On Monday, November 4, a majority of the association representing Chaffey College’s faculty registered a vote of no confidence against Chaffey College President Henry Shannon and two of the institution’s senior administrators.
The Academic Senate, representing the community college’s faculty – professors, teachers, lecturers, lab supervisors, instructors and adjunct professors – debated with regard to official action to be lodged against Shannon and associate superintendents Lisa Bailey and Alisha Rosas over the course of multiple meetings in September, October and this month before committing to taking the no confidence vote.
At issue was discontent with regard to hiring and promotional practices at the college, together with concern about decisions on conferring tenures or placing professors on tenure tracks, actions about which the faculty has been given no say. Some faculty members have alleged, and it now appears a majority of their colleagues have come to believe, that favoritism, cronyism and nepotism have tainted both hiring and policy decisions made by the college administration going back several years.
Shannon has led Chaffey College since 2007. Bailey has been associate superintendent of business services and economic development since 2013. Rosas, the who began at Chaffey in 2015 as the director of marketing and public relations, in 2020 promoted to associate superintendent for student services and strategic communications. Continue reading →

By M.R. Wainwright
In the aftermath of the 2024 general election, Helen Tran, Mayor of San Bernardino, finds herself isolated, her influence diminished, and her support base fractured. Her weakened position has left many residents and donors questioning her ability to lead, and her dwindling backing reflects a loss of confidence in her vision for the city. Once hopeful that Tran would bring meaningful progress, San Bernardino residents and city leaders alike have watched her administration falter, marked by missed opportunities, ineffective governance, and a disconnect from the community’s needs.
The election results only underscored Tran’s decreasing relevance. Her isolation became starkly evident with the decisive win of incoming Councilwoman-Elect Treasure Ortiz over former City Attorney Jim Penman, shutting down any hopes Tran may have had for a unified council under her leadership. Ortiz’s victory, alongside Kim Knaus’s election to the council, signaled a desire for fresh perspectives and highlighted Tran’s growing disconnect from a city in need of stronger, more cohesive leadership.
Further compounding her struggles was Tran’s involvement in the failed campaign of Dara Smith for County Assessor, a race marked by the support of out-of-town donors who seemed indifferent to local concerns. Smith’s loss delivered a resounding message that San Bernardino residents prioritize local interests over outside influence. Tran’s endorsement only reinforced perceptions of her as a mayor out-of-touch with the community, aligning herself with donors who did not reflect the city’s values.
The cracks in Tran’s support base have widened, with even her closest advisors beginning to quietly distance themselves. The failed recall efforts against her, disorganized and poorly executed, did more harm than good, highlighting her struggles to gain meaningful support within the city. Despite attempts to rally allies, Tran’s leadership missteps have become common concerns among her peers. With new council members like Knaus and Ortiz set to take office, Tran faces an increasingly isolated role as the council pivots toward San Bernardino’s future without her influence. Continue reading →

In July, in response to the City of San Bernardino’s application for a $26 million grant to cover the cost of constructing a comprehensive and full-service homeless shelter, the State of California came across with $17 million.
The following month, however, interim City Manager Rochelle Clayton, who had informed Mayor Helen Tran of the no-strings-attached funding from Sacramento but had kept from the city’s seven council members that the money was to be forthcoming, declined the state’s offer.
At this point, the members of the city council having learned of what occurred within the last few days, the question remains why Clayton did not take the final steps to actuate the grant.

FBN 20240009169
The following entity is doing business primarily in San Bernardino County as
TMR TAX SERVICES 11223 JOSHUA CT FONTANA, CA 92337: TINA M ROMAN
Business Mailing Address: 9036 MISSION BLVD #1006 RIVERSIDE, CA 92509
The business is conducted by: AN INDIVIDUAL.
The registrant commenced to transact business under the fictitious business name or names listed above on: N/A.
By signing, I declare that all information in this statement is true and correct. A registrant who declares as true information which he or she knows to be false is guilty of a crime (B&P Code 179130). I am also aware that all information on this statement becomes Public Record upon filing.
/s/ TINA M. ROMAN, Owner
Statement filed with the County Clerk of San Bernardino on: 10/10/2024
I hereby certify that this copy is a correct copy of the original statement on file in my office San Bernardino County Clerk By:/Deputy J2523
Notice-This fictitious name statement expires five years from the date it was filed in the office of the county clerk. A new fictitious business name statement must be filed before that time. The filing of this statement does not of itself authorize the use in this state of a fictitious business name in violation of the rights of another under federal, state, or common law (see Section 14400 et seq., Business and Professions Code).
Published in the San Bernardino County Sentinel on October 18 & 25 and November 1 & 8, 2024.

FBN 20240009075
The following entity is doing business primarily in San Bernardino County as
UNA MORDIDITA 16060 ATHOL ST FONTANA, CA 92335: JESSICA A RENTERIA
Business Mailing Address: 16060 ATHOL ST FONTANA, CA 92335
The business is conducted by: AN INDIVIDUAL.
The registrant commenced to transact business under the fictitious business name or names listed above on: OCTOBER 1, 2025.
By signing, I declare that all information in this statement is true and correct. A registrant who declares as true information which he or she knows to be false is guilty of a crime (B&P Code 179130). I am also aware that all information on this statement becomes Public Record upon filing.
/s/ JESSICA A RENTERIA, Owner
Statement filed with the County Clerk of San Bernardino on: October 8, 2024
I hereby certify that this copy is a correct copy of the original statement on file in my office San Bernardino County Clerk By:/Deputy K3379
Notice-This fictitious name statement expires five years from the date it was filed in the office of the county clerk. A new fictitious business name statement must be filed before that time. The filing of this statement does not of itself authorize the use in this state of a fictitious business name in violation of the rights of another under federal, state, or common law (see Section 14400 et seq., Business and Professions Code).
Published in the San Bernardino County Sentinel on October 18 & 25 and November 1 & 8, 2024.

Continue reading →

The Sentinel at 6:42 p.m. today, November 5, was notified that “hundreds” of California State University Students were casting provisional ballots at the polling precinct located at the CalState Alumni Center.
The clear insinuation contained in the report was that the lion’s share of those voting at that precinct are students, many of whom are not registered to vote in San Bernardino. Most of those voting at the Alumni Center, it was said, are Democrats.
Running in the Fifth Ward in today’s November 5 race, are Kim Knaus and Henry Nickel, the two-top finishers in the March Primary. Both outdistanced the incumbent Ward 5 councilman, Ben Reynoso, who defeated Nickel in a run-off in 2024. Nickel held the Ward 5 post since 2014, when he prevailed in a special election following the 2013 resignation of then-Councilman Chas Kelley. Nickel, a Republican, was reelected in 2015 and had his term expanded to 2020 when the city switched to even-year elections.
Nickel was the top vote-getter in the 2020 primary election, but was defeated when Reynoso, a Democrat activist, cleverly moved to register Cal State San Bernardino students prior to the November 2020-run-off election. Though local elections in California are by law non-partisan, in San Bernardino County, party affiliation is a major factor in virtually all elections.
This year, Knaus, who secured stronger Democratic Party backing than did Reynoso, was able to achieve a first-place finish in the primary, while Nickel, pulling much of the traditional GOP vote, managed to capture second.
It appears that Knaus has now taken a leaf out of Reynoso’s book, and is seeking to solidify her lead in the Fifth Ward by nailing down the college student vote.
CalState San Bernardino lies within San Benardino’s Fifth Ward. The campus includes multiple dormatories.

Even as Michelle Sabino is looking confidently toward electoral victory next Tuesday, November 5, in the race to sustain herself in her appointed position on the Grand Terrace City Council, events appear poised to overtake her and other members of the Republican Central Committee in the weeks and months after the election.
Over the last three years, Sabino has come out of nowhere to take a very prominent position on the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee.
At some point in late 2001 or early 2002, she wangled an appointment to the central committee after being nominated, without fanfare, to an empty position representing the county’s Third Supervisorial District.
In San Bernardino County, the Democratic Central Committee, the primary authority for the Democratic Party in the county, elects its members based upon their residency in the various Assembly districts within the county. The San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee, which rules with the backing of the state and national Republican Party within the 20,105-square mile confines of the county, elects its members based upon their residency with the five San Bernardino County supervisorial districts. In addition to their members elected directly to their respective central committees, the Democrats and Republicans also have what are termed ex officio members of their central committees, consisting of those candidates that represented their parties in the most recent elections for state and federal office. In this, the elected U.S. senator, the elected congressmen or congresswomen, the elected assemblymen or assemblywomen and the elected state senators representing San Bernardino County are designated as ex officio members of their respective parties’ central committees in San Bernardino County, just as those who vied for but lost in their efforts to represent San Bernardino County in the U.S. Senate, the U.S. Congress, the Assembly and the State Senate are designated as ex officio members of their respective parties’ central committees in San Bernardino County. In most, but not all, cases, the ex officio members, engaged as they are in matters of governance that confine much of their presence to Washington, D.C. and Sacramento, designate alternates to fill in for them at the central committee meetings held in San Bernardino County. It is not clear, even to members of the Republican Central Committee in good standing, on what basis Sabino was granted membership within the central committee. A common refrain is that her application for membership was accepted by and at the inistence of Phil Cothran Sr., the chairman of Republican Central Committee since 2021. Cothran and the close-knit group of his supporters within the central committee, including other appointees to the executive committee, have resisted efforts to clarify precisely when Sabino was brought into the central committee, who sponsored and supported her acceptance as a member of the the central committee and how her elevation to the executive committee came about, although it is widely acknowledged that she is there because Cothran is, or at least was, favorably impressed with her.
Both the San Bernardino County Democratic Central Committee and the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee have their respective executive committees. Members of the executive committees have a greater degree of reach and control in shaping the policies, programs and initiatives that the central committees as a whole will pursue by their role in determining ahead of time – i.e., prior to the individual monthly meetings of the central committees – what items are to make it onto those meeting agendas for discussion and then adoption/action. While the executive committee members generally do not have – given their relatively limited numbers – the final power of decision with regard to the central committee’s policy, stance, efforts, expenditures, programs and final decisions, they have the ability to foreclose ideas ahead of time such that certain initiatives or proposals are never considered or given an opportunity to be voted upon by the full membership. Similarly, the executive committee has the power and authority of presentation with regard to proposals, and can shape the body-at-large’s opinion by giving certain ideas or concepts a favorable boost by a friendly and flattering introduction and presentation, to say nothing of being armed with information ahead of time, such that it can lobby and/or seek to persuade members favorably with regard to what is eventually presented to them.
In Sabino’s case, she offered, at least ostensibly, at least two lines of access or service to the central committee that justified her placement on the executive committee. One of those was her running analysis of legislation pending in Sacramento in which the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee might have some conceivable interest and would potentially take a position on. The other was her status as a board member of the Inland Empire Business Alliance Political Action Committee. In that organization, she is playing a role – a major one it was said – in ascertaining whom the political action committee supported in the March 2024 primary election and whom it is supporting in the upcoming November election.
While the Inland Empire Business Alliance Political Action Committee has in the past established a pattern of endorsing, by a significant margin, more Republicans than Democrats, it has on occasion endorsed Democrats and provided them with money. In some cases, the perception is that those Democrats would have lost if it had not been for the generosity of the Inland Empire Business Alliance and its political action committee arm.
Most recently, in the March 5 primary race, the Inland Empire Business Alliance Political Action Committee came across with support for two Republicans – Ovi Popescu and Rhodes “Dusty” Rigsby – in their electoral efforts for the Loma Linda City Council. They were successful.
Still, the Inland Empire Business Alliance is supporting a handful Democrats. One of those Democrats is Kim Knaus, who is vying for the city council in San Bernardino in the Fifth Ward.
Running against Knaus is Henry Nickel, a Republican. Knaus and Nickel were the top vote-getters on March 5 and will now go head-to-head in November.
It was Sabino’s militating on behalf of Knaus and against Nickel that first brought Sabino’s hidden connection to the Democratic Party under scrutiny. Nickel is not only a Republican, he is a member of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee.
In her role with the Inland Empire Business Alliance and its political action committee, Sabino is active in determining which candidates for local office the organization is going to support, securing money for those candidates and then either conveying it to them directly or using it to run independent expenditure activity to support their candidacies. The research Sabino does for the Inland Empire Business Alliance in determining which candidates it should support includes interviewing the candidates. Despite the consideration that both Sabino and Nickel are members of the Republican Central Committee and that they have been attending monthly meetings of that organization together for the last two years, Sabino did not arrange an interview with Nickel.
While some of the efforts that Sabino had previously made on behalf of Democrats had somehow managed to fly under the radar, that was not the case when the Inland Empire Business Alliance came out in favor of Knaus. This was not Nickel’s first rodeo or walk around the political block. He had previously been on the San Bernardino City Council from 2013 until 2020, having run in three campaigns for that post, and had twice, unsuccessfully, vied for the California Assembly. He was sophisticated enough to look after his own fundraising efforts and to monitor what fundraising his opponents were engaging in. He knew where and to whom he had to appeal for both endorsements and monetary support. One such organization on his radar was the Inland Empire Business Alliance. That it was far more accustomed to supporting Republicans than Democrats had given him hope, if not an outright expectation that he would be a recipient of that organization’s largesse in his run against Knaus.
“I would have been more than willing to be considered by the Inland Empire Business Alliance for an endorsement and any support it would offer to my campaign,” Nickel told the Sentinel.
He was startled to hear that the alliance had come through with a donation to Knaus. As a member of the Republican Central Committee who had heard several presentations from Sabino about where the Inland Empire Business Alliance was vectoring its money, Nickel knew about the role Sabino played with the alliance and that she was at liberty to contact him to hear out what his platform is and ascertain whether the alliance would back him. He said he was disappointed that Sabino did not reach out to him. Then he learned Sabino had gone over to the other side, conveying the Inland Empire Business Alliance‘s money to his Democratic opponent.
In March, the Sentinel became involved, having been informed that a member of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee – Sabino – was militating on behalf of Democrats. The Sentinel made direct inquiries with Sabino. Initially, Sabino, when confronted with documentation that Knaus had received money from the Inland Empire Business Alliance, outright denied that she had any connection to the Inland Empire Business Alliance.
Upon the Sentinel reconfirming Sabino’s role with the Inland Empire Business Alliance, it contacted Sabino again. On that occasion, she began to cry, saying she was overwhelmed with the questions and that she was dealing with the challenge of a deterioration in her father-in-law’s health. She begged off, promising to return the call the following day. She did not make that call and she ducked three further efforts by the Sentinel to reach her at that time.
The following month, she was selected by the Grand Terrace City Council to fill the vacancy within its ranks created by the February resignation of former Councilwoman Sylvia Robles. Sabino is now one of five candidates vying for the three positions on the council, including her own, up for election this year.
There remain a number of individuals involved in local politics who perceive Sabino as an up-and-coming San Bernardino County politician, a potential office-holder for the next twenty to thirty years. Among those are ones who see her as the wave of the future in the GOP – energetic and charismatic Hispanic personages who will break the Democratic Party’s virtual monopoly on Latino voters, allowing the Republican Party to take back control of California.
There are those within the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee, Nickel included, who see things somewhat differently. They believe that Sabino is a turncoat, a Democrat wolf wearing Republican wool, who has taken some of that woool and pulled it down over Cothran’s eyes and is utilizing the position of power and trust she has in the Republican Central Committee to boost herself into elected office, from which she intends to spring into higher office still, but not as a Republican and rather as a Democrat. Her efforts on behalf of Knaus is a giveaway that she is ingratiating herself with the Democratic Party while she is working as a Democratic operative within the Republican Party, indeed its inner sanctum, several Republicans say.
And the betrayal goes beyond just Sabino, those members say. Two others on the executive committee have joined Sabino in supporting Knaus. One, surprisingly, is Robert Rego, who was formerly the chairman of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee and is now its treasurer. The other is Dakota Higgins, who is the representative of the First District. Both are supporting Knaus over Nickel.
Nickel told the Sentinel, “It appears council candidate Kim Knaus’s funds are being used to pay for the services of San Bernardino County GOP Treasurer and former Chairman Robert Rego’s company, Parkview Business Services, to have Mr. Rego serve as Knaus’s campaign treasurer.”
Higgins recently commended on an internet posting Sabino for her attendance at a promotional and fundraising event for Knaus.”
On previous occasions, when Knaus’s campaign made text postings and put up photos relating to her campaign and campaign events, occasional indications of Sabino’s and Rego’s involvement in her campaign were made. In short order, however, those postings or photos would be removed, gestures which left those seeking to marshal evidence that key members of the Republican Central Committee had gone over to the other side.
The Sentinel, however, has at this point in its possession clear-cut evidence that Sabino, Rego and Higgins are in the Knaus camp.
Other prominent Republicans are supporting Democrats in this year’s election. Democrat Congresswoman Norma Torres, for example, has garnered the support of several big name Republicans, including ones in the central committee. Her opponent in November is Mike Cargile, a member of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee. In the 53rd Assembly District Race, Republican Nick Wilson is going toe-to-toe in November against Michelle Rodriguez, a Democrat. In the March Primary, however, when Norma Torres’ son Robert, another Democrat was vying, there were major Republicans, including San Bernardino County Supervisor and former Republican Central Committee Chairman Curt Hagman and Fontana Mayor Acquanetta Warren supporting Robert Torres against Wilson.
This year in March, both the Democratic Central Committee and the Republican Central Committee elected its members. The Democratic Central Committee in May installed those new members. The Republicans by tradition do not replace their central committee in San Bernardino County until December. While the current leadership under Cothran appears complacent with regard to the members of the central committee who are abandoning fellow and sister Republicans in favor of Democrats, the new crop of Republican central committee members who will be put into place in December do not appear to be as tolerant of cross party support.
Whether he wins in his Fifth Ward race in San Bernardino next week or not, Nickel will be back as a member of the Republican Central Committee.
He said, “The San Bernardino County GOP bylaws are clear that members of the central committee are subject to removal if advocating for the election of candidates opposing SBCGOP-endorsed candidates. If members of the SBCGOP are in fact advocating for my opponent in the 5th Ward City Council race, they are subject to removal from the San Bernardino County Central Committee.”
Nickel said he wants Sabino, Rego and Higgins, at the very least, bounced out of the central committee.
Republicans are bound by the 11th Commandment which prohibits speaking ill of a fellow Republican.
Cothran has resisted, at least until now, efforts by stalwarts in the central committee have gunning for Sabino’s removal from the executive board and ouster from committee as well.
For more than six months, Sabino has spurned efforts by the Sentinel to have her respond to explain why she is assisting Knaus.
Nickel said he is not sure how Sabino was able to insinuate herself into the central committee.
“I think I first became aware of her when she just popped in and began providing the central committee with information with regard to legislation that she said it was important that the central committee should pay attention to,” he said. “She made a rather quick rise. I don’t think sufficient vetting of her took place. She was given theses significant positions with the central committee almost immediately. One of the things she was doing was reporting on who was getting money from the Inland Empire business Alliance PAC [political action committee]. She would take credit for that.”
The previous talk about Sabino being one of the future faces of the Republican Party in Sacramento has transmogrified into a widespread anticipation among situationally aware Republicans that she is to be rewarded by the Democrats for her penetration of the Republican Party on their behalf with an eventual berth in the Assembly and/or State Senate when she assumes her true colors as a registered Democrat within the next few years.
Cargile told the Sentinel that the entire central committee needed to wake up to what was going on and prevent Democratic operatives from compromising the party.
“We should follow our bylaws,” Cargile said. “If it is clearly established that one of our central committee members is supporting a Democrat in an election involving a Republican candidate, that member should be expelled from the central committee.”
Cargile asked, “What is the point of having a Republican party if our members are supporting the opposition and assisting and promoting Democrat ideas over our own values and policies?”
Cargile said, “I have concerns about the Republican Party and its direction.” He said out of necessity he was running his campaign as a Republican on his own without much support from the central committee.”
Cargile hinted that things would change after the most recent batch of Republcian Central committee members are installed in December.
“You will see some change after we have new people in place come January,” he said.
While several longtime dedicated Republicans in San Benardino County consider Sabino as unworthy of wearing the mantle of Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, Earl Warren, Dwight Eisenhower, Robert Taft, Robert LaFolette, Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln and to either be a turncoat Republican who has lost the way and is no longer a true-believer or someone who was an imposter or a Democrat-Lover from the start who has, improbably, deceived Cothran to obtain a position from which she is aiming a dagger at the heart of the GOP, it is not only the Republicans in San Bernardino County who are plagued by traitors within their ranks, according to Christian Shaughnessy, one of the trustees of the San Bernardino Democratic Luncheon Club, perhaps the most high-profile chapter of the San Bernardino County Democratic Party.
Shaughnessy announced that this week the San Bernardino Democratic Luncheon Club hd voted unanimously to censure San Bernardino Mayor Helen Tran, who was elected mayor two years ago with solid Democratic Party support, for what Shaughnessy called “her perfidious endorsement of the author of our city’s bankruptcy, the racist, corrupt, non-Democrat Jim Penman against a member of her own party, Dr. Treasure Ortiz.” Ortiz, a Democrat, is running against Penman, the former San Bernardino city attorney, for city council in the county seat’s Seventh Ward.

The Intercept this week released a documentary by filmmaker Stuart Harmon cataloging incidents from the experience of four Fontana police officers detailing a level of long-existent distinguishing racism and brutality within the police department which is alleged to continue to plague that agency.
The Intercept, which can be accessed at theintercept.com, is an unabashedly left-wing nonprofit news organization that publishes online articles and podcasts involving what it characterizes as rigorous, adversarial journalism in the public interest.
Harmon’s documentary, titled Fontana PD: Hate Within The Ranks, dwells in the main on recurrent allegations that the department in much of its 72-year history has been plagued with racism. In the main, the documentary focuses on the experiences of three of the department’s so-called “protected minority” officers who were employed with the department between the years of 1996 and 2017, David Moore, Andy Anderson and David Ibarra.
Their narratives were supported in part by a white member of the department, Raymond Schneiders, whose father had previously worked as an officer with the Fontana Police Department in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. Schneiders, who had begun his law enforcement career in 1982 with the San Gabriel Police Department, hired on in Fontana, in his father’s footsteps, in 1990. He promoted to a detective in the robbery/homicide division, and remained with the department for 18 years, until his 2008 retirement.
Harmon depicts the difficulty that each of the three said they encountered in finding a meaningful or lasting niche within the department and the glass ceiling that prevented their advancement beyond their relatively lower ranks they were confined to while employed in Fontana. A factor limiting their advancement, Moore, Anderson and Ibarra stated, was their ethnicity. Moore is African American, while Anderson and Ibarra are Hispanic.
Premises laid out with opening of the documentary are that it is true that there is a “code of silence,” that those within the law enforcement professtion who speak out against one police officer or one member of a particular department are considered by their peers to be speaking against all police or all members of that specific department. The documentary takes as truism that to become a member of the law enforcement brotherhood you face the perspective of retaliation if you do not toe the line.
Ibarra, who was with the department from 1996 to 2006, said he came to Fontana to “buy the American Dream” and that he had envisioned “one day, when I retired from the police department, that I would go onto the city council and possibly make a run for the mayor.”
Moore, who had previously worked with the Los Angeles Police Department and came to Fontana in 2000, remaining there until 2017, stated that “as soon as I signed up with the Fontana Police Department I noticed… it was a predominantly Caucasian organization” and that the minorities employed there were “stressed.”
Anderson, who was employed as a police officer in Fontana from 2002 until 2017, noted that after being hired by the Fontana Police Department, he experienced a degree of “culture hock. For a community that’s 70 percent Hispanic, the numbers of the department were really disproportionate,” Anderson said.
A visual displayed following Anderson’s statement quoted the website governing.com’s analysis of Bureau of Justice statistics and census data for the year 2013, which stated, “Fontana had the worst minority representation among cities of more than 100,000 population.”
Ibarra said he early on observed about the department that, “the upper management was all white.” With regard to racism within the Fontana Police Department, Ibarra said, “You can’t see it, but you can certainly feel it, and I felt it.”
On more than one score, the documentary seeks to draw both an analogy with and connection between the police department and the Ku Klux Klan, doing so in a way that is both elliptical and faintly disingenuous through a suspect associative process. The subject of the KKK’s past presence is established with archival photos of rallies, circa the 1970s and 1980s, led by the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, George Pepper, who indeed lived in a somewhat grand home in the City of Fontana that was extant at the time Moore was an officer and which he is caught on video driving past. Moore mentions that his uncle at the time of his hiring in Fontana referenced the community of Fontana’s connection to the Ku Klux Klan. Moore states that he responded to his uncle by telling him that was something in the city’s past. Moore then intimates that after working in the Fontana Department, he had concluded that the KKK’s proliferation in Fontana wasn’t that far in the past.
Moore states in the documentary that “There was a culture of white supremacy in Fontana,” such that “some of that old negativity still permeates the halls of the Fontana Police Department.”
This sentiment is backed by Ibarra, who said that through his experience relatively early on in his time with the department, “You could tell that they didn’t want nothing to do with the Mexican community.”
In attempting to make his case that the department had moved into full Ku Klux Klan or National Socialist mode, Moore charged that the department purposefully overlooked minorities, in particular himself, in favor of white officers with regard to advancing rank-wise in the department.
After noting that he had been chosen to receive the department’s officer of the year award, which provoked, he said, expressions of incredulity from some white officers he said he was close to that they couldn’t believe that the honorific had been bestowed upon “a nigger,” Moore said, “You look at my arrest record. You look at the things that I accomplished. It far surpassed most of my white colleagues. Yet every time a promotion came around, I was skipped over.”
Harmon, using visual means focusing on iconography used by the department together with Moore’s statements, sought to draw a tangent between the symbology used in some of the department’s insignia with Nordic Runes, which, it was implied or directly stated through Moore’s analysis, were tangentially “related to white supremacy.”
Moore, without further elaboration or explanation is heard in the documentary asserting that “this agency is sympathetic and believes in the same ideologies as your street white supremacist gang member.”
The documentary goes on to meld the accusations of overt racism, attitudes of white supremacy and the Ku Klux Klan affiliation of some of Fontana’s citizenry, such as Pepper, with the recent misadventure of the department’s former assistant chief, Alan Hostetter. Hostetter departed from the Fontana Department in 2009 to become the police chief of Yorba Linda in Orange County. After his retirement shortly thereafter and becoming abstracted into the beach community lifestyle in San Clemente for nearly a decade, Hostetter with the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020 became a passionate crusader against California Governor Gavin Newsom’s precautionary mandates aimed at arresting the spread of the disease. Hostetter insisted that the coronavirus was being used as a pretext to initiate a set of government-imposed restrictions on the American population which he characterized as a plot involving the Chinese government and American communists to eradicate Americans’ Consitutionally-granted freedoms. As the 2020 election approached, Hostetter’s mission against Newsom’s programs morphed into his advocacy for the reelection of Donald Trump, whom he celebrated as “the greatest president this country ever had.” When Trump was defeated that November, Hostetter became a primary West Coast instigator of the “Stop the Steal Campaign,” traveling twice to Washington, D.C., as part of the contingent intent on preventing Joseph Biden’s succession, once for the “Million Man March” on November 14, 2020 and then again in late December 2020/early 2021 in conjunction with five of his associates from Orange County as part of the effort to convince Congress to not ratify the outcome of the presidential election. On January 5, 2021, appearing with Trump advisor Roger Stone, Hostetter gave an incendiary speech during the Virginia Women for Trump rally that was held near the Supreme Court Building. The next day, he was on the Capitol grounds during the riot that resulting in a breach of the Capitol Building itself. While one of his five associates did enter the Capitol building, Hostetter did not, but he milled about on the Promenade, at first approaching the police line on the west plaza area of the Lower West Terrace, then ascended the stairs immediately adjacent to the construction support for the Inaugural Stage and subsequently walked up to the Upper West Terrace, near where the where rioters were entering the building by means of the Upper West Terrace door. He did not go into the building but remained on or near the Upper West Terrace for at least two hours. Throughout that time, according to federal prosecutors, Hostetter was carrying a hatchet in his backpack. He was indicted and arrested for participating in the January 6 riot in June 2021 and, after more than a two-year delay, went to trial in July 2023, representing himself. Hostetter agreed to forego a jury trial and instead be tried in a bench trial before Federal Judge Royce Lamberth.
Judge Lamberth, serving as both judge and jury, found Hostetter guilty on all four felony counts lodged against him – conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of an official proceeding, including aiding and abetting others engaged in that obstruction and interference; entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon; and disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building and grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon. Judge Lamberth sentenced him to 11 years and three months in prison.
Moore attributed what had befallen Hostetter as a byproduct of his experience in the crucible of far-right ideology that he implied permeates the Fontana Police Department.
“He’s a person that spiraled out into these extremist views because of the environment he was raised in there,” Moore said in a reference to the Fontana Police Department.
The documentary did not, however, establish any explicit connection between Hostetter and any racist or bigoted policies that proliferated in the department during his leadership.
One of the areas in which Harmon seemed to misread the historical and social context in Fontana consisted of where his documentary seized upon Fontana’s status as the birthplace of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang and what Moore saw as a similarity between elements of the motorcycle gang’s logos and symbols on its paraphernalia to emblems used by the department, with references to commonalities with regard to both Nazi or Neo-Nazi symbols, to further the suggestion that the department has strayed into the province of racial intolerance. In making this point, Moore characterized the Hells Angels as white supremacist in nature. This glossed over the historical reality that during the height of the Ku Klux Klan’s run in Fontana during the 1970s and 1980s, while Pepper was yet a high official in the KKK, the Hells Angels had, in fact, purposefully and actively physically placed themselves during public events in the middle ground between on one side Fontana’s African-American citizens and on the other side members of the Ku Klux Klan and their Neo-Nazi allies in an effort to avert violence.
Moore painted a picture of a sadistic institution in describing the department he had worked for.
“I started hearing complaints about use of force and police brutality,” Moore said. “I personally witnessed when officers were involved in questionable shootings or violent acts. Instead of them being disciplined, they actually were promoted. Very few have garnered discipline from the administration.”
The documentary made much of a distasteful joke relying upon a hackneyed racial association which resulted in a lapse of professionalism that compromised the integrity of the investigation of a murder that took place two decades ago to further establish the premise that the Fontana Police Department is a racist organization. That incident pertained to the circumstances around the autopsy carried out in the aftermath of the July 1994 stabbing death of Jimmy Burelson, a black man who died in an alleyway behind a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet. A technician with the department had affixed an eaten chicken leg from his own lunch into the hand of the corpse as a form of crude practical joke.
According to Schneiders, there were officers in the department who resented the manner in which the evidence technician had altered the body and the way it had been found, potentially interfering with evidence relating to the murder. He said the higher-ups in the department had not investigated the technician’s action or disciplined him and that Burelson’s murder case had gone unsolved.
A photograph of Burelson on the autopsy table with his hand apparently clutching the drumstick was widely circulated throughout the department. In the documentary, Moore is heard saying that Burleson’s corpse had been degraded by “the stereotype of Black men eating chicken.”
According to Moore, he at a certain point came to realize “rogue cops, racist cops” were attempting to “push me away from the job that I love.”
Moore claimed that he and Anderson, relatively late during their tenures with the department which ended in 2017, began to make reports of the incidents of police misconduct and racism within the department. This led to trouble.
According to Schneiders, “When you approach your police administration as an officer or any police employee and you expose corruption or this happening, racism, sexism, any of those things, they immediately resent and kill the messenger. They just don’t like whistleblowers, period.”
Ibarra stated “You start going out there and start questioning, soon you’re going to be labeled as a rat. That’s a death wish and if they want to make it rough on you, they will.”
In 2006, Ibarra left Fontana PD, and moved on to take a job with another department.
Moore and Anderson remained in Fontana. Anderson was given a promotion in 2007 to corporal, a position between that of a patrolman and detective. He remained at that level for another ten years.
After nearly a decade-and-a-half with the department, Moore, in tandem with Anderson, grew a bit more aggressive in seeking to prompt reform in the organization with which they were deployed. There efforts were not appreciated and they were not effective, according to the documentary. Moore found himself being investigated, including his department locker being searched and his movements being monitored. Anderson was removed from his narcotics division assignment on a pretext.
Both were accused of misconduct by the department.
At that point, Anderson recognized that he would never realize his intention of being promoted. “I always had hope and ambition that I was going to get up higher in the organization,” Anderson said. “My dreams of making lieutenant, of making captain, and making positive change were gone. They were dead.”
In 2016, Anderson and Moore filed a discrimination lawsuit against the department. In the suit they cited discrimination, being retaliated against and having been skipped over for promotion. After the filing of the suit, according to Moore, the department sought to make an example of the two of them. Citing sleep deprivation and anxiety issues that Anderson was experiencing, he was walked off the job and declared unfit for police work. “I never went back to work another day,” Anderson said.
“They falsely accused me of violating a department policy by leaving my wife on my insurance until I was completely divorced.” Moore said.
The suit they had filed dragged on in the courts for some six years. At the end stage of that litigation, Moore told Harmon, who was working on the documentary, “We are hoping that we’ll encourage other people to speak up, but we’re also hoping to shed light on the process in which it takes to speak up. I still believe in our country, in our law enforcement, and I believe in our criminal justice system.” Nevertheless, Moore acknowledged, he was in a fight with the system.
In April 2024, the case Moore and Anderson brought against the department was settled. No details of the settlement were revealed, and neither Moore nor Anderson, who apparently signed a nondisclosure agreement as part of the settlement, are at this stage willing to speak about what the terms of the settlement are.