Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Former Rialto Police Officer gets 6 years 8 months in Prison for Sex Acts with Teen Reletive.. By Lori Fowler Staff Writer.

Former Rialto police officer gets 6 years, 8 months in prison for sex acts with teen relative

Posted: 03/28/2013 03:26:13 PM PDT

Updated: 03/28/2013 03:41:00 PM PDT

RANCHO CUCAMONGA -- A former Rialto police officer was sentenced to more than six years in state prison Thursday for committing a series of sex acts with a teenage relative.
Theodore Ralph Fernandes, 51, of Fontana took a plea deal in February and pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual penetration against the victim's will and one count of lewd acts on a child age 14.
As part of the agreement, Fernandes also received two strikes and will have to register as a sex offender. Prosecutors said Fernandes was facing more than 40 years if he had gone to trial.
The victim first reported the crimes -- which were committed between 2002 and 2006, according to a criminal complaint by the San Bernardino County District Attorney's Office -- early last year. Fontana police began investigating and spent several months completing the case due to its complexity, police said.
Around that time, Fernandes was put on administrative leave from the Rialto Police Department. He resigned later in the year following 17 years of law enforcement experience. Fernandes was arrested in May after he turned himself in at the Fontana police station. He was originally charged with 20 counts of sex crimes. The 24-year-old victim, who was 14 when the crimes began, was not at Thursday's sentencing inside the West Valley Courthouse in Rancho Cucamonga. But she wrote a letter to the court, which was read by a victim advocate.

"I feel that even a lifetime sentence would never be punishment enough," the victim wrote. "I am satisfied though with the fact that Fernandes plead guilty and is serving time for what he did. The fact that he has to now take responsibility for his actions and reap the consequences that he thought he was above serving is justice enough for me. "

According to the probation report, Fernandes first requested sexually explicit pictures of the victim, who is identified as Jane Doe, and made inappropriate comments when she was 13 years old. That escalated to oral sex and other sex acts and eventually intercourse between the two.

Jane Doe told officials she allowed the incidents to happen because she was afraid of Fernandes and wanted to protect her family.

She also provided officials with 15 emails between herself and Fernandes that indicated an inappropriate relationship between the two, according to the probation report.

Though he had the chance, Fernandes, who was wearing a protective custody jumpsuit at the sentencing, did not address the court.

But outside the courtroom, Fernandes' family spoke for him.

"He didn't do anything illegal," said Patty Fernandes, Fernandes' sister.

Patty Fernandes called the victim a liar and added that there was no physical evidence.

Other family members said there was never any indication of sex acts going on between Fernandes and the victim, which is why they didn't believe her reports.

Following the sentencing, Jane Doe's father said his daughter is doing well and wants to move on.

"We're glad it's over, but we wish he would have gotten more time," he said.

Reach Lorivia emailor call her at 909-483-9378, or find her on Twitter@IEcourtsNow

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Rialto Police Cleared in Non-Fatal Shooting by Melissa Pinion-Whitt.. The San Bernardino County Sun Staff Writer

Rialto police cleared in non-fatal shooting

ByMelissa Pinion-Whitt, The (San Bernardino County) Sun

Posted: 03/28/2013 12:36:54 PM PDT

Prosecutors on Thursday cleared three Rialto police officers in the February 2012 shooting of a 24-year-old Rialto man.
The San Bernardino County District Attorney's Office said Officers Glen Anderson, Mike Martinez and Javier Pulido were justified when they opened fire on Huston Leron Parker because he pointed what they suspected was a gun at them.
Parker was actually armed with a replica gun. He survived the shooting.
Police came to a cul-de-sac in the 100 block of East Jackson Street on Feb. 8 after receiving a call about a man holding a gun and shooting at a car.
Officers later discovered that Parker called the police and armed himself with the replica gun. They found a note in his car with statements that indicated he wanted to commit "suicide by cop," prosecutors said in their report.

Reach Melissavia emailor call her at 909-386-3878.
Get the latest crime and public safety news on Twitter@IECrime.

Friday, March 15, 2013

Lawmakers Question $5.5 Billion Loan for Vegas Train is conntrolling spending? March 14, 2013 by Cowboy Byte.

Lawmakers question $5.5B loan for Vegas train is controlling spending?

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Cowboy Byte

While the Transportation Department warns that the sequester will lead to cutbacks causing snarled lines at airports across America, the agency is still considering a massive $5.5 billion government gamble on a high-speed train from suburban California to Vegas.

The total cost of the XpressWest project is $6.9 billion, with 80 percent potentially being fronted by the federal government. It would create a train that runs from Victorville, Calif., to Las Vegas and, if green-lighted, would be the largest loan of its type issued in America.But there are severe roadblocks, which skeptical lawmakers are once again drawing attention to at a time when the government is supposed to be looking for savings.

“We are deeply troubled by the prospects of subsidizing another costly, wasteful and risky high-speed rail project, particularly when our nation is facing a debt crisis that threatens the well-being of the current and future generations of Americans,” Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., and House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., wrote in a letter to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood on March 6.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/03/13/lawmakers-question-risky-55b-loan-for-high-speed-vegas-train-amid-sequester/#ixzz2NTMZgVK1

Read more: http://cowboybyte.com/19953/lawmakers-question-risky-5-5b-loan-for-high-speed-vegas-train-amid-sequester-cutbacks/#ixzz2Nb2RNSeu

BS Ranch Perspective:

The way that I look at it, is that I cannot believe that the Federal Government is still considering a High Speed Train to Sin City from Los Angeles... The only people that I can see trying to get this passed is those that own or run a Casino in Las Vegas!! Other then that why would we need this train?? After all ifyuou want to Gamble in Southern California all you have to do is go to almost any Indian Reservation and gamble away!! The benefit is much better since the money that is taken by the Indian Reservation is used to better their own people.. the People in Las Vegas better just keep working on advertising for LA. Customers and stop the milking of government for things that is not needed!!

BS.Ranch...

Friday, February 22, 2013

MacKay: What made this funeral resonate with strangers? Press Enterprise Feb. 22, 2013

Home > Local News > Special Reports > Dorner > Dorner Headlines

MACKAY: What made this funeral resonate with strangers?

COMMENTARY: A hero's funeral is a heart-wrenching goodbye and a release of tension and fear

STAN LIM/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon gives the eulogy during funeral services for Detective Jeremiah MacKay on Thursday, Feb. 21,at the San Manuel Amphitheater in Glen Helen.

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BY JAN SEARS

STAFF WRITER

February 22, 2013; 08:28 PM

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For some of us who watched San Bernardino County Sheriff's Detective Jeremiah MacKay's funeral on television and didn't know him personally, the moment that tore at our hearts was the mass bagpipe tribute.

The 130 or so pipers on the San Manuel Amphitheater stage played as one, their mournful drone punctuated by heavy drum beats and concluding with an eerie final blast of sound.

Others were brought to tears by the video tribute – hundreds of photos of a smiling, laughing man who clearly loved his life, his family and his work.

The photos were poignant enough, but then, when the tribute ended, the camera focused on MacKay's father in the audience, utterly unstrung and doubled over in grief.

Just minutes earlier, Alan MacKay had spoken calmly and eloquently about his son. He told stories about his young "adrenalin junkie" climbing the 11,500-foot Mount San Gorgonio at age 4, learning to ski at age 6 and later deciding against following in his father's footsteps as a firefighter because that career was "kind of boring."

Some were torn by the sight of San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon on his knees in front of Lynette MacKay, comforting her as he presented the flag that had been on her husband's casket. Or by the End of Watch announcement in which MacKay's call sign – 14D2 – was announced three times, with pauses between as if waiting for him to respond. That one still gets me, right in the throat.

What was it about that service that resonated so strongly, even among those of us who never knew him?

Of course there's the sorrow that a community experiences whenever it loses a protector. That was evident at the funeral of Michael Crain, 34, the Riverside police officer gunned down by an evil force that he most likely never saw coming.

The man most of us would have seen as just a guy in a uniform driving a black and white patrol car became someone we might have wished we had known after we heard his widow, friends and brother speak about their lives together. About how he loved his babies, his hash browns, his wife and buddies.

I think MacKay's funeral reverberated even more strongly among strangers because it was the final episode in the good vs. evil drama that has been playing out in the Inland region since Feb. 7.

That was the night Crain and his partner were ambushed by a former Los Angeles Police Department officer, just a few minutes after the rogue officer had shot at police in Corona and a few days after he had killed a young couple in Irvine. The woman was the daughter of an LAPD officer.

Dorner, who was fired by the department, had launched a violent vendetta. While he wrote in a manifesto about targeting specific LAPD officers who had wronged him, he ended up killing and wounding officers who had nothing to do with his rage. He killed our officers.

The intense news coverage of the Dorner manhunt set us all on edge. It gave me nightmares, which I seldom have.

Inland residents worried for days about where he might pop up next, and whether they could be safe going about their daily lives. Fear was striking close to home.

Officer Crain and his partner were shot while on patrol at the historic intersection of Magnolia and Arlington avenues, where the parent navel orange tree grows. The tree is the foundation of Southern California's citrus heritage.

Dorner's pickup truck was found burning at Big Bear Lake, a San Bernardino Mountain resort where many Inland residents go to ski, fish and enjoy a fresh-air refuge from the craziness of daily life in the flatlands.

The final shootout – the one in which the 35-year-old MacKay was killed – took place in a peaceful mountain village not widely known, but cherished by fishers who quest for trout in the upper reaches of the Santa Ana River.

MacKay's friends described him as a hard charger. He volunteered almost every day to help with the manhunt in the mountains where he had grown up. He was determined to "get that guy" and stop the terror that was being inflicted on the region, as Sheriff McMahon said during the funeral.

All of that probably contributed to MacKay being quick to arrive at the Seven Oaks cabin where Dorner had holed up. He and his partner were cut down in the first barrage of gunfire. His partner is recovering from his injuries.

As a sheriff's deputy, MacKay saw himself as a protector, the sheepdog watching over his flock, keeping the wolf at bay, his friends said. The concept, which MacKay adopted, is presented in an article by retired Army Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, titled "On Sheep, Wolves and Sheepdogs."

Productive people living good lives are sheep, Grossman wrote. Violent people with no empathy for others are wolves.

"But what if you have a capacity for violence and a deep love for your fellow citizens? What do you have then? A sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero's path," Grossman wrote.

MacKay was that person, his friend Deputy Roger Loftis told the funeral audience.

MacKay gave his life being a warrior. He might not have been without fear, but he had courage. The sheriff drove that point home with a quote from the actor John Wayne: "Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway."

"Jeremiah MacKay saddled up," McMahon said.

The detective's actions led to the end of the tension and fear that afflicted our region. MacKay sacrificed everything – all of his future days with his wife, the chance to see their daughter and 4-month-old son grow up, his time with his buddies and at work – so that evil wouldn't win.

Maybe that is why his funeral was so hard to watch.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

GAS PRICES: Did oil firms manipulate market, senetors ask... Press enterprise.. Nov. 28, 2012

GAS PRICES: Did oil firms manipulate market, senators ask

/AP

California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer are among those calling for a federal probe of gas price increases they say might have come as a result of market manipulation by oil companies in the West.

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BY BEN GOAD

November 27, 2012; 05:54 PM

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WASHINGTON – A group of lawmakers including California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer is calling upon federal authorities to launch an investigation into possible market manipulation by oil companies, following a pair of gas price spikes that drove fuel costs above $4 per gallon across the West.

In a letter sent Tuesday, Nov. 27, to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, the contingent of six U.S. senators, all Democrats, urged the Justice Department's Oil and Gas Price Fraud Working Group to conduct a "refinery-by-refinery level probe" of the May and October price increases.

Earlier this month, a report from McCullough Research, a Portland-based energy consulting firm, concluded that industry explanations for the price spikes were contradicted by emissions data. Specifically, the research indicated that some West Coast oil refineries may have been producing oil last May despite public reports that they were shuttered for maintenance. Also, both spikes came while crude oil, the main driver of gasoline prices, was decreasing, the senators note in their request for an investigation.

"Taken together we believe these facts paint a picture of a highly unusual set of concurrent events in West Coast petroleum markets," they wrote. "Given the hit to American families and businesses from gasoline price spikes, we urge the Working Group to use every existing authority and regulation to identify, stop, and prosecute any and all instances of false reporting, manipulation, or anticompetitive behavior in the West Coast petroleum wholesale markets."

An industry official said the petroleum companies dispute the notion that any false reporting or manipulation took place.

"We went through a very difficult time in the marketplace in the past few months," Western States Petroleum Association spokesman Tupper Hull said. "We experienced some very real and demonstrable disruptions in supply."

Hull said members have Congress have made similar appeals to authorities in the past and, despite dozens of investigations, the petroleum industry has never been found to have manipulated prices.

The McCullough report, however found that such manipulation could be easy to coordinate between companies.

"In highly concentrated industries, the exercise of market power through production reductions or cooperative pricing can require no more than an email or a phone call," it read.

RIALTO: Man convicted in bus driver killing.. Press Enterprise Nov. 28, 2012

RIALTO: Man convicted in bus driver's killing

Larry Kester, 47, of Fontana was fatally stabbed May 7, 2010 while driving an Omnitrans bus in Rialto.

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BY JOHN ASBURY

STAFF WRITER

November 27, 2012; 05:41 PM

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A jury that convicted a Rialto man of murdering a 2010 Fontana bus driver in 2010 will next have to decide whether he is insane.

Robert Darrell Johnson, 36, was found guilty of murder Tuesday, Nov. 27, for stabbing an Omnitrans driver on board a bus near a busy Rialto intersection in May 2010. The stabbing caused the bus to crash into a tree.

The jury also found a special allegation true that he used a knife.

Lawrence Kester, 47, was the father of eight and driving his normal route on Base Line from San Bernardino to Fontana when Johnson attacked him on the bus, which was carrying four other passengers. Authorities said the attack was without warning or provocation. No other passengers were injured.

Police said Johnson ran through a bank, where he dropped a knife, and into a supermarket, where he was arrested.

Johnson pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to the murder charge. A jury is set to return Wednesday to begin hearing evidence in the sanity phase of the trial.

Leading up to the trial, a judge had initially ruled Johnson incompetent to stand trial, based on two doctor's reports on his mental fitness. Johnson was ordered placed in a psychiatric facility and to undergo medication.

He was reevaluated in May, where doctors reported he was stabilized on medication and the judge found him fit to stand trial, according to court records. He had no prior criminal record in Riverside or San Bernardino counties.

Johnson could face up to a life sentence for the murder charge

Sunday, June 17, 2012

RIALTO: Rodney King drowns in own pool; autopsy report pending.... Press Enterprise, by Richard K. De Atley

Rodney King, whose videotaped beating at the hands of Los Angeles police officers set in motion events that would lead to the deadly Los Angeles riots of 1992, died after an apparent drowning in the backyard swimming pool of his Rialto home. He was 47.

The encounter with LAPD officers in 1991 brought King his unwanted fame. And it was law enforcement officers who provided the coda to his life early Sunday, June 17, when they jumped into the pool wearing their uniforms and equipment in an effort to save him.

His death was not regarded as suspicious, police said. But neighbors said it followed a Saturday night party that led into a late-night and early-morning argument, or at least noisy exchanges, between King and his fiancée that were loud enough to cause some neighbors to shout out a request to stop the ruckus.

An autopsy was scheduled for Monday morning June 18, said San Bernardino County Sheriff's spokeswoman Jodi Miller. She said toxicology tests were also being performed.

The results will take weeks to return, she said. The county coroner releases autopsy and toxicology results at the same time, she said.

Rialto police Capt. Randy De Anda said in a Sunday June 17 afternoon news conference that it was not unusual for King to go swimming at any hour, including the early morning.

He said that King's fiancée, Cynthia Kelley, discovered at about 5:25 a.m. that King was at the deep-end bottom of the pool. "She said she heard a splash in the rear yard … she found Mr. King … at the bottom of the pool. He was at the deep end," De Anda said earlier Sunday.

He said Kelley, whom he described as "not a strong swimmer," tried to pull King out, and called 911 when she could not.

Responding officers jumped in and retrieved King. They tried to give him cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Rialto Fire Department paramedics also treated King at the scene. He was taken to Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton, and pronounced dead at 6:11 a.m.

"Last night I heard a commotion," said neighbor Bob Carlberg, 53, who lives two doors away. "It really wasn't like a fight-fight-fight, but it was like yelling back and forth," he said. "He had a little party yesterday."

"He had something going on all night … the neighbors that live behind him were kind of yelling over to be quiet … the people who actually live next door to him said it was really loud," Carlberg said.

Carlberg said the disturbances were uncharacteristic of King, who lived on East Jackson Street, which is lined with single-story ranch-style and tract homes with well-trimmed lawns and shade trees. "He really kept to himself. The last couple of weeks he had more people over because he was planning his marriage. That's only my theory."

A neighbor of King said that around 3 a.m. she heard music and people talking next door and what sounded like someone who was very emotional.

"It seemed like someone was really crying, like really deep emotions," said Sandra Gardea, 31, a dental hygienist instructor who recently moved in. "And it just got louder and louder. Everybody woke up. Even the kids woke up."

She described the sound as "like moaning, like in pain. Like tired or sad, you know?"

Gardea said this went on for some time and then stopped.

"I heard someone say, 'OK, Please stop. Go inside the house.' … We heard quiet for a few minutes. Then after that we heard a splash in the back. And that's when a few minutes later we see the cops arrive and everyone arrive and we see him being taken in a gurney."

"You didn't see parties here or a lot of people. He was very withdrawn, and (kept) to himself," said neighbor Tondalaya Baker, 55, who lives around the corner from King's home. She said she most often saw him when he was working on his lawn or the front of his home.

De Anda said King was "poolside throughout the early morning, and he was in verbal contact with his fiancée throughout the morning. She was having a conversation through the rear sliding-glass door, and apparently when she heard the splash."

He said he did not know the content of the conversation. "At this time I do not know what Mr. King's toxicology was, or if he was intoxicated, or whether he was under the influence of any substances." He said detectives would try to determine what was going on at the moment King fell into the pool.

On Sunday afternoon, evidence was being carted away from King's home, including what looked like a marijuana plant. King had said in interviews last year that he had a doctor's recommendation to use medical marijuana. Medical marijuana users are permitted some legal cultivation.

De Anda said a coroner's investigation will include an autopsy and a toxicology report. He said there were no signs of drugs or alcohol near the pool when officers arrived, and that detectives had interviewed Kelley as a routine matter. Kelley had been one of the jurors who awarded King $3.8 million in his lawsuit against Los Angeles over the beating. King said recently he had spent most of the money.

Neighbors described King as friendly and willing to talk about anything except what happened in Los Angeles two decades ago. "The best neighbor in the neighborhood," said Baker, who said she spoke to him frequently.

Asked if King ever discussed his past, Baker said, "he never wanted to talk about that. He really just stayed to himself … he was extremely private." She said he often kept his drapes drawn at the home.

Carlberg said he liked to talk about cars with King.

"He was a pretty nice guy. Seemed like a real nice guy, I had no problems," Carlberg said.

Carlberg described the neighborhood "real quiet, peaceful, friendly. Everybody gets along. Everybody talks to everybody."

Two decades ago, King uttered five words that captured the sentiment of millions of Americans horrified by the scenes of death and destruction in the Los Angeles riots.

"I just want to say, you know, 'Can we all get along?'," King said in a quavering voice after rioters ravaged Southern California neighborhoods.

King was pulled over by LAPD officers in 1991 for speeding. He was drunk but unarmed. Officers responded to King's lack of cooperation by beating him with batons and kicking him repeatedly.

The beating was video-taped by a bystander, which elevated the case to international headlines.

Four of the officers, all white, went to trial. Their acquittal sparked the infamous Southern California riots on April 29, 1992. At least 53 people were killed, more than 2,000 were injured and more than $1 billion in property was damaged or destroyed.

King reflected in an interview with The Press-Enterprise in early April on how his lawyers handed him a four-page statement to read at a news conference. It was 1992, two days after the beginning of the disturbances that began when four Los Angeles police officers were acquitted of beating him.

But instead of reading the statement, King improvised.

"I spoke from my heart, you know," King said. "I felt there was a need to say something from the heart."

King moved to Inland Southern California from Los Angeles County in 1999 to escape some of the continued attention.

"At the time, I felt a little too much heat," he said. "The smoke hadn't cleared in Los Angeles for me. I thought it would be more comfortable for me to be in the IE."

Recently, King said he supported himself in part by doing handyman and construction work. He's also made money on reality-TV appearances, including "Celebrity Rehab."

The headlines that followed King during his 13 years in the Inland area generally had not been complimentary. He wasn arrested several times, including for driving under the influence and domestic violence.

In the latest case, he pleaded guilty in February to reckless driving after he was pulled over in Moreno Valley.

King acknowledged his mistakes. He wrote about them in his book, "The Riot Within," which was released in April.

He said his days of drinking heavily were over — although he said he hadn't quit alcohol entirely.

"I sip now," said King, whose father was an alcoholic. "I'm not guzzling drinks anymore. No one knows the future, but I sure feel comfortable where I am today with myself."

Staff writer David Olson, dolson@pe.com, and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

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