theories abounded as to what the rationale for the family’s exodus from their country was. Joseph McStay owned a business that designed decorative fountains, artificial waterfalls and birdbaths, which utilized some materials imported from Mexico. One rumor held that Joseph McStay’s business was a front for a drug cartel and that the McStays were seeking refuge in Mexico, either from authorities or a rival drug importation organization. San Diego detectives also focused on McStay’s ostensibly legitimate business operation and anything that might be amiss in this regard. Contacted and interrogated relatively early on in that process was Charles “Chase” Ray Merritt, who had manufactured, fabricated, assembled and installed Joseph McStay’s designed products. That trail appeared to be a dead end and investigators went on to other leads, including hundreds of phoned-in tips.
In April 2013, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department announced they were transferring the McStay family case to the FBI.
The case took a startling twist when on November 11, 2013, an off-road motorcyclist spotted what appeared to be human remains. When deputies from the Victorville sheriff’s station were dispatched to the remote desert area near Quarry Road and Interstate 15 and north of Stoddard Wells Road they encountered what ultimately proved to be the bodies of all four members of the McStay family, which had apparently been interred in hastily dug shallow graves.
Just a little less than a year after that grisly discovery, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department and the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office jointly announced that on November 5, 2014,  Merritt, 57,  had been arrested on suspicion of killing Joseph McStay, 40, his wife Summer, 43, and their two young boys Gianni, 4, and Joseph Jr., 3 in February 2010. Merritt, who was at that time a resident of Homeland in Riverside County, was arrested “without incident,” officials said, in Chatsworth in Los Angeles County.
An investigative team from the sheriff’s office, led by captain Leland Bolt and sergeant Chris Fisher and working in conjunction with the FBI and in communication with San Diego County authorities, conducted over 200 interviews and interrogations and obtained and served 60 search warrants in conjunction with the case.
There was a slight variance in the statements of the sheriff’s investigators and the district attorney’s office with regard to the nature of the evidence against Merritt. The sheriff’s department indicated it was the totality of evidence implicating Merritt rather than a single “smoking gun” that led to his arrest. The district attorney’s office, however, which charged Merritt with four counts of murder with a special circumstance of multiple murder on November 7, intimated that there was direct forensic evidence linking Merritt to the scene where the McStays were buried that would be presented at trial.
Sheriff John McMahon said, “There is no information to suggest there were any other suspects involved in this crime. Chase Merritt was a business associate of Joseph McStay. The cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma and based on the entire investigation and the evidence obtained, investigators believe the murders occurred at their residence in Fallbrook. Investigators are not disclosing the motive for the murders at this point.”
Investigators now believe the family videoed crossing the border into Mexico at San Ysidro in February 2010 was not the McStays. Neither investigators nor the district attorney’s office offered an explanation on how it was that the McStay family vehicle came to be parked near the border.
Merritt had a connection with the Victor Valley, where the bodies of the family members were found. In his youth his family lived in Hesperia and he attended Apple Valley High School in 1972, 1973 and 1974. In 2012 he was in a partnership with Abayomi Adepoju in a steel sculpture fabricating business run out of the Clock Tower Professional Center in Hesperia.
On Wednesday November 12, he was arraigned in Victorville Court before Judge Raymond Haight III. The prosecutor present was deputy district attorney Sean Dougherty. Merritt was represented by attorney Robert Ponce. Merritt pleaded not guilty to four counts of murder and denied the special circumstances alleged by the district attorney. Haight continued his no bail status. After the arraignment, Merritt was returned to custody at the West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga.

(November 10)  The once grandly touted Police Officer Standards and Training Cheating Scandal Prosecution, which entailed criminal charges against seven current and former Sheriff’s Department employees alleged to have defrauded taxpayers by falsifying training and pay records, was quietly closed out on Halloween when the figure at the center of the case, retired sheriff’s captain Hobart Gray, pleaded no-contest to a single count of “aiding in a misdemeanor.”
An indictment unsealed in March 2011 charged Gray; his wife, sheriff’s training specialist Angela Gray; sheriff training specialist Sallyann Christian; retired sheriff’s lieutenant Bill Maddox; sheriff’s lieutenant Russell Wilke, sheriff’s corporal David Pichotta; and former assistant sheriff Michael Stodelle with falsifying records for the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, the state agency which certifies law enforcement officers with regard to skills and specific technique qualifications. By earning certificates, officers qualify to retain their jobs or can have their pay level increased or otherwise qualify for advancement or promotion. According to the indictment, Angela Gray and Christian added the names of Pichotta, Wilke, Stodelle, Hobart Gray and Maddox to the rosters of training classes they never attended, enabling them to claim higher pay and retirement benefits.
Preceding the filing of charges, there were persistent and wide-ranging reports of training completion certification fraud involving scores of the department’s personnel.
At the case’s initiation, a high-powered press conference was held in which then-sheriff Rod Hoops, district attorney Mike Ramos and the deputy district attorney prosecuting the case, Dan Silverman, were present. After the aggressive kick-off, which was followed by intensive scrutiny by the media and further suggestions that the cheating implicated far more than those who had been charged, up to and including former sheriff Gary Penrod, the case stood essentially dormant for sixteen months.
Then, on July 13, 2012, sixteen months after the charges were originally entered, the first definitive public demonstration of t a problem with the case manifested when Silverman, announcing he was doing so in the interest of justice, dismissed charges against Maddox. Maddox had been charged with failing to complete a class relating to police dispatch work. His lawyer, Michael Scafiddi, demonstrated to Silverman’s satisfaction that  in claiming the course completion credit, Maddox had properly utilized a work assignment, the opening of a sheriff’s department dispatch center in the desert which he had supervised, as a learning experience that met the training criteria. Specifically, according to Scaffidi, Maddox had done research relating to dispatch equipment and procedures by speaking with other agencies throughout the state and consulting technical and procedural manuals.
In dismissing the charges against Maddox, Silverman asserted that the case against all six of the remaining defendants was proceeding toward trial. But on February 1, 2013, Silverman acceded to dismissing all charges against Wilke on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence to obtain a conviction.
Almost three weeks later, on February 21, 2013, the court finalized a plea arrangement Silverman obtained with Pichotta, in which the original charges against him were dismissed in return for his acceptance of guilt on a grand theft charge that was reduced to misdemeanor status.
Silverman was able to declare a second victory in the case on August 28, 2013 when Angela Gray pleaded guilty to the charge of aiding in a misdemeanor.
Nearly a year elapsed with no further developments in the case, until on August 19, 2014, very quietly, all felony charges against Stodelle were dismissed on Silverman’s motion “in the interest of justice.”
On October 31, 2014, the same day that Bart Gray entered his plea, all charges against Christian were dismissed upon a motion by Silverman “in the interest of justice.”
Multiple perspectives on the case relating to whether it should have been filed in the first place, whether it should have included more defendants than the handful who  were charged, whether Angela Gray and Christian fraudulently added the names of far more department personnel to the roster of those who had completed training,  whether it should have been more aggressively pursued, whether it entailed the maligning of innocent people or whether it represented a political can of worms exist. Those charged but exonerated can now maintain they were innocent all along. Those who entered pleas – the Grays and Pichotta – are seen by some as having thrown in the towel too early. Some believe that the case, as far as it went, was valid but that it did not go far enough. Those having that perspective hold that because dozens, scores or even hundreds of other deputies, corporals, detectives, sergeants, lieutenants, captains, deputy chiefs, assistant sheriffs, undersheriffs and even a sheriff or two were equally guilty, some of those in the docket were able to leverage themselves out of the case by threatening to expose virtually the entire department in the cheating scandal.

By Mark Gutglueck
Little more than five months after the United States entered World War II General George Patton sojourned to the forbidding outback of San Bernardino County to establish a training and maneuver ground for Army soldiers to acclimate them to fighting in the desert.
An interesting sidelight to this is that Patton, who would go on to glory in North Africa, Sicily, France and Germany in 1943, 1944 and 1945, at one point was on the verge of utilizing the men under him in a defense of the North American continent in which he was to deploy to Mexico to rebuff a Japanese invasion there.
In January 1942, German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel was pushing his troops in a relentless drive toward Egypt, threatening the Suez Canal and Great Britain’s critical line of communication between West and East, its land holdings in the British Colonies in Asia and a key channel for the delivery in either direction of supplies and raw materials needed in the war effort.
America had just entered the war and Patton was acutely aware, as was his commanding officer, Lt. General Lesley J. McNair, Chief of Staff, General Headquarters, that the United States would soon be called upon to join their British allies in the North African campaign. Americans would be going up against a well-trained, well equipped and experienced enemy, well versed and accomplished in the use of tanks as a tactical weapon in the desert.
With American fighting men and their leaders having no experience or background in a desert campaign, McNair resolved to develop a strategy and capability to engage the Germans and halt their advance in Northern Africa. He assigned Major General George Smith Patton, Jr. to establish the Desert Training Center for the purpose of training men and machines for action under the brutal and unforgiving conditions of the African deserts.
With staff officers in tow, Patton flew over a vast expanse of the Mojave Desert and the Anza Borrego Desert in Southern California and deserts across the Arizona and Nevada borders. At spots where his plane set down, Patton mounted horses to reconnoiter the territory. He elected to utilize a vast portion of the East Mojave Desert stretching across into Arizona, approximately 18,000 square miles of some of the most rugged land in the country. This was to become the Desert Training Center, the largest military installation and maneuver area in the world. In his communication back to General Headquarters, Patton beamed that the spot he had chosen was “the best training area… I have ever seen . . . it is desolate and remote . . . large enough for any kind of training exercises.”
Patton was briefly detailed to another assignment, but he was back in early April to a place where already arriving troops describes as “a place God forgot.”
Unfamiliar with the desert, Patton consulted with Roy Chapman Andrews, an explorer who had made several expeditions to the Gobi Desert. He instructed his officers that it was his intention to make his men so at home at living in the desert that when they were sent oversees to any desert environment, it will be no difficulty at all to kill the assorted sons of bitches you meet in any other country.”
Patton subjected himself to the same conditions his men had to endure, shunning accommodations at an Indio hotel and at a ranch house where his wife, Beatrice lived. Determined to move rapidly, Patton had the Desert Training Center operational by mid-April. Within four days of his arrival, Patton had the troops under his command engaged in a desert march. By the 15th day of his command all units at the center had been on a desert march……Within 23 days, he had conducted 13 tactical exercises, including some with two nights in the desert. Within a month after arrival, every man sent to the Desert Training Center had to be able to run a mile in 10 minutes, wearing a full back pack and carrying a rifle.
Conditions were primitive.  Some of the bivouacs wooden floors, but there was no electricity, no sheets for their cots, and none of the amenities common to other stateside military installations. Water was a problem. Patton wanted the Metropolitan Water District in Los Angeles to provide water to his men. District managers instead suggested that the men build storage tanks for water. Patton told the utility managers that his men “have no time to do anything except learn to fight.”
The harsh conditions and Patton’s unrelenting drive to build a fighting unit created tremendous hardship for the troops, but they recognized such toughness was necessary and the training would stand them in good stead to fight and survive in the environment they would soon encounter.
On June 3, 1942, Patton was given information about a Japanese expeditionary force on the High Seas heading toward the West Coast. Accompanying that information were indications the force was coming to invade Mexico, which had joined the Allies on May 22, 1942. Believing the  Japanese would land on the beaches of Baja California to move north and capture San Diego, Patton had his troops on high alert for three days in which the were poised to move within minutes to meet the invading Japanese at the tip of the Gulf of California. Ultimately, however, the Japanese invasion fleet eventually landed on Kiska Island in the Aleutians on June 6.
Four months after he founded the Desert Training Center, Patton was summoned to Washington and then dispatched overseas to start planning Operation Torch, the North African campaign which was to be decisive in Allied victory. Only a small portion of the million men that trained at the Desert Training Center during World War II served while he was commander there. But his legacy lives on and at this point, more than 72 years later,  it has served as the training ground for more than a million troops in seven armored divisions and thirteen infantry divisions.