In the more-than-decade-long give-and-take over water and water rights in Indian Wells Valley, it appears the coalition that has emerged among the valley’s farmers and its major industrial interest has claimed a victory over the City of Ridgecrest, the U.S. Navy and the joint powers authority which has yet to achieve the water importation solution the latter three entities are hoping will ultimately redress the overdraft in the region’s groundwater.
This week, on Thursday, Orange County Superior Court Judge William Claster ruled that the China Lake Naval Air Station is entitled, under a water rights adjudication effort being overseen by the Indian Wells Valley Water District, to far less water on an annual basis than the Navy had previously asserted. The Navy’s monopolization of the larger amount of water it had laid claim to within the confines of the water basin was consistent with the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority’s limitation of water use by a host of other entities vis-à-vis the water use/water conservation effort it is heading up. Several of those other water users, from farmers to a major mining operation within San Bernardino County to the water district that serves customers in Ridgecrest, the most populous part of the Indian Wells Valley, want to forge a more accommodating water sharing arrangement that will not entail an expense so drastic that it will necessitate that agricultural production at the farms end, the mining operation close down or that water district customers lose service.
In 2014, in the face of a persistent drought, then-Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency with regard to California’s water situation and then signed into law the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which classified 21 groundwater basins in the state, including the one in Indian Wells Valley, as being in a state of critical overdraft.
That designation triggered the creation of the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority, a joint powers agency overseen by a board comprised of one voting representative from Kern County, the City of Ridgecrest, Inyo County, San Bernardino County, and the Indian Wells Valley Water District, as well two non-voting members representing the U.S. Navy/China Lake Naval Air Station and the United States Bureau of Land Management.
The Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority took as its charter the commitment to ensure a sustainable water supply for the region by overcoming the depletion of the groundwater basin and its aquifer which underlies 597 square miles and includes the northwest tip of San Bernardino County, the southwest tip of Inyo County and the northeast corner of Kern County.
Both the Indian Wells Valley Water District, which serves as the region’s local water company, and the groundwater authority are intent on achieving a balance of water use and water recharge within the valley by 2040. Some differences between those two entities have emerged on how to best achieve that goal.
After the Groundwater Management Act went into effect, the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority came to the conclusion that a 50-mile pipeline extension from California City, where the Antelope Valley East Kern County Water Agency’s furthest extension of facilities importing water from the California Aqueduct ends, was the most viable solution. The Water District, along with numerous local entities including the Real Estate Association, Chamber of Commerce and the Indian Wells Valley Economic Development Corporation, considers that proposed project/solution to be prohibitively expensive and believes it would likely cause economic harm as well as double the rates paid by the Indian Wells Valley Water District customers for their water.
This led to the rather remarkable circumstance in which the two major entities in the region devoted to the management of the precious water resources in the area found themselves working at cross purposes. This was taking place in the context of other water use management/water conservation measures being instituted which imposed limits, hardships and expense on companies and corporations in the area involved in agricultural and industrial production.
To a greater extent, the voting board members representing Kern County, the City of Ridgecrest and Inyo County were on board with the water importation concept, as was San Bernardino County to a lesser extent. The Indian Wells Valley Water District, concerned that the cost of the water importation infrastructure would raise the cost of water beyond what its customers could reasonably sustain, pressed for alternate solutions to redress the water shortage, including water use efficiency, recycling and measures to lessen evaporation, as well as purchasing water from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which has already constructed a pipeline conveying water from Owens Valley to Los Angeles through the area.
The Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority pursued a strategy of establishing, based upon a survey of water usage patterns of well owners undertaken by an engineering consultant, Carlsbad-based Stetson Engineers, water use entitlements for those well owners in the valley, using its own formula. The authority assigned water use allowances to the region’s water pumpers. Excess use fees, referred to as augmentation fees, were formulated for application to those well owners who pumped above their allowances as well as on farmers who went beyond their respective share of the water supply set aside for agricultural usage. The authority’s intent is to use money generated in this way to purchase imported water and pay for the infrastructure needed to bring in the imported water. An element of that approach was to get the region’s agricultural users to agree to eventually decrease and then cease altogether pumping groundwater from the basin and coming to rely on water imported from Northern California. Simultaneously, the cost of water being used in the area, due to the excess use fees, was escalating, threatening to make both agricultural and mining operations unprofitable and therefore unsustainable. Large agricultural concerns such as Meadowbrook Dairy and Mojave Pistachios objected to that approach and withheld payment of its excess use fees, as did Searles Valley Minerals, which uses water in its mining process, soaking areas of Searles Valley Dry Lake as part of a mineral and chemical extraction process. Searles Valley Minerals went further, initiating a legal challenge in which it asserted that its water rights, based upon water use extending back into the latter part of the 19th Century, gave the company water rights that were senior to all other entities in Indian Wells Valley.
In 2021, based upon its contention that the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority formulated its strategy to overcome the basin overdraft without having first completed a scientifically sound survey of the extent of the overdraft and the full range of methodologies that could be applied to overcome it, the Indian Wells Valley Water District’s initiated an effort to adjudicate water rights throughout the Indian Wells Valley basin.
The Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority objected to the water district’s water rights adjudication effort, asserting that the adjudication interferes with the groundwater authority’s efforts to manage and reduce the overdraft and that the adjudication will have the effect of benefiting certain agricultural interests and Searles Valley Minerals, who they claim are the most profligate users of water in the basin, while threatening, or at least challenging, the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake’s federal reserved water rights.
Therein lies an important item of contention borne of the belief by some that the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority is being too deferential to the federal government and the Navy by allowing the Naval Air Weapons Station at China Lake to tie up more of the region’s water than it is using.
Rather than put up with the water rights adjudication process that the Indian Wells Water District was using to work through the various issues and balance the conflicting/competing interests of those who have to share the region’s water supply, the Indian Wells Valley Ground Water Authority sought to bypass the adjudication or render it irrelevant. Based upon the relationship that some of the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority board members had with Assemblywoman Diane Papan, they prevailed upon her to fashion, with their input, Assembly Bill 1413, which prioritizes groundwater sustainability plans being pursued by state-sanctioned groundwater authorities over the findings and water-use allotments arrived at in water rights adjudication processes in state court, thus obviating the effectiveness of the water rights adjudication the Indian Wells Water District is pursuing in Orange County Superior Court.
The Indian Wells Valley Water District considers this to be a backhanded ploy, particularly since the district believes the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority has miscalculated both water use from, and water recharge into, the basin.
According to the latest Groundwater Authority report for 2024, total water use in the Indian Wells Valley is approximately 20,000 acre-feet annually. Major users include the China Lake Naval Air Station at 1,500 acre-feet of water per year, the water district at 5,500 acre-feet of water per year, farming operations at between 8,000 and 9,000 acre-feet per year, Searles Valley Minerals at 2,200 acre-feet per year, some 800 small well owners at about 800 acre-feet per year, plus a few hundred acre-feet for several small communities.
In its adjudication lawsuit, the water district hopes to establish the groundwater authority’s determined recharge of 7,650 acre-feet per year is scientifically unsound and that the amount of water coming into the basin on average is something closer to 14,000 acre-feet per year.
The water district is looking toward that discrepancy being resolved, with the Phase 2 adjudication trial to determine the recharge scheduled for June of next year. This is despite the consideration that the groundwater authority lobbied for and has a succeeded in getting a bill up for consideration in the California legislature, Assembly Bill 1413, that would deny the court the option to review the water district’s science, thereby cementing the groundwater authority’s recharge number as not challengeable in court.
Despite that, the adjudication process is continuing in Orange County Superior Court.
In its filings with the court, the Navy proposed that it be provided with an annual water use allowance/reserved use right of 6,783 acre-feet of water per year, along with 325 acre-feet per year for future golf course irrigation, as well as 200 acre-feet per year to ensure the survival of a rare fish, the tui chub, which lives on a portion of the base. This request was based on the testimony of its expert witness, Michael Bizon, as well as that of China Lake’s Commanding Officer, Captain Warren Van Allen, and another naval officer with oversight of the base, Rear Admiral Keith Hash.
Testimony for the Phase 1 adjudication trial was conducted over seven days between April 28 and May 14, 2025 before Judge William Claster, with primary participation by the United States government, Meadowbrook Dairy, the City of Ridgecrest and Searles Valley Minerals Inc. Following the trial, the parties filed comprehensive post-trial briefs.
The Navy contended that its federal reserved water right, i.e., the minimum amount of water necessary to accomplish China Lake’s primary purpose of weapons development and testing was nearly 7,000-acre feet per year. There was testimony that over the last ten years, as China Lake has continued its mission, it has used an average of 1,536 acre-feet per year. According to the Navy, its personnel living on the base would on an average day use 104.25 gallons of water. Judge Claster accepted that as a reasonable figure. While the base has been using on average of 1,536 acre feet of water per year going back for a decade, that quantity is a product of only a relative handful of those working at the base – 6 percent – currently living there. That is subject to change, as is the base’s mission, which under differing international or national security demands, could intensify at any time.
Captain Van Allen and Admiral Hash testified they were unaware of future mission growth plans at this time, acknowledging that no substantial growth is forecasted to occur at China Lake in the next four to five years. Despite that and the consideration the 6,783 acre-feet of water per year the Navy was seeking was more than four times the current usage level, the Navy said that allowance was appropriate and indeed necessary given the possibilities of future weapon development and testing programs being assigned to China Lake and a return to on-base housing levels of the 1970s notwithstanding the demolition of most such housing and current Department of Defense policy limiting on-base residences to military personnel.
Bizon, testifying in his capacity as the Navy’s expert witness, hypothesized that at some point in the future 80 percent of China Lake’s personnel and their dependents would eventually live on the base.
In the past, there was a substantial population living on the grounds of the China Lake Naval Air Station. In 1954, there were over 3,400 housing units at the base, including 2,227 residences, 946 dormitory/barrack spaces, and 249 trailers. The number of on-base family units stood at 2,916 in 1972. By 1980, on-base houses had fallen below 1,500, by 1990 the number was 818, and by 2004 there were less than 200 residences. At present, only 6 percent of those who work at the base live on the base, with approximately 94 percent of China Lake’s workforce living off the base, primarily in Ridgecrest. On-base housing at China Lake consists of 192 units for family housing, 192 beds for unaccompanied personnel housing, and 24 beds for “geobachelor” housing for service members living apart from their families. Many of those units and beds are vacant.
The Navy’s water needs include 75.5 acre-feet per year provided to the Sands Unified School District facilities on the base, and 20 acre-feet per year for the water needs of horses and burros kept at a Bureau of Land Management facility near the base. According to the Navy, included in its estimate of future water needs at the base is 380 acre-feet per year for future construction, 325 acre-feet per year to irrigate the nine-hole golf course and another 200 acre-feet per year for endangered species support.
Kern County and the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority joined in with Ridgecrest’s brief to the court, which held that the Navy should be provided with even more water than the military service is asking for at China Lake, 7,988 acre-feet per year. That number was derived from the amount of water used in 1970, the single highest year of water usage in the base’s 80-year history.
According to Searles, the Navy is entitled to no more than its most recent 10-year average of 1,644 acre-feet per year, consisting of 1,536 acre feet for all base uses plus 108 acre-feet reserved for firefighting.
Meadowbrook made a similar argument, but conceded through its expert witness that an increase to about 2,000 acre-feet per year was not unreasonable.
Based upon state water law and the customary practice in conducting water rights adjudications of utilizing a five-year survey of water use just prior to or at the time of the adjudication process, particularly given that all other water users in the basin were being subjected to the same standard, Judge Claster never appeared inclined to accept anything near the 6,783 acre-foot annual water use entitlement the Navy was seeking.
“In light of… potential future programs and the fact that an increase in on-base housing is unlikely, the court rejects the Navy’s proposed figure of 6,783 acre-feet per year for its reserved water right” Judge Claster wrote in his decision dated July 31. “The court concludes that the Navy’s federal reserved water right for China Lake is 2008 acre-feet yearly.”
Judge Claster said the allowance the Navy was being given for future water use was at best a guesstimate.
“In this sense, all parties are forced to speculate to a certain extent,” Judge Claster wrote in his July 29 tentative decision. “The Navy and Ridgecrest et al speculate about programs that might come to China Lake, while Searles and Meadowbrook (albeit to a lesser extent) essentially speculate that the volume of work will remain the same. In the court’s view, a number of factors support the notion that there is a reasonable likelihood that additional future programs will come to China Lake. The court is giving the Navy the benefit of the doubt given the overriding importance of its mission. But the same is not true when it comes to the likelihood of increasing the amount of personnel living on the base in future years. Indeed, not only does the evidence strongly suggest this will not occur, but it amounts to a second layer of speculation on top of the layer regarding future programs. While the court can live with that first layer, the second layer goes too far. There was no evidence suggesting that additional housing beyond the 16 houses currently on the drawing board will be built.”
Ridgecrest City Manager Ron Strand on the Ridgecrest Facebook page stated, “This ruling threatens the very foundation of water affordability in Ridgecrest and the ability for our community to grow and prosper. For years, the Indian Wells Valley Water District relied on 4,390 acre-feet yearly replenishment-free water transferred from the Navy’s unused water right to serve its off-base civilian workforce. In 2024, the water district pumped 74 percent of its total use in replenishment-free unused water. This exemption saved the water district—and its ratepayers—millions of dollars annually.”
Strand continued, “Now, with the court’s preliminary ruling in favor of a sharply-reduced federal reserve right for the Navy, that replenishment-free water supply is at risk. Unless overturned, the water district could be forced to purchase water, that it once pumped for free, from local big agricultural interests —forcing Ridgecrest residents and businesses to pay significantly higher water rates. This situation arose because the water district chose to file a comprehensive adjudication when it could have simply filed a lawsuit directly against the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority in challenge of the groundwater sustainability plan. A more narrow legal challenge would have allowed the water district to contest the plan, without opening the door to a full adjudication trial—a process that ultimately placed the Navy’s federal reserve right under legal scrutiny. What’s worse is that the water district has so far failed to publicly support the Navy in this legal fight—even though it stood to lose the most. It is now time for the Water District to reverse course and argue against this preliminary decision and support an appeal if it becomes final —for the benefit of its ratepayers and our community’s largest employer – the Navy.”

By Richard Hernandez & Mark Gutglueck
Late today, a three-judge panel with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s imposition of procedural complications for the Donald Trump administration’s mobile patrol strategy for effectuating mass deportations in seven counties in the south-central portion of California, including San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties.
The degree to which the ruling will impede agents with the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in their efforts to roll up foreigners who are in the country illegally, specifically ones in a large portion of Southern California where state authorities and local government employees have proven unsupportive and in some cases resistant to such operations, is not entirely clear. A key element of the ruling hinges on the use and interpretation of the term “reasonable suspicion,” which carries with it a subjective implication that the judges left undefined.
Throughout his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump made repeated commitments that he would, upon reelection, have his administration seriously commit to sealing the country’s borders and identifying, arresting and processing for deportation as many of the 18 million undocumented migrants he estimated were in the country as proved practicable. It was his intention and the intention of those advising him to prioritize California, where at least 2.2 of those undocumented aliens were believed to be residing and where the state and scores of cities had declared themselves to be sanctuaries for those failing to abide by U.S. immigration law.
Those in the Trump administration involved in immigration law enforcement, such as Tom Homan, understood the California Values Act, embodied in 2017’s Senate Bill 54, strongly discouraged or even prevented state and local law enforcement agencies from assisting federal Immigration and Naturalization and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and agencies in collaring those in the country illegally. They attributed this to the Democratic Party’s grip on California. The Democrats have supermajorities in both legislative houses in Sacramento and all of the state’s constitutional offices, from governor to lieutenant governor to state attorney general to secretary of state to state treasurer to state controller to superintendent of schools to insurance commissioner. Donald Trump and his key supporters have articulated their belief that the Democrats are mollycoddling illegal aliens because they are cultivating them as future members of the Democratic Party.
Homan, who served as the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement from January 2017 to June 2018 and was designated to be the “border czar” during the second Trump Administration, with others formulated a plan to engage in an illegal alien deportation blitz in those areas within the Golden State – consisting of no more than a half dozen extended communities – where the Republicans rather than the Democrats are in ascendancy. The plan called for obtaining the cooperation of the sheriffs and police chiefs in those regions, whom administration officials believed would be willing to engage in “workarounds” to the California Values Act by defining those in violation of U.S. immigration law as criminals. Plans on Homan’s desk called for arresting as many of the 127,681 individuals in San Bernardino County identified as illegal immigrants and a like number in Riverside County within the first two months of what was dubbed “Operation Alta California” that was due to begin on April 10. Administration officials believed that what was to be orchestrated in San Bernardino and Riverside counties would serve as a model for such cooperation between federal agents and local law enforcement agencies in California as Operation Alta California proceeded.
Just a few weeks before the aggressive undocumented alien round-up was to begin, however, both San Bernardino County Sheriff Shannon Dicus and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco threw a monkey wrench into the works by publicly announcing their departments would not cooperate with the federal agencies on the immigration enforcement issue because doing so might result in that portion of the population in their counties who are in the country illegally – more than six out of every 100 residents in each of the counties – ceasing to cooperate with law enforcement with regard to reporting on the proliferation of crime, no longer coming forth as witnesses or refusing to testify in court. President Trump and key members of his administration, having previously considered both the Republican Dicus and the Republican Bianco to be key allies, were discombobulated by their betrayal and were forced to reformulate the game plan for Operation Alta California, centering its initial phase not in the Inland Counties but rather in Los Angeles and postponing its kick-off by nearly two months.
Once operations were under way, federal agents encountered what was at first characterized as “light” resistance to the raids, a substantial number of which were carried out at workplaces – factories and production facilities – which federal officials had identified as employing substantial numbers of undocumented workers. Industries known to be heavily laden with migrant labor were targeted by federal officials as were places where day laborers, a work force recognized as being more than 97 percent foreign, congregate, such as parking lots in front of big box hardware stores.
In very short order, resistance to the federal immigration enforcement action hardened and grew more sophisticated. Making use of social media platforms, apps, encrypted messaging, maps tracking the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Department task forces’ locations, a network of communication was set up among and between those in the country illegally and immigration advocacy groups, which made use of digitized anti-detention programs, such as ICEBlock and the Rapid Response Network. These employed a succession of hotlines via phone numbers those in Southern California are able to call or text to report sightings of federal officers, primarily ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] officers. Those managing the hotline then relay word to hundreds, indeed thousands, of activists with whom they are affiliated through cell phone contact, giving precise instructions and directions to where ICE is setting up or involved in actions. Those activists in turn contact individual migrants to pass the information along, signaling them to leave or stay out of a specified area or building while the raid is ongoing.
The Mexican government created an app, ConsulAppContigo, to facilitate communications with Mexican citizens in the United States, allowing migrants to instantaneously contact consular officials and reciprocally allow consular officials to contact them, which was typically used when those Mexican nationals were confronted by Border Patrol or Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents or were taken into custody. The information exchange allowed consular officials to both contact the family members of those arrested and arrange for legal assistance.
By June 4, there were massive shows of public resistance to the raids, primarily in Los Angeles and Los Angeles County. Huge public protests materialized in the areas where workplace arrests were taking place or near federal buildings. This complicated the function of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Initially, federal officials were baffled by the rapid turnout of crowds and interference in their operations, but within days had learned about the anti-detention apps.
In addition to targeting specific sites identified ahead of time, Immigration and Customs Enforcement teams engaged in “roving raids” in which they patrolled the urban environment, on the lookout for individuals or groups of people who matched criteria associated with illegal aliens, making stops of them and taking them into custody if they could not offer documentation, proof, evidence or an indicator of U.S. citizenship.
According to civil libertarians and attorneys specializing in Fourth Amendment rights, such tactics skirted the U.S. Constitution, at least with regard to U.S. Citizens, whose rights are guaranteed under the Constitution, and in theory a violation of the rights of anyone in the country, whether they are here legally with visas or legal-residency-granting green cards or not.
Amidst the federal action, local law enforcement agencies, most notably those where the most intense enforcement was taking place – the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department – were desperately seeking to remain uninvolved, not lending assistance to the federal agents in carrying out the operations, even when civilians obstructed the federal agents or, in a handful of noteworthy cases, grew combative. In only a few circumstances where near riot or riot conditions had manifested did the law enforcement agencies make arrests. This led, initially, to the Trump Administration calling out the California National Guard to provide population control in the areas where the raids were being conducted. After the State of California filed a legal challenge to the use of the National Guard, the federal government deployed over 700 Marines from the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines stationed at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms to specific locations in Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Orange counties to “protect federal personnel and federal property in the greater Los Angeles area.”
Ultimately, after a careful evaluation of the tactics being used by the federal government and an examination of hundreds of arrests, the American Civil Liberties Union, Public Counsel, other groups and private attorneys selected the arrests of three immigrants taken into custody at a bus stop – Pedro Vasquez Perdomo, Carlos Alexander Osorto, and Isaac Antonio Villegas Molina – and a U.S. citizen – Jason Brian Gavidia – as well as a dual U.S./Mexican citizen – Jorge Luis Hernandez Viramontes – they could cite as constitutional test cases and brought suit against the government on July 2 in Los Angeles Federal District Court.
In the suit, the plaintiffs’ lawyers argued that blanket detentions and/or arrests are illegal and that laws relating to specific crimes, such as violating immigration statutes, cannot be applied broadly but must be applied against each defendant specifically, with a credible recitation of the crimes alleged to have been committed by the arrestee. Furthermore, the suit charged the government with engaging in racial profiling, and it asserted that agents of the government cannot make stops based on race or ethnicity, and they cannot “solely” use a person’s workplace, presence in a particular place or location or the work the individual performs as reason to make contact with him or detain him. According to the suit, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were either using those pretexts or claiming those constituted the probable cause or reasonable suspicion to stop and question individuals which in an overwhelming number of cases led to arrests and deportations.
The suit maintained that “masked” agents whose identities were unknown and could not be determined were “systematically” and aggressively cornering brown-skinned people throughout Southern California, utilizing force and intimidation, and taking to the ground those who attempted to leave or fled, arresting them without probable cause and without adequately documenting the grounds for doing so, thereafter incarcerating them in “dungeon-like” conditions without access to legal counsel or the outside world.
The immigration population in Southern California, according to the lawsuit, was “under siege” by agents of the federal government, including military personnel, heavily-armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and heavily-armed Border Patrol agents, many of whom were indistinguishable from one another as they were decked out in military-style clothing. Federal personnel were engaged in “indiscriminate immigration raids flooding street corners, bus stops, parking lots, agricultural sites [and] day laborer corners,” the suit maintained. It called upon the court to prohibit the federal government from its “ongoing pattern and practice of flouting the Constitution and federal law.”
The matter went before U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong at the U.S. District Courthouse in Los Angeles. Frimpong, an appointee of President Joseph Biden, conducted a hearing in which she heard from government lawyers who constructed what has been acknowledged by all sides as a “narrow” as well as “limited” defense of the government’s actions without raising central tenets of the Trump Administration’s immigration policy.
Representatives of the Trump Administration acknowledged the accuracy of a central element of the lawsuit, that Southern California is indeed “under siege,” but asserted those engaged in the occupation were not agents of the federal government but rather citizens of foreign nations.
Judge Frimpong questioned Sean Skedzielewski, counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the United States Department of Justice, as to what grounds the government was using to determine whom agents stopped and what constituted reasonable suspicion about those who had been arrested which justified detaining them and questioning them in the first place or otherwise targeting them.
Judge Frimpong pressed Skedzielewski to cogently refute that the government was indiscriminately or prejudiciously targeting individuals for deportation.
Skedzielewski was, however, tight-lipped when Judge Frimpong pressed him for specifics with regard as to what factors constituted “reasonable suspicion” that a particular individual arrested was an illegal alien. Without being specific, Skedzielewski indicated that no one had been arrested “solely” on the basis of their place of work, their presence in a particular place, their ethnicity or race, type of work, language or accent, while seeming to indicate a combination of those factors and more were taken into consideration.
“These are sophisticated operations,” Skedzielewski told Judge Frimpong and hinted at the government’s access to a whole range of investigative tools that were brought to bear in identifying specific individuals, who were targeted. Without stating so directly, Skedzielewski implied that in effectuating the arrests of those specifically identified as being in the country illegally, the agents were thereby brought into contact with others who fit a reasonable investigative profile of an undocumented alien. Skedzielewski purposefully avoided going beyond his references to sophisticated techniques to not compromise any of a host of technical means employed by government agencies.
When Judge Frimpong took issue with the lack of detail in the files for those who had been arrested, Skedzielewski obliquely begged off by stating that the different departments of the federal government had not had time to collate all of the data relating to the thousands of arrests that had taken place. He asserted that the lack of detail pertaining to the three illegal aliens who are plaintiffs in the suit was hardly reason for the government to issue a temporary restraining order limiting further operations.
Skedzielewski’s responses to those questions, as well as to Judge Frimpong’s inquiries relating to the federal government having delegated authority over Operation Alta California to two relatively low ranking government officials – Andre Quinones, a deputy field office director for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Kyle Harvick, an agent overseeing the Border Patrol office in El Centro – did not seem to satisfy her.
The federal government was not offering a sufficient response or refutation to the plaintiffs’ contention that those being arrested had been detained arbitrarily, and the recording of data relating to those arrests, the judge said, was skimpy at best. In normal state and federal criminal cases unrelated to immigration law, Judge Frimpong pointed out, the arrest record involves investigative/arrest reports in which law enforcement officer explain “why they arrested this person, how they happened to be where they were and what they did. There doesn’t seem to be anything like that here, which makes it difficult for the court to accept your description.” She said that made the plaintiffs’ contention that they were being targeted for arrest on unconstitutional grounds more credible.
Skedzielewski said the action taken by the agents, including the arrests, was properly documented and demonstrated that the federal government had complied with the law in both stopping those suspected of being in the country illegally and arresting them and that the agents had been entirely “above board” in conducting the operations.
Unwilling to compromise in open court the technical means Immigration and Customs Enforcement is relying upon to satisfy its internal standard of reasonable suspicion while those technical means are likely to be of use in future operations targeting illegal aliens, Skedzielewski made no further response.
In a tentative decision previewed on July 11 and finalized on July 12, Judge Frimpong ruled that using race, ethnicity, language, accent, physical whereabouts or employment as a basis for immigration enforcement runs afoul of the 4th Amendment and its prohibition barring unreasonable searches and seizures by the government. She said the available evidence indicated the federal government was engaged in racial profiling in that they were using race, the work people were engaged in, their location, and their language to form “reasonable suspicion,” to detain those arrested on charges of being in the country illegally.
Citing a “mountain of evidence,” Judge Frimpong said Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s actions violated the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures and the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process.
Her order was binding within Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.
She issued an order that such detaining cease forthwith and issued a secondary orders that those in custody at Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s downtown B-18 detention facility be given 24-hour access to lawyers and a phone line unmonitored and untapped by the government.
The Trump Administration appealed Judge Frimpong’s decision. It was taken up by the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. The matter was entrusted to a 9th Circuit panel of three justices, those being Judges Marsha S. Berzon, Jennifer Sung and Ronald M. Gould.
In making the appeal, the Trump Administration had requested a stay of Judge Frimpong’s ruling, asserting irreparable harm would ensue as the interruption of the government’s effort to locate and arrest illegal aliens would allow many dangerous individuals to evade capture and remain in the country.
Deputy Assistant Attorney General Yaakov Roth asserted that Judge Frimpong was in error in that the government had in all cases met the burden of abiding by the Fourth Amendment and that none of the arrests had been effectuated indiscriminately.
At a hearing on Monday July 28, Roth offered the government’s position that the operations were within the guidelines of the constitutional protections that all Americans enjoy, and he maintained that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were not acting arbitrarily in identifying suspects based on a host of criteria and information available to them, extending to race, ethnicity, language, location, and occupation. Like Skedzielewski when he was before Judge Frimpong, Roth did not before Judges Berzon, Sung and Gould reveal the technical means the government uses in conjunction with other identifying factors which may extend to race, ethnicity, language, location and the line of work engaged in by those ultimately targeted for detention, arrest and deportation.
Like Judge Frimpong prior to them, Judges Berzon, Sung and Gould concluded the Trump Administration was arbitrarily arresting those accused of being in the country illegally, violating the Fourth Amendment in the process. The three-judge panel upheld Judge Frimpong, rejecting the appeal. This included denying the Trump Administration’s request that Judge Frimpong’s ruling be stayed.
“Defendants have not shown that they are likely to suffer irreparable injury without a stay,” the panel’s ruling states. “If, as defendants suggest, they are not conducting stops that lack reasonable suspicion, they can hardly claim to be irreparably harmed by an injunction aimed at preventing a subset of stops not supported by reasonable suspicion,” the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel wrote. “We agree with the district court that, in the context of the Central District of California, the four enumerated factors at issue — apparent race or ethnicity, speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent, particular location, and type of work, even when considered together — describe only a broad profile and ‘do not demonstrate reasonable suspicion for any particular stop.’”
The panel’s 61-page decision reads in part, “In sum, defendants have not established that the district court’s order likely exceeded the district court’s authority to completely protect the named individual and association plaintiffs from the threatened injuries. In sum, we agree with the district court’s conclusion that a district-wide injunction is necessary ‘to provide complete relief’ to each of the stop/arrest plaintiffs ‘with standing to sue’—including the named individuals and associations. Because the district-wide TRO [temporary restraining order] is necessary to provide complete temporary relief to the plaintiffs with standing, we conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion by entering an order that applies throughout its district.”
Whether the ruling will, as many are concluding, end the widespread and intensive immigration enforcement activity the Trump Administration is engaging in throughout much of Southern California is not a given and may not even be likely.
Both Skedzielewski and Roth, respectively, conducted themselves before Judge Frimpong and the Judge Berzon/Judge Sung/Judge Gould panel such that they maintained that the Trump Administration was abiding by the Fourth Amendment in arriving at a level of reasonable suspicion before proceeding with detentions and arrests while not revealing the details of the methodology used to augment the information pertaining to the race, ethnicity, language, location and the line of work engaged in by those targeted for detention, arrest and deportation.
Of note is that during the hearing before the 9th Circuit panel, an exchange between Roth and Judge Sung took place in which Roth said, “Legally, I think it’s appropriate to use the [race, ethnicity, language, location and the line of work] factors for reasonable suspicion” and Judge Sung responded, “No one has suggested that you cannot consider these factors at all.”
In addition, the 9th Circuit panel in its ruling indicated that while the government could not rely solely on race, ethnicity, language, location and the line of work of those being targeted for arrest, those factors could be considered “as permitted by law.”
Thus, the Trump Administration has preserved its ability to detain, arrest and deport illegal aliens where the factors of race, ethnicity, language, location and the line of work of those being targeted are not considered in a vacuum.
One crucial factor added to the reasonable suspicion equation is data the government has extrapolated from secondary, tertiary and sometimes even fourth or fifth sources pertaining to those suspects. Included in that data is information provided to federal agents, inadvertently, by the suspects or their advocates themselves when, ironically, they are attempting to thwart the action of the federal agents or federal agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The government and law enforcement agencies, based upon prior case law, are at liberty to use cellphone interceptors or cellular tower simulators, such as the Stingray marketed by the Harris Corporation, to monitor cellphone or smart device communications. A Stingray or a cellphone interceptor mimics cellphone towers, receiving incoming or outgoing voice and text communications from cellphones. In this way, using such devices, federal agents can listen in on, monitor or read the unencrypted communications of anyone using a cellphone or smartphone. Under the precedent set in the case of Smith v. Maryland, government agencies do not have to obtain a warrant to utilize a cellphone interceptor or cellular tower interceptor.
In addition, this technology can be compounded with hook-ups to information processing systems or software using algorithms to evaluate or interpret the contents of the communications. Those algorithms can be set to pinpoint, highlight or prioritize for further analysis communications that pertain to subject matter that might relate to a particular topic. In this case, such a topic being prioritized for examination could be discussion of where Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are located in real time. That a cellphone user is in communication with a network tracking the whereabouts of immigration authorities could be reasonably interpreted, according to the Trump Administration, that the cellphone user is an undocumented alien.
Moreover, even if the known Immigration-and-Customs-Enforcement-agent-tracking network is using encryption, making the content of the communication taking place indecipherable, the fact that the cellphone user is actively linked to the network and using encryption can be reasonably interpreted, according to the Trump Administration, that the individual in possession of the cellphone is a migrant unregistered with the government.
Federal agents can also use global position data emanating from a phone linked to a known Immigration-and-Customs-Enforcement-agent-tracking network to track the whereabouts of the person in possession of the phone or otherwise utilize triangulation of the signals emanating from the phone to physically track or locate the individual in possession of that phone. The federal agents can use that data to formulate reasonable suspicion that a person at a particular location is an undocumented foreigner on American soil. In a circumstance where multiple individuals with phones that are linked to a known Immigration-and-Customs-Enforcement-agent-tracking network converge in one location, according to the Trump Administration, reasonable suspicion exists to conclude a business employing undocumented aliens is operating there.
In this way, efforts by the illegal immigrants or their advocates and supporters to assist those immigrants in avoiding detection and/or identification by the entities seeking their deportations can have the precisely opposite outcome of what was intended, arming the federal government with the legally-required basis upon which to effectuate those migrants’ arrests. Similarly, the wishful assumption that the July 12 ruling by Judge Frimpong upheld by Judge Berzon, Judge Sung and Judge Gould today will bring to a close the roving Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids of the last two months may likewise miss its mark.

Nine years after a previous Chino Valley Unified School District board majority sustained a definitive and what was for the district an expensive legal setback by testing the prevailing state/church separation standard that prohibits school prayer, the current school board majority is attempting again to imbue its proceedings with the aura of divine guidance.
The district filed a motion in the same forum, U.S. District Court, in which its practice of opening school board meetings with a prayer or invocation was rejected in 2016. The board, which has three members at present who were not in office in 2016, is pinning its hope for a different outcome on a substantial changeover on the U.S. Supreme Court and a slightly different tenor that panel has set with regard to public displays of religiosity in the interim.
One factor with regard to this matter in the Chino Valley that has not changed is the inspiration for the trend – the Reverend Jack Hibbs of the Calvary Chapel Chino Hills Congregation. Hibbs is a denominationalist, who holds that Christians have a duty to stand up for their beliefs by either running for election to public office themselves or supporting other Christians who do run, and then, upon taking office, Christianize public policy.
Beginning with the successful candidacy of Sylvia Orozco, a Calvary Chapel parishioner, to the school board in 2006, Hibb’s followed that up with the election of another Calvary Chapel attendee, James Na in 2008.
In 2012, a third member of Hibbs’ congregation, Andrew Cruz, was elected to the school board. Cruz, Na and Orozco, representing a religious trifecta that constituted a majority on the board, set about making significant inroads on the district’s policies.
A major milestone in this regard was making Bible study part of the district curriculum, as well as including benedictions at the beginning of the school board meetings and later, after Na became board president, outright evangelism from the district board dais, with Na telling those present at meetings that they should seek out Jesus Christ as their personal savior.
When the district began to move toward including daily prayer as part of basic instruction at the district’s schools, the Freedom From Religion Foundation of Madison, Wisconsin in 2014 stepped in and filed suit in Federal Court in Riverside against the district on behalf of two named plaintiffs, Larry Maldonado and Mike Anderson, and 21 unnamed plaintiffs who asserted they were alienated or intimidated at school board meetings because of the insistence of some district officials to engage in so-called Christian witnessing, including “prayers, Bible readings and proselytizing.”
A ruling on the Freedom From Religion Foundation lawsuit by Federal Judge Jesus Bernal resulted in overt religiosity and proselytizing within the district’s schools being eliminated in 2016. As a consequence of that ruling, the district had to reimburse the Freedom From Religion $546.70 for its cost in filing the lawsuit and cover its $202,425.00 in attorney’s fees.
Nevertheless, the Na, Cruz and Orozco voted for the district to appeal Bernal’s ruling to U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The Ninth Circuit ultimately upheld Bernal, which resulted in the district being responsible for another $75,680 of the Freedom From Religion’s legal fees with regard to the appeal.
In 2018, Orozco did not seek reelection and Christina Gagnier and Joe Schaffer were elected and thereafter joined with Board Member Irene Hernandez-Blair to form a board majority that countered Na and Cruz.
For four years, the denominationalists in the Chino Unified School District were one vote short of exercising the control over the district they had formerly. In the 2020 election Cruz and Na had been returned to office and Hernandez-Blair did not seek reelection. She was replaced by Don Bridge, who was as committed as was Hernandez-Blair to preventing a religious takeover of Chino Valley’s public schools.
Gagnier, an attorney, had aspirations of moving on to higher office, such as the state legislature and/or Congress. A politician in the mold of Congresswoman Katie Hill or Palm Springs Mayor Christy Holstege, Gagnier had the backing not only of local Democrats but those at the state and national levels, and she was a particular darling of the progressive establishment. She was being groomed to move up to Sacramento in conformance with the strictures of California’s term limits, from which perch she was to eventually launch her run for Congress. This plan was contingent upon her maintaining her status as an officeholder. In 2022, the Democrats, as the dominant party in Sacramento, joined forces to assist her in hanging onto her incumbency. California Superintendent of Public Schools Tony Thurmond, formerly a Bay Area assemblyman, was prominent among the Democrats campaigning on her behalf.
Despite the Democrats pulling out all, or most, of the stops in the effort to keep Gagnier in office, she ran head-on into Hibbs’ denominationalist political machine, which was militating to recapture the high ground it had occupied until the combination of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Judge Bernal, Hernandez-Blair, Gagnier and Schaffer had successfully obstructed it. The 2022 election did not go the Democrats way in the 2022 Chino Valley Unified School District election. Two further members of the Calvary Chapel Chino Hills congregation, Sonja Shaw and Republican Central Committee Member Jon Monroe, proved victorious, displacing Gagnier and Schaffer on the board.
That same year, the U.S. Supreme Court in considering the case of Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, in which a football coach challenged his having been disciplined for praying with members of his team on the field after games, in a 6-to-3 ruling dispensed with the previous standard, one embodied in the 1971 case of Lemon v. Kurtzman relating to such issues. Under Lemon v. Kurzman, laws could not have a religious intent, could not advance a particular religion but could not inhibit any religion either and could not promote government involvement in a particular. The Supreme Court, in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, indicated that in prohibiting the coach from praying with his players, the coach’s free speech rights might have been violated and that before prohibiting prayer straight out, a governmental entity should consider “historical practices and understandings” with regard to prayer in the particular community involved.
With Na and Cruz yet on the school board and their being joined by Shaw and Monroe, the school board last month week at last got around to rolling the dice to determine if the ruling in Kennedy v. Bremerton unwinding the controlling precedent in Lemon v. Kurzman will result in a different outcome than in 2016 and 2018.
At its July 17 meeting, the board, with Shaw and Monroe absent, discussed with the district’s legal counsel the retaining of Advocates for Faith & Freedom, a Murrieta-based nonprofit law firm specializing in issues relating to religious liberty to represent it with regard to what was generically described as “anticipated litigation.” No announcement of any action with regard to that matter was made that evening, but it was revealed that on Thursday, July 31, Advocates for Faith & Freedom, on behalf of the district, filed with the District Court in Riverside for relief from Judge Bernal’s 2016 injunction enjoining the board from permitting or endorsing prayers during meetings.
The district’s filing incorporates wording from the Supreme Court’s decision in the Kennedy v. Bremerton case, propounding that a majority of the board are intent on adopting a policy of kicking off the board meetings with an invocation or a prayer in keeping with the district’s “history and traditions.”
In a statement that minimized the degree to which the board as it was previously composed including Na and Cruz had virtually exclusively utilized Christian prayer as the board homilies, Shaw insisted that the district had “welcomed voices of all faiths without coercion or preference.” She said that secular “groups driven by political agendas” had straitjacketed the district into having “to abandon a unifying tradition,” namely prayer recitation. “We will not quietly surrender our right to reflect the values of our community and the freedoms our nation was built upon,” according to Shaw.
Robert Tyler, an attorney for Advocates for Faith & Freedom who was involved in 2016 and 2018 when the district policy was successfully challenged by the Freedom From Religion Foundation and lost on its appeal of Judge Bernal’s ruling, indicated the district this time will be hanging its hat on the reorientation the Supreme Court has made with regard to the subject of public religious expression in recent years.
Almost as soon as the filing was made, the Freedom From Religion Foundation indicated it will step up to oppose the district’s latest legal effort.

Two homeless women were mauled, one fatally, by pit bulls in San Bernardino on Thursday.
The attacks occurred proximate to the shantytown that formed along the chain-link fence barrier to East Twin Creek near Pacific Street and Perris Hill Park Road after city officials forcefully removed dozens of people who were living in Perris Hill Park in November 2024.
The dogs made a savage attack on the woman late in the afternoon on July 31. An emergency 911 call reporting the attack on one of the women was made around 5 p.m. and was patched through to the police department. Several units were dispatched to the scene.
The first of the officers to respond located one of the woman, believed to be the woman about whom the emergency call had been made. He summoned an ambulance and was attempting to tend to her wounds when two of the dogs that had been obscured by nearby vegetation emerged, moving quickly toward him.
The officer used his service firearm to shoot and kill one of the dogs, while the other scampered away.
Shortly thereafter, another woman, subsequently identified as 51-year-old Teodora Mendoza, was found nearby, with severe injuries to her face. She had lost a substantial amount of blood. She was transferred at once to St Bernardine Hospital, which was located roughly two-thirds of a mile away.
Despite the rendering of medical care, Mendoza succumbed to her injuries.
A series of events stretching back for more than a year and taking place at various locations, one as far as 2,610 miles away and another less than a mile distant, led to Mendoza’s demise.
On June 28, 2024 the U.S. Supreme Court’s entered a ruling in the case of the City of Grants Pass v. Johnson allowing local governments to be more ruthless in the way the homeless population is handled.
The Supreme Court’s final disposition of the City of Grants Pass v. Johnson matter essentially undid previous rulings in the 1962 case of Robinson v. California and the 2018 case Martin v. Boise.
In Robinson v. California, the Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment prohibits criminalization of a status, as opposed to criminalizing criminal acts, in striking down a California law that made being addicted to narcotics unlawful. By extension, this pertained to being homeless, such that it made applying traditional vagrancy laws difficult, problematic or even impossible. In this way, from that point on, at least until last year, an individual could not be prosecuted for being homeless.
In Martin v. Boise, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that city officials in Boise, Idaho could not enforce an anti-camping ordinance whenever its homeless population exceeds the number of available beds in its homeless shelters. The Ninth Circuit includes the nine western states and all of the Pacific Islands.
Both Robinson v. California and Martin v. Boise had the practical effect of preventing government in general and local governments in particular from declaring open warfare on the homeless. Whereas previously, before the Grants Pass vs. Johnson ruling, local officials had to walk a very fine line in evicting homeless from parks and other public areas, officials as of June 2024 have had a much freer hand in sending the homeless packing.
In the City of Grants Pass v. Johnson ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the punishments of fines, temporary bans from entering public property, and one-month jail sentences imposed by the City of Grants Pass on trespassers at its parks were neither cruel nor unusual and that that the Grants Pass’s anti-camping ordinances were neutrally applied against both the homeless and those who are not homeless. The upshot was that the Supreme Court held that local governments can ban the homeless from public areas.
This was of substantial significance in San Bernardino, where the homeless had established what was, for all intents and purposes, permanent residency there, living in tents or using other means such as sleeping bags laid out near the parks’ picnic tables to make it through the night and on to the next day and then the next and then the next.
The city first cleared the homeless from Secombe Lake Park and then Meadowbrook Park.
For years, city officials and many residents decried the homeless habitation of the parks, which many complained made city residents reluctant, unwilling and afraid to visit and make use of those amenities.
In October 2024, San Bernardino Mayor Helen Tran said the city would initiate the removal of homeless individuals from the Perris Hill Park as soon as it had two new homeless shelters in place. A month later, those shelters had yet to materialize, but officials impatient with the situation on Thursday, November 14, dispatched city employees, accompanied by police officers and employees of the Burrtec trash company, to begin forcefully evicting the remnants of the homeless population living in Perris Hill Park.
On that day, Mendoza was separated from the place she had for months off-and-on been calling home.
There were expressions of relief and accomplishment among a certain set of the city’s population over the homeless having been booted from the parks.
As an inducement to get many of the homeless to leave Perris Hill Park, officials offered them vouchers to stay at local motels or hotels. Based upon the Sentinel’s inquiries at the time, those dislodged from the park who accepted the offers of the vouchers were given respites from living under the stars for, in one case, three days, another for 10 days and a third for a week. A fourth person enjoyed a motel stay of eight days. Thereafter, all were again living under dire conditions in San Bernardino.
The homeless who left the parks took up lodging in areas nearby that proved as problematic as their presence in the parks. This included living in alleyways, abandoned buildings, in flood control channels, in and near riverbeds and creekbeds and under freeway overpasses.
Mendoza’s situation was not much different from those of others caught up in the inhumane conditions that come with living on the streets. Whereas previously, while she was among others while subsisting in Perris Hill Park, there would have been enough people in close proximity to her to, perhaps, have pulled a vicious dog that had locked its jaws onto her face, had such an attack occurred there. As it turned out, roughly a half-mile away from Perris Hill Park, in the area near Twin Creek where she had been reduced to dwelling on July 31, she found herself isolated just enough that when she had her final encounter with the dogs, there was no one there to save her.

A week after reports were abounding that Paul Cook was on the brink of resigning as First District San Bernardino County supervisor in order for former State Assemblyman and ex-Hesperia Mayor Thurston Smith to be appointed to that post, word now comes that the 82-year-old Cook is determined to remain in office until the end of his term in 2028 and is openly talking about running for reelection that year.
The Sentinel and other news outlets in July reported that Cook and others had engaged in considerable backroom maneuvering and political horsetrading involving other supervisors, high-level county staff and members of the committees and subcommittees of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee to make way for Smith to succeed him.
Cook, who was formerly the mayor of Yucca Valley, a California assemblyman and for almost eight years a member of Congress, left the U.S. House of Representatives in 2020 to run for First District San Bernardino County Supervisor. Based on his name recognition and the considerable amount of money in his political war chest, he was handily elected supervisor in 2020 and comfortably reelected in 2024.
Cook, who actually resides in the county’s Third Supervisorial District in one of the nicest homes in Yucca Valley, worked around the residency requirement in his run for First District supervisor by claiming he lived in the home of his designee as chief of staff, Tim Itnyre, who was the son of a fellow Marine with whom Cook served when he was a commanding officer at the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Base prior to his retirement from the military.
In recent years, Cook has faced health challenges, and episodic lapses of memory and lucidity. Nevertheless, his vote in support of the decisions made by the ruling coalition on a Republican-dominated board of supervisors that currently consists of himself, Second District Supervisor Jesse Armendarez, Third District Supervisor Dawn Rowe and Fourth District Supervisor Curt Hagman is considered important, and those on the fourth and fifth floor of the county administrative building at 354 Arrowhead Avenue in San Bernardino have been walking on eggs in an effort to keep from offending him. Nevertheless, there have been occasions in public, including at board meetings and during speeches he has made at open events where his “verbal eccentricities” have raised concerns.
To preserve the county’s political, administrative and managerial order, a move was afoot, the Sentinel was informed, since shortly after Cook’s reelection in March 2024, to make a smooth transition from Cook to some other Republican as the supervisor overseeing the county’s 10,063-square mile First District comprising just a tad over half – roughly 50.05 percent – of the county’s 20,105 square mile land mass and roughly one-fifth of the county’s 2.15 million residents. Cook’s successor, it was understood, would need to be at one with the shared agenda of Hagman, Rowe and Armendarez. It was widely represented that Smith, a now retired cement and concrete contractor who spent eight years on the Hesperia City Council and a single two-year term in the California legislature and goes by the nickname “Smitty” rather than his given first name of Thurston, had emerged as the person best suited to take over from Cook.
The political establishment believed having Cook vacate the supervisorial position mid-term and promoting a “safe” individual who would not obstruct or get in the way of the general direction the current board of supervisors is moving the county in would be preferable to having a number of unknown entities vie for supervisor, creating a circumstance in which the victor might prove unreceptive toward the ideas the current majority has with regard to how the county should be governed or, worse, hostile to those ideas or, worse still, a Democrat.
A plan, reportedly signed off on by San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee Chairman Phil Cothran Sr., was for Cook to resign later this year, for the board to decide to make a temporary appointment to fill the vacancy, to accept applications for the post from among First District residents, including Smith, and to then appoint Smith to the position, which provides its holder with a yearly salary of $194,806.47, another $37,133.02 in perquisites and pay add-ons, and $63,200.50 in benefits for a total annual compensation of $295,139.99. The board was also purposed to set a special election to choose someone to hold the post in the final two years that Cook had been elected to in 2024, running from December 2026 until December 2028. This would allow Smith to run for election to the post in the November 2026 election as an incumbent, which, it was calculated, would confer upon him an advantage that would likely result in his remaining in office.
When information about what was in the offing went public last month, it set off a wave of denials among officeholders, county officials and staff, higher-ups in the San Bernardino County Republican Party and Smith himself, who said his eye is on running from the California Assembly in 2026. Cook, it was reported, was talking about beginning preparations, some three years in advance for his 2028 reelection run.
“More fake news,” was a common refrain.
“You guys never get it right,” one politico said of the Sentinel, specifically. “Or if you do, it’s by accident.”
“Wrong again,” said another.
There were few people who wanted to speak on the record regarding Colonel Cook.
One politician whose résumé included service as an elected city council member and member of the board of supervisors among other elected posts, held an appointed commissioner position, no fewer than four joint powers authority directorships and has had a career within government that spanned from senior administration to overseeing government finances including a multi-billion budget, spoke to the Sentinel under the condition of anonymity.
The Sentinel, the politician said, had not gotten the facts wrong but had broken the information prematurely, before the changeover to Smith was to be actuated.
“I’m not sure of the timing,” the politician said. ”Word is that the Colonel was to leave as soon as everything was in place, and the leak of this information to the general public has thrown things askew. Paul is an honorable guy who has always been interested in doing all he right things, but as everyone has seen, at 82 years old, the comparisons being made between him and Joseph Biden are not that far off. There is a real question as to his fitness to serve as supervisor at this point. He has health challenges. It is legitimate to ask whether he was in any shape to be supervisor when he was elected in 2020. His staff runs the office, with very little input from him. That is not any different than with the other supervisors. The county supervisors’ staffs and the county CEO run the county. All of the supervisors are disengaged and have been that way going back ten years or more. They used to dominate the county transportation agency, but they’ve given that over to the mayors and council members. The supervisors have tremendous power, but to exercise that power, they have to work, work hard. There is a risk that something will go wrong if they take any initiative and they will end up in the doghouse. There is a slightly better chance something good will come of it and they’ll get glory. But no one wants to work that hard and no one wants to take any risk. Give me an example of one major proposal the board has made in the last decade. I can’t think of one. They’re engaged in housekeeping, keeping the county running, day-to-day and making sure they get reelected. That’s it. Paul is just like the rest of the board, except a little bit slower and even more disengaged.”
Cook has stayed out of trouble by doing, essentially, nothing, the politician said.
“He has two people, Tim Itnyre [his chief of staff] and Dakota [Higgins, his assistant chief of staff], who are competent guys, knowledgeable about the district and the way the county is run,” the politician said. “They are capable of looking after the interests of the district’s constituents and keeping most of them happy. They’re running the office. They’re in charge. They’re the First District supervisor, by proxy, if you will.”
Henry Nickel, who is currently a member of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee, served two terms as the Fifth Ward councilman with the City of San Bernardino, and captured the Republican nomination for Assembly in the 40th District in 2018, losing ultimately to the far-better financed Democrat, James Ramos.
Nickel was willing to speak on the record regarding Smith’s prospective replacement of Cook.
That talk among the county’s political elite has turned to easing Cook out of office is not surprising, Nickel said.
“Paul Cook had his moment, but he is getting up there in age,” Nickel sad. “He used to be really dynamic, animated, smart and on his toes. He is not as sharp as he used to be. He doesn’t have the energy or snappiness anymore. He is aloof. It was different when he was in Congress or in the Assembly. He was a leading Republican, but was never all that involved in the [San Bernardino County Republican] Central Committee.”
Replacing Cook with someone like Smith makes perfect sense, Nickel said.
“I have always liked Smitty,” Nickel said. “Everybody likes Smitty. He was successful in business, and he has learned the ropes of being in office. Smitty has been in the trenches. I have worked with him on so many levels. He is definitely someone everybody could work with. He’s just one likeable guy. He can reach across the aisle to the other side and get support. People can get enthusiastic about him. I don’t know if Cook has that kind of support. I don’t think Cook has had the kind of energy Smitty has since before he left Congress.”
Nickel said he wanted it clear that “I have nothing against Colonel Cook. Years ago, because of his experience and understanding of what was happening around the world and within our own country, and given his prestige, he was the right guy to send to Sacramento or elect to Congress. But how long does he or anyone want to keep going? At some point, everybody has to hang it up. You can’t just take the approach that you’re going to run out the clock. You don’t want to make it so you die in office. That is something that is uncomfortable to think about. If you have someone who is in office just to hang on just for the sake of hanging on and then they die, that will lead to instability. There comes a point where you step down and let the younger generation in there to do what they can. Selecting Smitty as the person to take over going forward just makes sense. You want someone who can keep the engine running, money flowing in and can excite the base. Smitty makes a lot of sense because he is someone who is cued in and energetic. In the central committee he is involved in fundraising. He is someone who can use his clout and vitality to advance the interests of our party and our county. If we were doing this as a job interview, I would hire Smitty.”
Nickel beamed, “Now, I think it’s time for someone like Smitty to step forward. Because of the political circumstance, Smitty fits the bill. I can support him, 100 percent.”

Big Bear Lake Councilman Randall Putz has confidently tossed his hat into the ring to succeed District 34 Assemblyman Tom Lackey, who will be termed out of the California legislature when his current term ends in 2026.
Putz’s hope that he can convince the voters of the district, which stretches across swathes of San Bernardino, Los Angeles and Kern counties, to send him to Sacramento to represent them contrasts with multiple phases of political reality, not the least of which is that his base represents only slightly more than one percent of the entirety of the district’s population. Moreover, outside the eastern San Bernardino Mountain communities, Putz has at best limited name recognition in the San Bernardino County portion of the Assembly district and is entirely foreign to the district’s voters in Los Angeles and Kern counties.
Beyond that, Putz, a lifelong Republican in a one of the few areas within California where Republicans yet predominate, inexplicably recently changed his party affiliation to Democrat. Within the 34th Assembly District, 44.49 percent of the  247,249 voters are Republicans and 27.7 percent are registered Democrats, with 4.82 percent belonging to the American Independent, Peace & Freedom, Green, Libertarian and other more obscure parties and 22.58 having no party preference.
In 2022, when the district was redrawn pursuant to the ten-year reapportionment/redistricting that followed the 2020 Census combining sections of what had formerly been the 36th District and 33rd District, Lackey, a retired career Highway Patrol Officer and Assembly incumbent representing the former 36th District since 2014 was thrown into a match against another Republican, then-33rd Assembly District incumbent Thurston Smith, who had been in office just a single term at that point. In that race, Lackey took home a 56.5 percent to 43. 5 percent victory, based largely on Lackey’s name recognition advantage over Smith with the voters in Los Angeles and Kern counties.
In that match-up, Smith within the San Bernardino County portion of the 34th District outpolled Lackey, garnering  35,676, or 52.39 percent of the 69,092 votes cast on the easternmost side of the district to Lackey’s 32,415 votes or 47.61 percent.
In Los Angeles and Kern counties, however, Smith, whose claim to political fame consisted of his eight years on the Hesperia City Council including two years as mayor, a short stint as a member of the Mojave Water Agency Board of Directors and his single term as a member of the California Assembly, was a virtually unknown commodity.
On the 34th District’s west and northwest side within Los Angeles and Kern counties, Lackey earned 31,425 or 71.53  percent of 43,931 votes cast there to Smith’s 12,506 votes or 28.47 percent.
When 2024 rolled around, Smith, fully conscious that not only were the numbers still against him but that Lackey held vaunted standing within the GOP, did not vie to return to the Assembly. That year, both the March open primary contest for the two top 34th Assembly District run-off positions in the November election and then the November General Election were limited to Lackey and Democrat Ricardo Ortega. Lackey gave Ortega a 65.71 percent-to-34.29 percent thrashing in March and then trounced him in the November contest  63.36 percent to 36.64 percent.
Meanwhile, Smith was biding his time, knowing that following Lackey’s 2024-to-2026 term, his sixth as a member of California’s lower legislative house, Lackey under California’s term limits could not run again, clearing the way for his re-entry into the statehouse.
The vision of Smith and his supporters, however, has been clouded by developments beyond their control, both on the west and northwest end of the 34th District and at the level of the statewide GOP. This exists in the personage and ambition of  Charles Hughes, a member of the Antelope Valley Union High School District Board of Trustees and a retired U.S. Navy veteran and California Department of Corrections lieutenant. Hustling hard, Hughes captured not only Lackey’s endorsement but that of California Assembly Caucus. i.e., 18 of the current 19  current Republican members the Assembly. Additionally, Hughes made a show of how intent he is on succeeding Lackey by collecting more than one quarter of a million in donations into his campaign war chest by June of this year.
While Smith and his support network, which extends to the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee and most of its members, are not, exactly, giving up, they recognize that they have a Herculean task before them that is going to require a well-oiled-and-maintained political machine firing on all eight cylinders. This approach means that Smith must succeed in capturing the vast majority of Republican votes on the San Bernardino side of the district, a fair smattering of the Democrat votes on the San Bernardino side of the district and that he has to make a better showing against Hughes in Los Angeles and Kern counties in 2026 than he did against Lackey in 2022. That is for Smith a difficult strategy in the face of Hughes’ showing of fundraising capability that will allow him to run an aggressive campaign, but one that is achievable. An assumption, however, was that no third candidate was going to get into the action and split the San Bernardino County vote with Smith.
Putz’s emergence as a candidate has really gummed up the works for Smith and the Republicans in San Bernardino County who feel that they should be the beneficiaries of their region’s Republican plurality and that one of their own – a San Bernardino County Republican – should be representing the 34th District in Sacramento, not someone from Los Angeles County, which currently is home to 25 of the California Assembly’s 80 members.
The anger at Putz among San Bernardino County Republicans is palpable. His motivation, for them, is simultaneously incomprehensible, absurd and enraging. For his abandonment of the Republican Party, he is perceived as a turncoat. As a Democrat, by virtually any handicapping yardstick that might be applied, his chances of winning are infinitesimal. If Ortega runs again, having two Democrats in the race would compound the odds against him. Putz’s limited base – consisting primarily of the 5,044 inhabitants of Big Bear Lake and the city’s 2,804 voters – when gauged against the 34th Assembly District’s 466,780 population and 247,249 registered voters, severely compromises his electoral viability. Four years ago, Putz’s Big Bear Lake City Council colleague, Rick Herrick, provided an illustration of the futility that surrounds Putz’s council run when he sought, unsuccessfully to capture the 33rd Assembly District seat in the last election before the merging of portions of the 33rd and 36th districts into the 34th. Herrick, a Republican in what was the equally-heavily Republican 33rd found himself at a disadvantage to Smith, who hails from Hesperia, which at that time had a population of 99,818, virtually 20 times that of Big Bear Lake. The question many want to ask Putz is this: If the Republican Herrick from Big Bear Lake could not beat Smith in the Republican-heavy 33rd District, how now does the Democrat Putz think he can beat either Smith or Hughes in the Republican-heavy 34th District, when nearly 39 percent of the voters in the district reside in Los Angeles and Kern counties?
To a vast number of the San Bernardino County Republicans focused on questions of governance and politics extending to the struggle between the two major parties that has been going on in Sacramento since shortly after California became a state, Putz is a traitor whose true aim is to serve as a spoiler who is working to ensure that a good portion of San Bernardino County consisting of the major part of its mountain communities and a good part of its desert is represented by a politician who is closer to Los Angeles than he is to San Bernardino.
Putz acknowledges none of that, and he blithely celebrates himself as a new breed of bipartisan politician, who is seeking to rise above the bickering of the Democratic/Republican divide.
As what was once a seemingly dyed-in-the-wool Republican who has swung leftward into being a Democrat, Putz suggests
A former Republican turned Democrat, Putz said he has a unique perspective on serving the 18,000-square-mile 34th District, which includes all of Bear Valley, as well rural areas of San Bernardino and portions of Kern and Los Angeles counties.
He is less focused on what is dividing Republicans from Democrats, Putz insists, than the issues of importance to the mountain-and-desert-dwelling population of the 34th District, people who live in an environment that is more rustic and rural than urban. He is one of the “Good Country People,” as someone such as Flannery O’Connor might have put it, rather than one of those city slickers. He’ll be the voice of the redheaded and neglected countrified folk, California’s forgotten stepchildren, when he gets to Sacramento, according to Putz.
“I’m a fighter,” according to Putz. “I feel a deep obligation to use my experience and abilities to serve the people of Assembly District 34. We need to make sure our voices are heard, resources come our way, we move forward together, and build the future our region needs and deserves. For the past 25 years, I have lived, worked, and built my life in this region. I’ve spent 16 years in local and regional government leadership, solving problems and working with people from all walks of life to get things done. Now, I want to take that experience to Sacramento to fight for our fair share and bring meaningful change to our district.”
Despite having reinvented himself as a Democrat, Putz sometimes has difficulty unbinding himself from his Republican roots. He owns a niche retail establishment that caters to bird lovers, selling bird feeders, bird seed and related merchandise. As an entrepreneur himself, he has an especial sensitivity to the things that make a business work, the red tape and regulation or over-regulation that can make a business fail and the challenges in the private sector, an orientation that has led him to serve, as a member of the city council who was elevated for a time to the appointed mayor’s spot, as a voice for the business community in Big Bear. In Big Bear, the business community is, in major measure, the tourism industry, including some highly profitable out-of-state corporations. In this way, Putz’s personal and political identity is wrapped up in the advancement of business interests, those of his own and those of others, of small mom-and-pop retail or service providers, mid-size operations or corporate behemoths. When issues before the Big Bear Lake City Council that involved balancing the profitability of a business against the quality of life of residents, Putz on more than one occasion sided with those who had invested or risked money to make money. In this way, his conversion into a Democrat is not entirely convincing. He has spoken about preserving nature and land and the wilderness, which in the 34th District means the forest and the desert. Still, in those instances where business interests come into direct conflict with the conservation of land and the protection of the species that live upon it, such as when development is to occur on property occupied by desert tortoises (Gopherus agassizii or Joshua trees (yucca brevifolia) or Mohave ground squirrels (Xerospermophilus mohavensis) or bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) or San Bernardino bluegrass (Poa Atropurpurea) or California dandelion (Taraxacum californicum) or Johnston’s rock-cress (rabis johnstonii) or Bear Valley sandwort (Arenaria ursina) or as-grey Indian paittbrush (Castillegja cinerea) or southern mountain wild buckwheat (Eriogonum kennedyi var. austromontanum) or Hidden Lake bluecurls (Trichostema austromontnum ssp. compactum), Putz has retroceded, backing off or backpedaling from the characteristic Democratic endorsement of strict environmental protection or ecological prioritization, suggesting that “common sense” or “realistic” principles should be applied so that some order of compromise between on one end the developmental imperative, the expansion of a ski lodge/resort or a moneymaking venture and on the other end the protection of the environment can be effectuated.
Interestingly, while he has donned the identity and outer trappings of a Democrat and even though this aligns him with the party that has a supermajority in both houses of the legislature and which occupies every constitutional office in California’s state government from governor at the top down through lieutenant governor, state attorney general, state controller, secretary of state, state treasurer, superintendent of schools and insurance commissioner, he yet decries his new party’s dominance, which is leading at least some to question whether his political transformation is a genuine one, whether he is actually on the Democratic Team, whether he is malingering and is a Republican agent who is trying to insinuate himself into the Democratic ranks or if he is merely engaged in an effort to advance himself electorally.
Of the system in Sacramento where his new party has control, Putz offers the assessment that “It’s broken. Our democracy thrives on balance—balance of power, balance of ideas, balance in solving problems that impact the lives of everyday Californians. But for years, we have drifted further from that balance, slipping into deeper polarization, resentment, and disengagement. Extreme politics, media bubbles, and divisive algorithms are keeping us stuck. And yet, despite these challenges, we remain one of the longest-standing democracies in the world. That is something worth fighting for.”
He continued, “Pegging people on one side or another is a big part of our problem. No one is all red. No one is all blue. We are all a little purple. The extreme political swings of recent years have only served to stall progress, deepen divisions, and make governing harder. It’s time to restore balance. We need to move away from the unhealthy extremes and return to reasonable compromise—where real solutions are found. The current culture of polarization is manufactured for selfish gain, and in the end, it’s the people who lose. I will work to find common ground, bridge divides, and focus on what unites us rather than what separates us. We need to turn off the noise, step away from social media outrage, and get back to governing with purpose.”
He will be both an old fashioned and a new age politician from here on out, Putz vowed.
“I will work to ensure our region gets the resources it needs, that we solve problems in a bipartisan way, and that we make real progress,” he said. “I will keep lines of communication open, check in with the people I serve, and ensure that policy decisions reflect the realities on the ground.
Putz took aim at the enemy of the people – the press – whom he accused of utilizing disingenuous means such as artificial intelligence to try to fool them by telling them what to think.
“It’s time to move beyond the distractions, break free from the grip of media algorithms and talking heads, and reconnect with the real needs of our communities,” he said. “Because good governance starts with being present, engaged, and accountable. And that is exactly the kind of leadership I will bring to the State Assembly.”
Putz said his formula for success as a politician is to “listen, unite [and] serve. Good leadership starts with listening. Too many people feel unheard and unseen by their government, and I want to change that. I will work to increase civic participation and ensure that all voices—especially those different from my own—are heard and considered with empathy and respect. Listening is not just a task to complete; it’s the foundation of strong representation. I have always made it a priority to meet with anyone who wants to talk, to gather data, and to stay connected with my community. Because when people feel heard, they engage. And when they engage, we build a stronger, more effective government. Governing isn’t about rhetoric—it’s about action. I believe in rolling up my sleeves and making things happen. I will work to ensure our region gets the resources it needs, that we solve problems in a bipartisan way, and that we make real progress. I will keep lines of communication open, check in with the people I serve, and ensure that policy decisions reflect the realities on the ground.”
-Mark Gutglueck

By Phill Courtney
Every year, around the Fourth of July, my wife and I, along with the many dogs we’ve had, must go through those nerve-shattering sieges of blasts in the night, supposedly celebrating the independence of our country. Now I say “around,” because this annual ordeal isn’t just on the Fourth, but, lately, seems to have started much earlier than that, while often extending a number of days afterwards, becoming particularly noticeable starting in 2020—the first year of COVID—when statistics show that sales of fireworks basically doubled.
Of course, we know that we’re not the only pet owners who’ve had to endure these terrible trials, and while, yes, in the words of that old aphorism: misery loves company—that doesn’t mean it still isn’t misery.
This year was a little different, though, not because there were less fireworks, but because I wasn’t here this July 4th to comfort our two canines. A long-time friend, whom I’ve come to regard as my “honorary kid sister” since I’ve known her since she was twelve, had asked me (and my wife) if I could spend a week with her in Ohio, and the tickets she offered to pay for were cheaper if I was willing to fly on the 4th. I was, which resulted in a “first” for my life: seeing many of the sparkling shows from above as we descended into Columbus.
This doesn’t mean, though, that I avoided the siege entirely, since a number of what seemed to be M-80 explosions went off in our neighborhood before I’d left. Meanwhile, as for the evening of the 4th itself, my wife was home dealing with a hysterical female husky, who, she told me later, slipped into our shower to hide, then tore up the curtain with her paws. Thankfully, though, our male lab did somewhat better this yar.
Now I tell you all this as a way to bolster what I’m asserting here: that it’s way past time to phase out fireworks in favor of the several alternatives that are finally coming into fashion as many of the “negatives” associated with both professional firework shows and those “safe and sane” home versions (which, many times, are neither), continue to make the news.
Yes, as we’ve seen above, and as many of us know first-hand, fireworks and pets just don’t go together, especially when they run off and are killed in traffic. But there’s also the human toll to consider as well, with many people dying in accidents every year.
For instance, firework factories ignite on a fairly regular basis, with hundreds of deaths in diverse countries throughout the world, many in India and Mexico, and while we’d like to think that this is basically only a problem in countries with lax safety standards, it’s a problem here too throughout the U.S.
One of the most recent examples happened in the Sacramento area just this past July 1st, when an unlicensed fireworks warehouse, the ironically name Devastating Pyrotechnics, went up in flames, taking seven employees along with it, while a house storing fireworks (again illegally) in Ontario in March of 2021, went up, killing two on the site, with millions of dollars of damages to surrounding homes.
Another one of the more bizarre local firework incidents happened in September of 1987 in Rialto and I was personally involved in the extent that I heard it. But what set that explosion apart was this: it was not an accident.
It happened in the early morning hours while I was sleeping at my apartment complex in the eastern part of Riverside. Suddenly there was a jarring air blast outside that reverberated impressively throughout the entire auto courtyard below.
Only later, after I’d checked the news, did I discover what had happened. Apparently, a man, who worked at a fireworks factory in Rialto, was experiencing some dissatisfaction in his relationship with a woman and decided to show her just how dissatisfied he was by “going out with a bang”—a bang she’d never forget.
So, he called her and told her to look out the window at a certain time in order to see a sight showing her just how unhappy he was. Then he set off the entire factory and that was the sound I heard.
Fortunately, unlike a lot of men, he didn’t feel the need to kill his lady-friend first in a murder/suicide, nor involve anyone else in his dramatic act (the factory was empty at the time), so it was just him and that memorable sight for his girlfriend.
Shortly after that, and partly because I’d heard it at my location some 15 miles away, my then girlfriend (who was asleep next to me at the time but didn’t hear it) and I were curious, so we drove over to see the site of the explosion for ourselves (with her two young children in tow). Fortunately, it was an area that was mostly industrial, with just a few scattered homes, so the neighborhood damage was minimal. Most memorable for me were the large chunks of concrete that had been blasted sky high and then fell into the surrounding streets.
Besides these incidents, there’s also been a long, sad list of firework disasters at, among others, nightclubs; religious ceremonies; and wedding celebrations. In 2013 a nightclub firework accident killed 242 in Brazil; while unlicensed fireworks at a Hindu temple in India set off a conflagration that killed 111 in 2016. In the U.S., one of our most infamous was the 2003 Station nightclub fire in Rhode Island that killed 100 partiers when pyrotechnics adjacent to the rock band performing, ignited flammable acoustic ceiling panels.
Recently, one the ghastliest incidents of all (perhaps because it was captured on video) was the September 2023 fire at a wedding in Iraq when yet more fireworks set to shoot towards the ceiling as the couple took their first dance, immediately ignited flammable decorations displayed above. Although the couple survived, what should have been their joyous day was forever tainted by their 107 guests who did not.
Besides all these spectacular incidents, the many rather mundane injuries and some deaths that result from “safe and sane” firework accidents each year should be mentioned, as well as the wildfires they occasionally set off. In August of 2017, my wife and I had just driven through the Columbia River Gorge on our way to see the total eclipse of the sun that August, when a knuckleheaded 15-year-old and his friends playing with fireworks during that summer’s “no burn ban” (one of whom videotaped it, leading to his arrest) set off a wildfire several weeks later that burned for three months and cost millions to contain.
Which is not to say that I didn’t have my own knuckleheaded days as a teenager myself. For several years we went over from Corona to some family friends in Fontana (where fireworks were legal) to set off our own, including, of course, sparklers, Piccolo Petes and other devices, some of which went off unexpectantly one time in a bucket, causing much excitement, while on another Fourth, some other celebrants across a dry field, set it on fire. Fortunately, the Fontana fire department was ready.
Another memorable occasion was the time I and a friend, who’d managed to come into possession of an M-80, decided to drive up into an unpopulated canyon above Upland and set it off. We then quickly ran, and I’ll never forget how the explosion reverberated throughout that canyon.
M-80s, by the way, do not, as the long-time urban myth holds (which I’d always believed until I researched this column), equate to a fourth-of-a-stick of dynamite, since dynamite consists of different chemicals.
Despite these incidents and a few others like them, I managed to avoid any teenage injuries myself, but one of my two younger brothers was not so fortunate, having injured an eye (while a friend blistered his hand) in our own backyard when what’s called a “cherry bomb” went of prematurely after the fuse failed. In one of my wiser teenage decisions, I’d opted out for once, advised them not to do it, and then went inside before I heard the explosion.
Finally, one more negative outcome from firework displays that should be mentioned is one that often goes unrecognized: the air and even ground pollution they create. The chemicals, which range from antimony sulfide to even arsenic, are dispersed by both smoke in the air, and in ground particles.
Although some firework advocates argue that the effect are negligible, there’s no denying that millions of dollars of valuable chemicals go up in smoke every year, and have led to some debates about fireworks in places like Lake Arrowhead, and their blast affects not only on pets, but on the beloved eagles nesting there, along with the chemical residues that coat the lake afterwards. The carbon dioxide and monoxide that fireworks release can also trigger attacks in people with asthma.
Now, with all this said, the question remains: where do we go from here? And, fortunately, there are a number of alternatives to fireworks that can been seen on the internet. Although there are what is known as “silent fireworks,” they still release chemicals, so much more promising for public displays are the evolving technologies of drone and laser beam shows, which many cities are already switching over to.
These shows have the advantage of both eliminating pollution, but also the nerve-shattering blasts which opened this piece—like the ones that not only sent our husky into the shower and then under the bed but also drive me up the wall.
That takes care of the official shows, but what about those blasts that seem to come from all directions and from just down the street? and that’s a much more challenging problem because they continue to happen despite being banned for many years here in Redlands and in other municipalities, with rather stiff fines when “firework fools” are occasionally found and fingered.
Aye, but there’s the rub, as Shakespeare would say, and I once talked to our city’s former police chief about the problem, and he acknowledged how difficult that is. Authorities are working on it though, with some cities not only employing drones in shows, but also for surveillance to “smoke out” (so to speak) those thoughtless morons who seem to possess no empathy at all for pets and their owners.
Finally, I also had another simple reason I wanted no fireworks this Fourth of July: considering what’s been going on in this country lately, I don’t think we deserved them. Instead, I stand ashamed as millions of Americans continue to trash what those brilliant men in 1776 attempted to establish. But that’s another column for another day, so I’ll just leave it at that.
Instead, let me ask you to communicate with lawmakers and other community leaders, urging them to work on phasing out fireworks. For all the reasons mentioned above, it’s well past time, both for people and for pets, like our sweet and loving, lady husky, shivering under the bed.
***
Phill Courtney has taught high school English and was a candidate for Congress twice with the Green party in Riverside County. His email is: pjcourtney1311@gmail.com

By Natsume Sōseki

Over the wintry

Forest, winds howl in rage

With no leaves to blow.

FBN 20250006062
The following entity is doing business primarily in San Bernardino County as
RISEWELL COACHING AND CONSULTING
[and] RISEWELL COACHING
[and] RISEWELL
[and] RISEWELL EXECUTIVE COACHING
18265 LAPIS LN SAN BERNARDINO, CA 92407: PATRICIA J TUCKER
Business Mailing Address: 18265 LAPIS LN SAN BERNARDINO, CA 92407
The business is conducted by: AN INDIVIDUAL
The registrant commenced to transact business under the fictitious business name or names listed above on: January 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/ PATRICIA J TUCKER, Principal
Statement filed with the County Clerk of San Bernardino on: 07/01/2025
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 J99653
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 4, 11, 18 & 25 and August 1, 2025.

FBN 20250005892
The following entity is doing business primarily in San Bernardino County as
RIVERA’S ROLLING SUDS
6985 GROVE AVE HIGHLAND, CA 92346: JUAN C RIVERA
Business Mailing Address: 6985 GROVE AVE HIGHLAND, CA 92346
The business is conducted by: AN INDIVIDUAL
The registrant commenced to transact business under the fictitious business name or names listed above on: June 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/ JUAN C RIVERA, Owner
Statement filed with the County Clerk of San Bernardino on: 06/24/2025
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 J6733
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 4, 11, 18 & 25 and August 1, 2025.

FBN 20250006129
The following entity is doing business primarily in San Bernardino County as
MAYA’S STORY LAND
6571 BRIGHTON PL RANCHO CUCAMONGA, CA 91737: NICOLE McPHETRIDGE
Business Mailing Address: 6571 BRIGHTON PL RANCHO CUCAMONGA, CA 91737
The business is conducted by: AN INDIVIDUAL
The registrant commenced to transact business under the fictitious business name or names listed above on: June 17, 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/ NICOLE MCPHETRIDGE
Statement filed with the County Clerk of San Bernardino on: 07/02/2025
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 J6733
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 4, 11, 18 & 25 and August 1, 2025. Continue reading →