U.S. to ensure rare-earth supply amid trade war with China - Los Angeles Times

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U.S. to ensure rare-earth supply amid trade warwith ChinaBy ANDREW MAYEDA

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U.S. to ensure rare-earth supply amid trade war with China - Los Angeles Times

https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-china-rare-earth-supply-20190604-story.html[6/11/2019 8:15:55 AM]

Dozens of factories process rare earths, iron and coal on the outskirts of Baotou city in Inner Monglia, northwest China. (Frederic J. Brown / AFP / Getty Images)

The U.S. will take steps to ensure it doesn’t get cut off from the supply of rare earths used in a widevariety of products, including computer screens, missile systems and mobile phones, CommerceSecretary Wilbur Ross said.

The Commerce Department on Tuesday released a report requested by President Trump in December

U.S. to ensure rare-earth supply amid trade war with China - Los Angeles Times

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2017, when he asked officials to look into U.S. access to so-called rare earths, a group of 17 elements,including lanthanum and terbium.

“These critical minerals are often overlooked, but modern life without them would be impossible,” Rosssaid in a statement. “Through the recommendations detailed in this report, the federal government willtake unprecedented action to ensure that the United States will not be cut off from these vital materials.”

Beijing has readied a plan to restrict exports of rare earths to the U.S. if the trade war between the twonations deepens, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News last month.

The report acknowledged the potential danger to the U.S. of being shut out of foreign supplies of rareearths. “The United States is heavily dependent on critical mineral imports,” according to the report. “IfChina or Russia were to stop exports to the United States and its allies for a prolonged period — similarto China’s rare earths embargo in 2010 — an extended supply disruption could cause significant shocksthroughout U.S. and foreign critical mineral supply chains.”

China accounts for more than 70% of global output of rare earths. The U.S. was the leading globalproducer of rare earths from the 1960s to the ’80s, when production began shifting offshore.

The Commerce report recommends a number of steps, including improving the government’sunderstanding of domestic sources of rare earths and expediting approvals of mining permits.

The U.S. has 1.4 million metric tons in rare earth-mine reserves, 93 times the nation’s output last year,according to data from the U.S. Geological Survey website. The country’s only producer, MP Materials,has been shipping all its output from the Mountain Pass mine in California to China because there is norefining capacity available to handle its output anywhere else in the world, its biggest shareholder said.

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Trump controlling only rare earth mine in US ‘unrealistic,’ MP Materials co-chairman says | Fox Business

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Trump controlling only rare earth mine in US

‘unrealistic,’ MP Materials co-chairman says

By Henry Fernandez Published June 10, 2019 Trade War FOXBusiness

MP Materials co-chairman: It’s unrealistic for Trump administration to take control of our mine

MP Materials co-chairman James Litinsky discusses China’s threat to stop exporting rare earth minerals to the U.S.

and why he feels that the government won’t take control of the business.

Trump controlling only rare earth mine in US ‘unrealistic,’ MP Materials co-chairman says | Fox Business

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/trump-controlling-the-only-rare-earth-mine-in-america-is-unrealistic-mp-materials-co-chairman-says[6/11/2019 8:18:22 AM]

An official with MP Materials, the only rare earth mining and processing sitein North America, told FOX Business he doesn’t foresee the Trumpadministration taking control of the mine.

“I really don’t think it’s a realistic consideration because by the time thathappens, we are already profitable, we’re producing,” MP Materials co-chairman James Litinsky said during an exclusive interview on "Countdown tothe Closing Bell." “Why would they just sign a contract like they do withLockheed Martin or Boeing or anybody?”

In 2017, President Trump was presented with idea of nationalizing theMountain Pass, California, rare earth company by the head of an advanced-materials manufacturer.

Litinsky said MP Materials is responsible for 200 American manufacturing jobswhose workers ensure that the mining facility remains the lowest-cost producerin the world.

“The job we signed up to do was to return the rare earth industry to the UnitedStates of America. That’s the job I undertook with the team out there,” he said.“We are getting this job for America.”

Litinsky added he is appreciative that the Trump administration considers MPMaterials a national asset.

“There are a lot of great national assets that have partial ownership by peoplein the market place whether public or private that some of us might not like,” he

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Trump controlling only rare earth mine in US ‘unrealistic,’ MP Materials co-chairman says | Fox Business

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said. “But that’s just not American industry.”

CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX BUSINESS APP

Rare-earth minerals are used in electric vehicles, military jet engines, batteries,satellites and even washing machines. They are the latest target of the tradestandoff between China and the U.S. and Beijing is reportedly consideringrestrictions on a set of 17 metals that are difficult to find and extract.

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The Washington Post

Business

China hints it will choke off U.S. ‘rare earths’ access. But it’s notthat easy.

Add to list

By David J. Lynch

June 10 at 4:22 PM

MOUNTAIN PASS, Calif. — Rusty tin shacks are all that remain of the gold miners who once prowled this

desert hillside about an hour’s drive southwest of Las Vegas. Almost a century later, their modern-day

descendants are prospecting for the more exotic materials that have become the latest flash point in the U.S.-

China trade war.

This is Mountain Pass, the only mine in the United States that harvests rare-earth elements, the raw

ingredients used to produce high-tech products such as smartphones, wind turbines, electric vehicles and

fighter jets.

China dominates the global market for these materials and has been threatening to take them hostage in the

deepening trade conflict. Just the suggestion that Beijing could starve American factories of essential materials

has sent rare-earth prices soaring over the past month, with dysprosium oxide, used in lasers and nuclear-

reactor control rods, up by one-third.

But the alarm overlooks the rise over the past decade of alternative sources of rare earths — including

Mountain Pass — and ignores the difficulties China would face in implementing a ban, including the prospect

of widespread smuggling and the likelihood of hurting countries that Chinese authorities may prefer not to

alienate.

“We have an absolutely world-class resource,” said Michael Rosenthal, chief executive of MP Materials, which

operates the California mine. “That’s our competitive advantage.”

President Trump, fresh from an immigration dispute with Mexico, pivoted Monday to his stalled China trade

talks. In a CNBC interview, the president — expected to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping later this month in

Japan — said their “differences can be worked out very easily.”

But Xi shows no sign of caving and may use rare earths as a bargaining chip. In the latest sign that China might

reprise its 2010 cutoff of exports to Japan, the powerful National Development and Reform Commission said

on June 4 it would set new limits on sales outside China.

“We must strengthen export management and control,” the state planning agency said. “We need to establish a

mechanism for investigating and tracing the export flow of rare earths.”

A U.S. Commerce Department report this month fanned industry worries, warning of a dangerous dependence

upon imported materials, including rare earths, and calling for “unprecedented” action to bolster domestic

stockpiles.

Mountain Pass, which began post-bankruptcy operations only last year, represents the United States’ best hope

of weathering any Chinese materials blockade. Along with new output from countries such as Australia and

Myanmar, the U.S. mine helped cut China’s share of global production to 71 percent last year from more than

97 percent in 2010, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

“We can make the Chinese threat become a hollow threat very quickly by letting market forces take care of it,”

said Douglas Paal, a China expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former vice

chairman of JPMorgan Chase International. “China does not have us by the throat.”

From the rim of the open-pit mine, bulldozers, excavators and 70-ton trucks can be seen chewing through

layers of ebony and chocolate earth more than 500 feet below. Exploratory drilling has penetrated more than

1,800 feet without finding the end of the rare-earth deposit here, an indication of its untapped potential.

Officials have begun contingency planning to accelerate production in the event of a Chinese cutoff, Rosenthal

said. Though Mountain Pass could not fill all domestic needs, it could boost output of substances needed for oil

refining and some specialized magnets.

Yet the mine’s role at the center of the U.S.-China faceoff over 17 elements with names such as neodymium,

terbium and europium is not without irony.

Mountain Pass ships its main product — a powdery substance that looks like crushed cocoa — to China for

processing before it is sold to Chinese customers. A Chinese rare-earths producer, Leshan Shenghe, holds a

nonvoting 10 percent stake in the U.S. mine.

Since June 1, the mine’s shipments to China have been hit with a 25 percent tariff from China, retaliation for

Trump’s latest import tax. For now the company is absorbing the added costs, so officials are squeezing savings

out of their suppliers, searching for cheaper shipping companies and making sure they are not paying uniform-

rental fees for workers who have quit.

“We are literally going around shutting off lights,” Rosenthal said.

Even as the trade war intensified, the Americans and Chinese here continued cooperating. Rosenthal, 41, who

speaks fluent Mandarin, says the Shenghe team provides advice on the mixtures to use in the ore’s chemical

bath. Zhou Jihai, 66, a senior Shenghe engineer, says the Chinese company is learning from MP about

automation.

Speaking through an interpreter, Zhou acknowledged that some industry colleagues in China criticize Shenghe

for helping the Americans. But he waved off trade-war questions.

“It does not affect too much our cooperation. It only affects the relations between the two countries,” he said.

“We hope the two sides can reach some sort of compromise.”

In July 2017, JHL Capital Group, a Chicago-based hedge fund, and QVT Financial, a New York investment

firm, spent $20.5 million to bring the site out of bankruptcy. Production last year exceeded any under the

previous owner, Molycorp, and the venture now is operating at a profit. Performance over the past six weeks

has been the best to date, Rosenthal said.

“I can’t say we’re entirely satisfied with our results yet. We have a lot of work to do still,” he said. “But we feel

good we’re on the right path here.”

Molycorp filed for bankruptcy in mid-2015, a victim of falling commodity prices and China’s market

dominance.

MP’s hopes of competing with Chinese rivals — mostly state-owned enterprises that receive government

subsidies and face lower labor and environmental costs — rest on the quality of its ore deposit and the relative

ease of distilling it into salable products. Despite the tariff head wind, the mine is profitable, Rosenthal said.

“That says something about our ability to compete,” he added.

MP Materials has made progress by reversing some of the previous owner’s decisions. Molycorp bet heavily on

“caustic cracking,” which strips a less valuable material known as cerium from the rare-earth concentrate.

But the process required a roughly $300 million building that Rosenthal said was “extraordinarily expensive”

to operate and did not work as well as the traditional method. Now the structure is scorned as the “crack

house” and sits idle.

The Mountain Pass operation is as simple as digging a big hole in the ground and as complex as the most

sophisticated industrial chemistry.

James Litinsky, founder of JHL, the hedge fund that led the formation of MP Materials, said the mine reflects a

shift away from the mutual vulnerability that has characterized the global economy for the past two decades.

Trump’s 2017 executive order requiring the government to “reduce the nation’s vulnerability to disruptions in

the supply of critical materials” bears him out.

“The world needs to protect against a single point of failure in the supply chain,” he said. “In the context of rare

earths, that happens to be China.”

Standing in a control room, Rosenthal gazed at a computer display monitoring a critical operation. This is the

“ball mine,” a building dominated by a giant metal drum that resembles a cement mixer.

A mix of ore, dirt and rocks entered the vessel on a conveyor belt, where it was buffeted by jets of water and

steel balls before passing through vats of chemicals — a laborious process designed to cause the rare earths to

bubble to the surface of an industrial stew.

The company’s success or failure turns on what happens in this building. Green, blue and purple lines

oscillated in a narrow band on the computer screens as the air vibrated with a mechanized hum. One monitor

showed a spike like a bad electrocardiogram, a sign that output was not as consistent as desired.

“We have to — have to — get this building right,” Rosenthal said, adding that MP Materials aspires to produce

rare earths “at the lowest cost in the world.”

The task of adjusting the chemical bath for each batch of excavated ore is complicated by the need to recycle

and reuse enormous quantities of water. That is a legacy of the facility’s troubled history in the 1980s, when

spills from a pipeline carrying radioactive wastewater to a distant dry lake bed led to a federal investigation and

costly cleanup.

Unlike Molycorp, MP Materials recycles its wastewater by forcing the liquid waste from the “ball mine” through

giant filters made of synthetic fiber. Environmental regulations require that even rainwater runoff here has to

be captured and treated.

Not everyone is confident the United States can endure an interruption of Chinese shipments.

Though Chinese labor and environmental costs are rising, some analysts doubt MP’s chances of becoming a

low-cost producer. Jim Kennedy, a St. Louis-based consultant, said MP cannot compete in the long run against

China, the only country with a supply chain that encompasses mining, intermediate processing facilities and

factories to produce products such as laptops and electric cars.

Kennedy, a longtime advocate of federal subsidies for a more robust U.S. rare-earths industry, said the

Mountain Pass deposit also lacks the full roster of rare earths, particularly the “heavy” minerals optimized for

technology and defense production.

“There’s no challenging China’s rare-earth monopoly with market forces,” he said.

Any cutoff of Chinese exports would be disruptive. But most of the material needed by American tech

companies is used in factories in China — not the United States. So Beijing would need to choke off exports of

products made with rare earths, too, a broader embargo that would probably claim other countries — and

Chinese factory workers — as collateral damage.

Foxconn, a Taiwanese company, uses rare earths in Shenzhen, China, to make key parts of Apple’s iPhone.

Tesla relies on the materials for magnets produced by Beijing Zhong Ke San Huan High-Tech Co.

The United States last year imported only $160 million worth of rare earths, virtually unchanged from 2010.

In many cases, there are alternatives. During the 2010 supply interruption, one company that had used

neodymium to polish glass “found that they were able to use something else to do the same job that was easily

available,” said Sage Chandler, vice president for international trade at the Consumer Technology Association.

“Many other companies did the same.”

It is also hard to imagine any embargo being foolproof. Despite official Chinese attempts to stamp out illegal

production, rogue operations last year produced an estimated 60,000 tons of rare earths, according to the U.S.

Geological Survey. That means American customers would almost certainly obtain some supplies in the event

of an export ban.

“Fears are overstated. . . . There’s plenty of non-Chinese supply at current levels in Australia and the U.S. if you

reallocated things for critical needs,” said Eugene Gholz, who worked on supply chain issues in the Pentagon

during the Obama administration and now teaches at University of Notre Dame.

As the trade war simmers, MP executives are preparing for a future of enduring U.S.-China acrimony. Work is

underway on the facilities needed to process the mined material on site rather than send it to China. What

remains to be done is a matter of work and money rather than invention.

“We’re at this critical point,” Rosenthal said, “where things are coming together.”

David J. LynchDavid J. Lynch is a staff writer on the financial desk who joined The Washington Post in November 2017 after working for theFinancial Times, Bloomberg News and USA Today. Follow

China hints it will choke off U.S. 'rare earths' access. But it's not that easy. - U.S. - Stripes

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China hints it will choke off U.S. 'rare

earths' access. But it's not that easy.

USGS PHOTO

By DAVID J. LYNCH | The Washington Post | Published: June10, 2019

MOUNTAIN PASS, Calif. - Rusty tin shacks are all thatremain of the gold miners who once prowled this deserthillside about an hour's drive southwest of Las Vegas.

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China hints it will choke off U.S. 'rare earths' access. But it's not that easy. - U.S. - Stripes

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Almost a century later, their modern-day descendants areprospecting for the more exotic materials that havebecome the latest fash point in the U.S.-China trade war .

This is Mountain Pass, the only mine in the United Statesthat harvests rare-earth elements, the raw ingredientsused to produce high-tech products such assmartphones, wind turbines, electric vehicles and fghterjets.

China dominates the global market for these materialsand has been threatening to take them hostage in thedeepening trade confict. Just the suggestion that Beijingcould starve American factories of essential materials hassent rare-earth prices soaring over the past month, withdysprosium oxide, used in lasers and nuclear-reactorcontrol rods, up by one-third.

But the alarm overlooks the rise over the past decade ofalternative sources of rare earths - including MountainPass - and ignores the diffculties China would face inimplementing a ban, including the prospect of widespreadsmuggling and the likelihood of hurting countries thatChinese authorities may prefer not to alienate.

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China hints it will choke off U.S. 'rare earths' access. But it's not that easy. - U.S. - Stripes

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"We have an absolutely world-class resource," saidMichael Rosenthal, chief executive of MP Materials,which operates the California mine. "That's ourcompetitive advantage."

President Donald Trump, fresh from an immigrationdispute with Mexico, pivoted Monday to his stalled Chinatrade talks. In a CNBC interview, the president - expectedto meet Chinese President Xi Jinping later this month inJapan - said their "differences can be worked out veryeasily."

But Xi shows no sign of caving and may use rare earthsas a bargaining chip. In the latest sign that China mightreprise its 2010 cutoff of exports to Japan, the powerfulNational Development and Reform Commission said onJune 4 it would set new limits on sales outside China.

"We must strengthen export management and control,"the state planning agency said. "We need to establish amechanism for investigating and tracing the export fow ofrare earths."

A U.S. Commerce Department report this month fannedindustry worries, warning of a dangerous dependenceupon imported materials, including rare earths, and callingfor "unprecedented" action to bolster domestic stockpiles.

Mountain Pass, which began post-bankruptcy operationsonly last year, represents the United States' best hope ofweathering any Chinese materials blockade. Along withnew output from countries such as Australia and

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China hints it will choke off U.S. 'rare earths' access. But it's not that easy. - U.S. - Stripes

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Myanmar, the U.S. mine helped cut China's share ofglobal production to 71 percent last year from more than97 percent in 2010, according to the U.S. GeologicalSurvey.

"We can make the Chinese threat become a hollow threatvery quickly by letting market forces take care of it," saidDouglas Paal, a China expert at the Carnegie Endowmentfor International Peace and a former vice chairman ofJPMorgan Chase International. "China does not have usby the throat."

From the rim of the open-pit mine, bulldozers, excavatorsand 70-ton trucks can be seen chewing through layers ofebony and chocolate earth more than 500 feet below.Exploratory drilling has penetrated more than 1,800 feetwithout fnding the end of the rare-earth deposit here, anindication of its untapped potential.

Offcials have begun contingency planning to accelerateproduction in the event of a Chinese cutoff, Rosenthalsaid. Though Mountain Pass could not fll all domesticneeds, it could boost output of substances needed for oilrefning and some specialized magnets.

Yet the mine's role at the center of the U.S.-China faceoffover 17 elements with names such as neodymium,terbium and europium is not without irony.

Mountain Pass ships its main product - a powderysubstance that looks like crushed cocoa - to China forprocessing before it is sold to Chinese customers. AChinese rare-earths producer, Leshan Shenghe, holds anonvoting 10 percent stake in the U.S. mine.

Since June 1, the mine's shipments to China have been

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hit with a 25 percent tariff from China, retaliation forTrump's latest import tax. For now the company isabsorbing the added costs, so offcials are squeezingsavings out of their suppliers, searching for cheapershipping companies and making sure they are not payinguniform-rental fees for workers who have quit.

"We are literally going around shutting off lights,"Rosenthal said.

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Even as the trade war intensifed, the Americans andChinese here continued cooperating. Rosenthal, 41, whospeaks fuent Mandarin, says the Shenghe team providesadvice on the mixtures to use in the ore's chemical bath.Zhou Jihai, 66, a senior Shenghe engineer, says theChinese company is learning from MP about automation.

Speaking through an interpreter, Zhou acknowledged thatsome industry colleagues in China criticize Shenghe forhelping the Americans. But he waved off trade-warquestions.

"It does not affect too much our cooperation. It onlyaffects the relations between the two countries," he said."We hope the two sides can reach some sort ofcompromise."

In July 2017, JHL Capital Group, a Chicago-based hedgefund, and QVT Financial, a New York investment frm,spent $20.5 million to bring the site out of bankruptcy.Production last year exceeded any under the previousowner, Molycorp, and the venture now is operating at aproft. Performance over the past six weeks has been thebest to date, Rosenthal said.

"I can't say we're entirely satisfed with our results yet. W ehave a lot of work to do still," he said. "But we feel goodwe're on the right path here."

Molycorp fled for bankruptcy in mid-2015, a victim offalling commodity prices and China's market dominance.

MP's hopes of competing with Chinese rivals - mostlystate-owned enterprises that receive governmentsubsidies and face lower labor and environmental costs -rest on the quality of its ore deposit and the relative ease

China hints it will choke off U.S. 'rare earths' access. But it's not that easy. - U.S. - Stripes

https://www.stripes.com/news/us/china-hints-it-will-choke-off-u-s-rare-earths-access-but-it-s-not-that-easy-1.585465[6/11/2019 8:15:32 AM]

of distilling it into salable products. Despite the tariff headwind, the mine is proftable, Rosenthal said.

"That says something about our ability to compete," headded.

MP Materials has made progress by reversing some ofthe previous owner's decisions. Molycorp bet heavily on"caustic cracking," which strips a less valuable materialknown as cerium from the rare-earth concentrate.

But the process required a roughly $300 million buildingthat Rosenthal said was "extraordinarily expensive" tooperate and did not work as well as the traditionalmethod. Now the structure is scorned as the "crackhouse" and sits idle.

The Mountain Pass operation is as simple as digging abig hole in the ground and as complex as the mostsophisticated industrial chemistry.

James Litinsky, founder of JHL, the hedge fund that ledthe formation of MP Materials, said the mine refects ashift away from the mutual vulnerability that hascharacterized the global economy for the past twodecades. Trump's 2017 executive order requiring thegovernment to "reduce the nation's vulnerability todisruptions in the supply of critical materials" bears himout.

"The world needs to protect against a single point offailure in the supply chain," he said. "In the context of rareearths, that happens to be China."

Standing in a control room, Rosenthal gazed at acomputer display monitoring a critical operation. This is

China hints it will choke off U.S. 'rare earths' access. But it's not that easy. - U.S. - Stripes

https://www.stripes.com/news/us/china-hints-it-will-choke-off-u-s-rare-earths-access-but-it-s-not-that-easy-1.585465[6/11/2019 8:15:32 AM]

the "ball mine," a building dominated by a giant metaldrum that resembles a cement mixer.

A mix of ore, dirt and rocks entered the vessel on aconveyor belt, where it was buffeted by jets of water andsteel balls before passing through vats of chemicals - alaborious process designed to cause the rare earths tobubble to the surface of an industrial stew.

The company's success or failure turns on what happensin this building. Green, blue and purple lines oscillated ina narrow band on the computer screens as the airvibrated with a mechanized hum. One monitor showed aspike like a bad electrocardiogram, a sign that output wasnot as consistent as desired.

"We have to - have to - get this building right," Rosenthalsaid, adding that MP Materials aspires to produce rareearths "at the lowest cost in the world."

- - -

The task of adjusting the chemical bath for each batch ofexcavated ore is complicated by the need to recycle andreuse enormous quantities of water. That is a legacy ofthe facility's troubled history in the 1980s, when spills froma pipeline carrying radioactive wastewater to a distant drylake bed led to a federal investigation and costly cleanup.

Unlike Molycorp, MP Materials recycles its wastewater byforcing the liquid waste from the "ball mine" through giantflters made of synthetic fber . Environmental regulationsrequire that even rainwater runoff here has to be capturedand treated.

Not everyone is confdent the United States can endurean interruption of Chinese shipments.

China hints it will choke off U.S. 'rare earths' access. But it's not that easy. - U.S. - Stripes

https://www.stripes.com/news/us/china-hints-it-will-choke-off-u-s-rare-earths-access-but-it-s-not-that-easy-1.585465[6/11/2019 8:15:32 AM]

Though Chinese labor and environmental costs are rising,some analysts doubt MP's chances of becoming a low-cost producer. Jim Kennedy, a St. Louis-basedconsultant, said MP cannot compete in the long runagainst China, the only country with a supply chain thatencompasses mining, intermediate processing facilitiesand factories to produce products such as laptops andelectric cars.

Kennedy, a longtime advocate of federal subsidies for amore robust U.S. rare-earths industry, said the MountainPass deposit also lacks the full roster of rare earths,particularly the "heavy" minerals optimized for technologyand defense production.

"There's no challenging China's rare-earth monopoly withmarket forces," he said.

Any cutoff of Chinese exports would be disruptive. Butmost of the material needed by American tech companiesis used in factories in China - not the United States. SoBeijing would need to choke off exports of products madewith rare earths, too, a broader embargo that wouldprobably claim other countries - and Chinese factoryworkers - as collateral damage.

Foxconn, a Taiwanese company, uses rare earths inShenzhen, China, to make key parts of Apple's iPhone.Tesla relies on the materials for magnets produced byBeijing Zhong Ke San Huan High-Tech Co.

The United States last year imported only $160 millionworth of rare earths, virtually unchanged from 2010.

In many cases, there are alternatives. During the 2010

China hints it will choke off U.S. 'rare earths' access. But it's not that easy. - U.S. - Stripes

https://www.stripes.com/news/us/china-hints-it-will-choke-off-u-s-rare-earths-access-but-it-s-not-that-easy-1.585465[6/11/2019 8:15:32 AM]

supply interruption, one company that had usedneodymium to polish glass "found that they were able touse something else to do the same job that was easilyavailable," said Sage Chandler, vice president forinternational trade at the Consumer TechnologyAssociation. "Many other companies did the same."

It is also hard to imagine any embargo being foolproof.Despite offcial Chinese attempts to stamp out illegalproduction, rogue operations last year produced anestimated 60,000 tons of rare earths, according to theU.S. Geological Survey. That means American customerswould almost certainly obtain some supplies in the eventof an export ban.

"Fears are overstated. . . . There's plenty of non-Chinesesupply at current levels in Australia and the U.S. if youreallocated things for critical needs," said Eugene Gholz,who worked on supply chain issues in the Pentagonduring the Obama administration and now teaches atUniversity of Notre Dame.

As the trade war simmers, MP executives are preparingfor a future of enduring U.S.-China acrimony. Work isunderway on the facilities needed to process the minedmaterial on site rather than send it to China. Whatremains to be done is a matter of work and money ratherthan invention.

"We're at this critical point," Rosenthal said, "where thingsare coming together."

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An excavator loads rare earth onto a truck on a quay at the Port of Lianyungang in Jiangsu province.Photographer: Imaginechina via AP Photo

It was Beijing’s decision almost 30 years ago to make rareearths a strategic material, and ban foreigners frommining them, that helped pave the way for China to elbowaside the U.S. as the world’s leading producer.

In the intervening period, as China tightened control ofdomestic output of rare earths -- a broad group of 17elements used in everything from electric vehicles to militaryhardware -- the U.S. all but surrendered to China’sdominance of the sector.

With China now accounting for 70% of global production,and only one U.S. mine in operation, American industriesoutside of defense have “no immediate avenues ” to breaktheir reliance on China for supply of rare earth elements,according to Citigroup Inc.

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China's Grip on Rare Earths Began With Decision 30 Years Ago - Bloomberg

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-10/china-s-grip-on-rare-earths-began-with-a-decision-30-years-ago[6/11/2019 8:16:41 AM]

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It’s why Washington is now facing a new front in itsburgeoning trade war with the world’s second-biggesteconomy, after Beijing signaled its intent to restrict exports ofthe critical materials. A possible blacklisting of U.S.companies, or a ban on exports of rare earth metals to theU.S., may have have a material fnancial effect on technologycompanies that source signifcant revenue from China, or userare earth minerals, according to a Fitch Ratings researchnote.

Click here to read about rare earths as a trade war cudgel

Here’s a look at the country’s reserves, export regime,dominant players and illegal activities.

China Ramps UpExports climb, making China dominant global supplier

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source: Chinese customs

1. Six Dominant Producers

China consolidated its mining and separation companies intosix licensed groups in 2016. Beijing granted the groupsannual production quotas to better manage its strategicmineral resources and ensure the sustainability of the

China's Grip on Rare Earths Began With Decision 30 Years Ago - Bloomberg

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-10/china-s-grip-on-rare-earths-began-with-a-decision-30-years-ago[6/11/2019 8:16:41 AM]

industry.

They were granted mining quotas totaling 120,000 tons ofrare earths oxide in 2018 compared with 105,000 tons in2017.

The country plans to cap domestic mining output below140,000 tons by 2020 to preserve resources and will cutsmelting and separation capacity by a third from 2015 levelsto 200,000 tons, according to the industry’s fve-year planissued in 2016. It’s part of a drive to more than double thesector’s proft margin to 12%.

The following are the six major producers with 2018 quotas,according to the Ministry of Information and Technology.

COMPANY NAME MINEDOUTPUT

LISTED UNITS INVOLVED

China Northern RareEarth Group High-TechCo.

69,250tons

itself, Shanghai listedInner Mongolia Baotou Steel Union

Co.

Southern China RareEarth Group Co.

28,250tons

Subsidiary of Jiangxi Copper

Chinalco Rare Earth &Metals Co.

14,350tons

applied for Shanghai IPO in 2018

Xiamen Tungsten Co. 3,440tons

itself, Shanghai listed

Guangdong RareEarths Industry Group

2,700tons

Rising Nonferrous Metals ShareCo.

China's Grip on Rare Earths Began With Decision 30 Years Ago - Bloomberg

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-10/china-s-grip-on-rare-earths-began-with-a-decision-30-years-ago[6/11/2019 8:16:41 AM]

Co. China Nonferrous Metal Industry’sForeign Engineering and

Construction Co.

China Minmetals RareEarth Co.

2,010tons

itself, Shenzhen listed

2. Where Are the Mines?

Loosening GripChina dominates rare earths mining, but new projects are being assessedglobally

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Source: United States Geological SurveyNote: Exploration projects are being evaluated to determine if they are economic todevelop

Baiyun Obo in northern China’s Inner Mongolia, run byChina Northern Rare Earth, is the world’s largest mine. Itholds 83% of the country’s total reserves, mainly lightelements. Mines in Shandong province have 8%, Sichuan has3% and the rest of the reserves are in southern provinces,mainly in medium-to-heavy forms, according to 2017 data onthe China Rare Earth Industry Association website.

China's Grip on Rare Earths Began With Decision 30 Years Ago - Bloomberg

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-10/china-s-grip-on-rare-earths-began-with-a-decision-30-years-ago[6/11/2019 8:16:41 AM]

3. Exports, Imports

China has a surplus in light rare earths, which dominate itsexports, but needs to import medium-to-heavy types to meeta domestic shortfall, according to SMM Information &Technology Co. On exports, the government doesn’t have anycontrol on quantity or qualifcation as companies are onlyrequired to present sales contracts to receive licenses.

The country’s outbound shipments of rare earths rose 3.6% toabout 53,000 tons in 2018, according to Chinese customsdata. Exports have been rising every year since 2013. Exportsof rare earths and its products, including permanentmagnets, rose 5.4% to 95,586 tons last year, with 18,852 tons,or 20%, to the U.S. It relies on China for 80% of its purchasesof rare earths.

China’s imports doubled to around 70,000 tons last year,making it a major importer for the frst time, according to thecountry’s industry group.

4. Illegal Mining

While there’s no offcial data, the country is dogged by illegalexploration and production. A government crackdown hasseen illicit production volumes fall signifcantly from almostbeing equal to sanctioned output of around 100,000 tons ofoxide in the middle of the decade, according to Wu Xiaofeng,an analyst with SMM, without giving a specifc estimate.

China was estimated to have produced 180,000 tons lastyear, compared with an offcial quota of 120,000 tons,according to a U.S. Geological Survey report that cited

China's Grip on Rare Earths Began With Decision 30 Years Ago - Bloomberg

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-10/china-s-grip-on-rare-earths-began-with-a-decision-30-years-ago[6/11/2019 8:16:41 AM]

Chinese government data.

5. Consumption Areas

StrategicMagnets dominate China's rare earths consumption

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Sources: SMM Information & Technology Co.

Permanent magnet materials account for 44% of China’sconsumption, with polishing making up 10%, oil andpetrochemicals 9% and the rest used in metallurgicalmachinery, glasses, catalysts and lighting, according to SMM.

6. Looming Domestic Shortfall

A growing need for permanent magnets in new-energyvehicles is driving demand growth, increasing China’sdependence on imports as domestic production is capped.

Earlier this year, the government issued a frst round quotafor mined output of 60,000 tons, down from 73,500 tons ayear earlier and compared with 2018’s full-year limit of120,000 tons.

China's Grip on Rare Earths Began With Decision 30 Years Ago - Bloomberg

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-10/china-s-grip-on-rare-earths-began-with-a-decision-30-years-ago[6/11/2019 8:16:41 AM]

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The market will be waiting eagerly for the next round ofproduction quotas, which are due to be released later thismonth. This year’s frst-round quota was relatively low givenChina’s total demand is expected to rise to 180,000 tons andcompanies may have to source supplies from overseas, ChenZhanheng, vice secretary general at the rare earthassociation, said in March.

— With assistance by Winnie Zhu, and Martin Ritchie

(Updates with Fitch comment in fourth paragraph.)

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San Bernardino proposes cutting salaries of attorney, clerk and treasurer to assist ailing budget – Press Enterprise

https://www.pe.com/...-budget/?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_content=tw-pressenterprise[6/11/2019 7:55:11 AM]

The City of San Bernardino swore in a new mayor and three council members at the SturgesAuditorium in San Bernardino on Wednesday evening December 19, 2018. (Photo by WillLester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)

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San Bernardino proposes cutting salaries ofattorney, clerk and treasurer to assist ailingbudgetThe terms of all three elected positions are to expire in March 2020, atwhich point two will be filled by appointment and the third will be eliminated

San Bernardino proposes cutting salaries of attorney, clerk and treasurer to assist ailing budget – Press Enterprise

https://www.pe.com/...-budget/?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_content=tw-pressenterprise[6/11/2019 7:55:11 AM]

By BRIAN WHITEHEAD | bwhitehead@scng.com | San Bernardino SunPUBLISHED: June 10, 2019 at 5:20 pm | UPDATED: June 10, 2019 at 5:22 pm

Two weeks after first discussing ways to tackle a projected $11.2 milliondeficit, San Bernardino city leaders will revisit those proposals Tuesday,June 11, and consider additional measures to avoid fiscal calamity.

According to a staff report prepared for the budget study workshop, acommittee formed by Mayor John Valdivia to explore cost-savingstrategies has recommended cutting the salaries for the elected cityattorney, city clerk and city treasurer to save $56,000 in the next fiscalyear, which runs July 1 through June 30, 2020.

The committee, which met May 30 and June 5, is chaired by CouncilmanHenry Nickel and includes council members Theodore Sanchez andJuan Figueroa.

Following the expiration of their terms in March 2020, the city attorneyand clerk positions shall be filled by appointment, as stated in the citycharter. The treasurer’s position, a part-time job, will be eliminated.

Under the committee’s proposal, total compensation for the last ninemonths of the city attorney’s term would decrease from $184,700 to

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San Bernardino proposes cutting salaries of attorney, clerk and treasurer to assist ailing budget – Press Enterprise

https://www.pe.com/...-budget/?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_content=tw-pressenterprise[6/11/2019 7:55:11 AM]

$100,000, the clerk’s from $128,600 to $52,500, and the treasurer’s from$50,200 to $5,000. The reductions would save $206,000 in payroll costs.

In a corresponding move, San Bernardino, much like Riverside andFontana, would use $150,000 of its salary savings to fund legislativeadvocates in Sacramento and Washington, D.C.

“It’s not a comfortable proposition to bring forward, but we need to savemoney everywhere we can,” Nickel said by phone Monday. “And thetruth of the matter is the role and the function of those elected officials isno longer what it was when those salaries were put in place.

“With the reduced responsibilities, taxpayers should be relieved of payingfull compensation for those positions.”

Since San Bernardino contracted with Best Best & Krieger for legalservices in August 2018, elected City Attorney Gary Saenz has helpedthe firm transition into the role. When Saenz’s term expires in March2020, Best Best & Krieger will assume the city attorney’s post.

Ahead of the expiration of City Clerk Gigi Hanna’s term, city leadersexpect to have an appointment process in place to hire her successor forthe remainder of the fiscal year.

“This is not a reflection, as far as I’m concerned, on their performancesince they’ve been in office,” Nickel said of Saenz, Hanna and CityTreasurer David Kennedy. “It’s not intended to be anything other thanaligning our budget. We must be cognizant of protecting our taxpayers’

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San Bernardino proposes cutting salaries of attorney, clerk and treasurer to assist ailing budget – Press Enterprise

https://www.pe.com/...-budget/?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_content=tw-pressenterprise[6/11/2019 7:55:11 AM]

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interests and services.”

Councilman Fred Shorett said Monday he does not support cutting thesalaries of sitting officials, suggesting instead cuts be made to staffing inthe mayor’s office.

The longtime councilman championed similar measures when discussingcharter reform a few years ago.

“We don’t need all the staff in the legislative office,” Shorett said. “Weneed to be making those cuts.”

In response to a request to shave 7% from their 2019-20 budgets, citydepartments last month proposed myriad cuts to personnel andprograms.

According to the proposals, nodepartment would take abigger hit than the city’s policeforce, whose 2019-20finances are projected toaccount for about 65% of thecity’s budget. While thedepartment would not givepink slips to any current policeofficers, it would make anumber of reductions torealize about $7.1 million innet savings.

Among the items on thechopping block, a $339,000contract for body worncameras and TASERs.

“Due to the depth of the reductions,” the staff report reads, “the deliveryof police services will be negatively impacted. Despite the reductions, thedepartment will strive to deliver the best possible service to thecommunity.”

San Bernardino proposes cutting salaries of attorney, clerk and treasurer to assist ailing budget – Press Enterprise

https://www.pe.com/...-budget/?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_content=tw-pressenterprise[6/11/2019 7:55:11 AM]

The City Council meets at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday in the temporary CouncilChambers, 201 N. E St. San Bernardino.

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Brian WhiteheadBrian Whitehead covers San Bernardino for The Sun. Bred in Grand Terrace, he graduated fromRiverside Notre Dame High and Cal State Fullerton. For seven years, he covered high school andcollege sports for The Orange County Register. Before landing at The Sun, he was the city beat

reporter for Buena Park, Fullerton and La Palma.

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By Garrett Bergthold Staff Writer Posted Jun 10, 2019 at 7:54 AM

ADELANTO — More than a dozen vendors will set up at Adelanto StadiumJune 29 during the Mental Health Expo to spread the word about mental healthservices and techniques available in the High Desert.

Hosted by the Rotary Club of Adelanto, with the support of the city and the city-owned stadium, the Mental Health Expo includes vendors and speakersrepresenting a variety of related fields.

Karen Hasick, organizer of the event at Adelanto Stadium, said many techniquesexist to get an individual through a short term crisis until professional help canbe sought in the event of an emergency. These include traditional and alternativemethods like laughter and mindfulness, she said.

“The medical health field is now actually coming to an awareness that the non-traditional stuff can be married with what they are doing,” Hasick said.

Guest speakers will include: Wandalyn Lane, program manager for Valley StarBehavioral Health, Marta Ardema, of Family Service Agency of San Bernardino,and Pat Farrell of Energy Healing Medicine.

Farrell will be speaking about tapping, which is an alternative treatment forphysical pain and emotional distress, according to Healthline.com. It’s anacupuncture-like technique that “taps” into the body’s meridian points, which areenergy hot spots, to restore balance to the body’s energy.

Some believe an imbalance in the flow of energy through the body can influencedisease or sickness. It has been said to help remedy anxiety and PTSD.

Confirmed vendors include St. Joseph Health, St. Mary Community Health &Healthy Communities, Family Service Agency of Adelanto, Valley StarBehavioral Health, Choice Medical Group, High Desert Vet Center and

Mental health expo is coming to Adelanto

American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

Hasick says goals of the expo are to inform Adelanto residents about services inthe immediate area, and to educate people in the surrounding mountaincommunities that help is available in the Victor Valley.

The Mental Health Expo is a free event that begins at 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. June 29at Adelanto Stadium.

Snacks and drinks will be available for purchase. Call 760-963-1261 with anyquestions.

Garrett Bergthold can be reached at GBergthold@VVDailyPress.com or at 760-955-5368.

Follow him on Twitter at @DP_Garrett.

Tree-bound bear removed from Apple Valley neighborhood - News - vvdailypress.com - Victorville, CA

https://www.vvdailypress.com/news/20190610/tree-bound-bear-removed-from-apple-valley-neighborhood[6/11/2019 8:03:48 AM]

Tree-bound bear removed from Apple Valleyneighborhood

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Tree-bound bear removed from Apple Valley neighborhood - News - vvdailypress.com - Victorville, CA

https://www.vvdailypress.com/news/20190610/tree-bound-bear-removed-from-apple-valley-neighborhood[6/11/2019 8:03:48 AM]

By Rene Ray De La Cruz Staff Writer

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Posted Jun 10, 2019 at 5:40 PMUpdated Jun 10, 2019 at 5:47 PM

APPLE VALLEY — Until an animal control offcial knockedon his door at 7 a.m. Monday, homeowner Buz Callawayhad no idea a 185-pound bear had sought refuge in a treeon his property.

The bear, which authorities believe found its way into the neighborhood of Klickitat Avenue andPawnee Road from an area near Silverwood Lake, spent several hours in Callaway’s tree. CaliforniaDepartment of Fish and Wildlife offcials had to shoot tranquilizers into the bear twice before itbecame groggy and tumbled down from near the top of the 25-foot tree to the ground.

Offcials with the Town of Apple Valley Animal Services Department and state agency quicklyadministered care to the male bear on Monday as they hydrated, tagged and measured the vital signsof the animal.

With cameras in hand, dozens of people tried to capture a glimpse of the groggy bear as it sat in thetree.

“In the 45 years that I’ve lived here, I’ve never seen this much excitement in Apple Valley ” saidCallaway, 81. “I don’t think Roy Rogers could have drummed up this much excitement — unless he fellout of a tree.”

Tree-bound bear removed from Apple Valley neighborhood - News - vvdailypress.com - Victorville, CA

https://www.vvdailypress.com/news/20190610/tree-bound-bear-removed-from-apple-valley-neighborhood[6/11/2019 8:03:48 AM]

Deputies from the Apple Valley Sheriff’s Station kept people away from the scene.

Neighbor Amelia Santoro was one of many who gasped as they watched from a distance the bear fall tothe ground.

“There goes Boo Boo,” yelled Santoro, 47, who waited in her car for nearly two hours to catch a glimpseof the bear. “I hope he’s OK.”

The “black bear” weighed about 185 pounds and was in good condition as state and town offcialsworked on the animal on the ground and later in the back of a pickup truck owned by Fish andWildlife, Apple Valley Animal Services Director Gina Whiteside told the Daily Press.

The bear was expected to be unconscious for nearly 90minutes, plenty of time for state offcials to transport theanimal back to the Silverwood Lake area, state offcialssaid.

Before the bear was brought down, several residents toldthe Daily Press they heard over the last four days that abrown bear was seen roaming through Lucerne Valley, nearSycamore Rocks Park and near Sunset Hills Memorial Parkand Mortuary.

Neighbor Edna Jones was shocked when her daughter, wholives in Hawaii, called and told her to bring her dogs inside for safety because there was a bear near herhome.

“Look at all these people out here,” Jones said. “All this to see a bear in a tree. When was the last time abear was seen in Apple Valley?”

Kellie Walker and her granddaughter, Marley Tennell, 9, sat in their car and watched the scene unfold.

“I think that bear looks like Paddington Bear,” said Marley. “I just hope he gets home safely.”

In an attempt to avoid startling the bear, offcials with Animal Services and the Sheriff’s Station askedresidents within Ramona Avenue, Navajo, Elkalo and Nanticoke roads to keep their pets inside and forthe public to stay away from the area.

Reporter Rene Ray De La Cruz may be reached at 760-951-6227, RDeLaCruz@VVDailyPress.com,Twitter @DP_ReneDeLaCruz

Ex-school district leader found dead two months after stepping down amid questions - Los Angeles Times

https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-edu-former-lennox-superintendent-found-dead-20190610-story.html[6/11/2019 7:56:20 AM]

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Ex-school district leader found dead two monthsafter stepping down amid questionsBy HOWARD BLUME

JUN 10, 2019 | 6:25 PM

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Ex-school district leader found dead two months after stepping down amid questions - Los Angeles Times

https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-edu-former-lennox-superintendent-found-dead-20190610-story.html[6/11/2019 7:56:20 AM]

Former school district Supt. Kent Taylor, 54, shown in 2012, was found dead Sunday in his home in San Bernardino County. Authorities are investigating. (Gary Friedman /Los Angeles Times)

Former Lennox School District Supt. Kent Taylor, 54, was found dead Sunday at his home in SanBernardino County two months after stepping down amid questions over his management of the schoolsystem, officials confirmed Monday.

His oversight of the South Bay-area school district, which faces possible insolvency, had been underscrutiny on several fronts. He also recently resigned from the school board for the Colton school district.

Ex-school district leader found dead two months after stepping down amid questions - Los Angeles Times

https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-edu-former-lennox-superintendent-found-dead-20190610-story.html[6/11/2019 7:56:20 AM]

Taylor, who became superintendent at Lennox in 2013, was regarded by admirers as an energetic andinnovative educator but by critics as someone who pushed aggressively into gray areas of the law, withquestionable benefit for students.

“I am heartbroken at the loss of my friend and educator Kent Taylor,” tweeted state AssemblywomanAutumn Burke, who represents the Lennox area. “Lennox has lost a true leader.”

Taylor’s most controversial venture was having far-flung Catholic schools enroll their tuition-payingstudents into a new Lennox online academy. Lennox then claimed state public school funding for thestudents and used some of the money to buy computers for the Catholic schools.

Enrollment had been declining in the Lennox School District for more than a decade by the time Taylordecided to open the virtual academy in 2016, part of a concerted effort to build enrollment, The Timesreported. By then, the student population had fallen to 5,055, nearly 25% below what it had been in 2006.

"We're trying to be on the cutting edge so we can make sure students' lives get changed and their trajectoryin the future can be great," Taylor in 2017 told The Times, which published an investigation of the project.

Officers responded to a call Sunday afternoon in the 22100 block of Mavis Street in Grand Terrace, saidSgt. Jeff Allison, a spokesman for the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.

Authorities have released no cause of death pending the completion of an investigation. However,investigators do not believe outside parties played a role in Taylor’s death, according to the department.

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Ex-school district leader found dead two months after stepping down amid questions - Los Angeles Times

https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-edu-former-lennox-superintendent-found-dead-20190610-story.html[6/11/2019 7:56:20 AM]

The Lennox school system has about 7,000 students and is located east of Los Angeles InternationalAirport. County education officials confirmed to The Times on Monday that the school district is on thebrink of insolvency, with insufficient reserves to pay its bills, according to a May 31 analysis. In that sameanalysis, county education office Supt. Debra Duardo disclosed her decision to install a “fiscal advisor”with authority to rescind actions taken by the elected Lennox Board of Education.

The budget problems have been exacerbated by the pending loss of the Catholic school project, whichTaylor agreed to shut down after this year, according to the county.

“We discussed the legal concerns regarding the program,” Duardo wrote in an October letter to Taylor.“During that call, you agreed that you would eliminate the program at the beginning of the new fiscalyear.”

On April 9, Taylor resigned from his Lennox superintendency and his Colton board position. Taylor hadbeen elected to the Colton board five times starting in 1999, a span that included one break in servicewhen he moved to accept a job in another part of the state.

Two days after Taylor’s resignations, the Los Angeles County Office of Education sent a letter to theLennox district expressing concerns, which were first reported by the Daily Breeze.

In the April 11 letter, county officials flagged the district’s deficit spending as well as its failure to maintainadequate reserves and fund balances, inability to estimate the ending fund balance, ignorance of legallyrequired budget procedures and “lack of monitoring of cash.”

The Breeze also reported on potential conflicts of interest and questionable arrangements withcontractors.

Taylor spent much of his childhood in Inglewood, although his professional career had unfoldedelsewhere. He worked as a special education teacher in San Bernardino, became a principal and then adistrict supervisor overseeing curriculum and intervention programs for struggling students. In July 2011,he moved with his wife and three children to the Antelope Valley town of Rosamond, where he was namedsuperintendent of the small Southern Kern Unified School District.

He guided that school system out of financial difficulties, leading to high hopes when he returned toInglewood in 2012 as the state-appointed administrator of a school system teetering on bankruptcy.

He was the hometown boy made good, returning to help others do likewise.

"There was something special inside him that made him stand out," Mary Boykin, one of his formerEnglish teachers, said at the time. "I recall talking to him a great deal about his desire to go to college, hisdesire to be somebody. He was one of those you don't ever forget."

But the stint in Inglewood proved brief. State officials forced him out after two months on allegations thathe agreed to a tentative teachers’ contract without their authorization. The state was in control per theterms of its bail-out loan to keep the school system afloat.

Former Lennox school Superintendent Kent Taylor found dead at home in San Bernardino County – San Bernardino Sun

https://www.sbsun.com/...rdino-county/?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_content=tw-sbsun[6/11/2019 7:56:46 AM]

Lennox School District Superintendent Kent Taylor resigned

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Former Lennox school Superintendent KentTaylor found dead at home in San BernardinoCountyThe embattled official’s tenure was under scrutiny after he resigned fromhis job in Lennox and the school board in Colton

Former Lennox school Superintendent Kent Taylor found dead at home in San Bernardino County – San Bernardino Sun

https://www.sbsun.com/...rdino-county/?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_content=tw-sbsun[6/11/2019 7:56:46 AM]

By DAVID ROSENFELD | drosenfeld@scng.com |

The Daily BreezePUBLISHED: June 10, 2019 at 11:20 am | UPDATED: June 10,2019 at 6:28 pm

Kent Taylor, the former Lennox School Districtsuperintendent who resigned abruptly in April aftermore than six years at the district, was found deadSunday, June 9, in the San Bernardino Countycommunity of Grand Terrace, authorities said.

Sgt. Jeff Allison, a spokesman for the SanBernardino County Sheriff’s Department, declinedto reveal the cause of death because thecircumstances are still under investigation by thecounty coroner’s office. Coroner’s officials declinedto discuss their early investigation.

“The cause and manner of death is still underforensic examination. However, at this time we arenot looking for any outstanding suspects,” Allisonsaid, leaving suicide or an accident as the onlyother possible explanations for Taylor’s death.

Sheriff’s deputies arrived at Taylor’s residence onMavis Street in Grand Terrace about 12:25 p.m.Sunday after receiving a phone call about adeceased male at the home, Allison said.

On Monday morning, a woman answered the doorat the Mavis Street home and promptly closed it ona reporter. Neighbors said they had seen policeactivity but didn’t know what it was about.

Tuesday, April 9, effective immediately, following a closed sessionmeeting. He also resigned the same day from the Colton JointUnified School District. (Photo courtesy Lennox School District)

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Former Lennox school Superintendent Kent Taylor found dead at home in San Bernardino County – San Bernardino Sun

https://www.sbsun.com/...rdino-county/?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_content=tw-sbsun[6/11/2019 7:56:46 AM]

The story was first reported by 2urbangirls.com.

Taylor, 54, resigned from the superintendent’sposition in Lennox on April 9, the same day healso resigned as a board member for the ColtonJoint Unified School District in San Bernardino. Noexplanation was provided by Taylor or from eitherdistrict for his sudden departures.

Following news of Taylor’s death, which spreadacross the district quickly Monday morning, stateAssemblywoman Autumn Burke, who representsthe tiny unincorporated community situated justeast of Los Angeles International Airport, calledTaylor a “true leader.”

“I am heartbroken at the loss of my friend andeducator Kent Taylor. Our differences should befully embraced, not destroyed,” Burke wrote onboth Facebook and Twitter. “Lennox has lost a trueleader.”

Interim Lennox Superintendent Nick Salerno couldnot confirm Taylor’s death Monday morning,although the news was already spreadingthroughout the district.

“No matter what, every human being deserves

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1 1 shot and killed at grocery store in SanBernardino; multiple suspects seen leaving areain vehicle

2 Former Lennox school Superintendent KentTaylor found dead at home in San BernardinoCounty

3 Charles ‘Chase’ Merritt found guilty of killing 4members of McStay family

4 Triple-digit heat continues in Inland Empire, buta break is coming

5 8 shot at dice game in San Bernardino, 2 incritical condition, and a neighborhood shaken

6 San Bernardino proposes cutting salaries ofattorney, clerk and treasurer to assist ailingbudget

7 2019 Jurupa Valley Pro Rodeo rounds up bighelping of bull riding

8 Rodents and cockroaches: Restaurant closuresin San Bernardino County, May 30-June 6

9 The Arrowhead Country Club pool that was oncea community oasis has been restored

10 DUI arrest after 6-car crash on 15 Freeway inTemecula kills Murrieta woman

11 Summer McStay may have been raped beforeshe was killed, buried in desert, court documentsays

Former Lennox school Superintendent Kent Taylor found dead at home in San Bernardino County – San Bernardino Sun

https://www.sbsun.com/...rdino-county/?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_content=tw-sbsun[6/11/2019 7:56:46 AM]

Lennox Superintendent Kent Taylorresigns after closed-door meeting

Taylor resigns post as Colton schoolboard member

Just days after Lennox superintendentresigned, L.A. County officials expressedfears about district’s solvency

Millions spent on open-ended contractsweigh down this financially strappedschool district

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dignity and respect,” said Lennox school boardmember Angela Fajardo. “Let’s give that to Mr.Taylor and his family.”

Priscilla Avila, president of the Lennox TeachersAssociation, said the union also was trying toconfirm details.

Duringhis timeinLennox,Taylorwasinvolvedin a

controversial program to enroll local Catholicschool students in online classes administered bythe Lennox Virtual Academy. The arrangementdrew inquiries from the Los Angeles County Officeof Education, but no formal audit was initiatedbecause Taylor agreed to shut down the programthis year, according to a letter from LACOEobtained by the Southern California News Group.One contractor made more than $600,000 on thedeal.

Not long after Taylor left Lennox, it was revealedthat the district was facing financial trouble as ithad spent down a considerable amount of itsreserves. A letter from LACOE expressed

Former Lennox school Superintendent Kent Taylor found dead at home in San Bernardino County – San Bernardino Sun

https://www.sbsun.com/...rdino-county/?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_content=tw-sbsun[6/11/2019 7:56:46 AM]

concerns about the district’s budget and its abilityto maintain appropriate levels of state-mandatedreserve funds.

A subsequent investigation by the SouthernCalifornia News Group found the district waspaying millions of dollars to a security firm and twoother consultants on open-ended contracts.

In May, both the district’s chief business officerand its chief personnel officer resigned, sayingthey would pursue other opportunities and spendmore time with their families.

Taylor, a graduate of Inglewood High School,came to Lennox as a deputy superintendent in2013 following controversy at the InglewoodUnified School District, where he served just twomonths as the state-appointed administrator. Hewas forced to resign after it was alleged heoverstepped his authority in offering a deal with thelocal teachers union. He received $100,000 inseverance.

Taylor served as a member on the Colton JointUnified School District board from 1999 to 2011,leaving to become superintendent of the SouthernKern Unified School District in July 2011. Beforethat, he served as a teacher, assistant principal,principal and in other administrative assignmentsin San Bernardino, Yucaipa, San Jacinto andRialto.

When he returned to the region from Kern County,he again ran successfully for a school board seatin Colton in 2014.

Taylor earned a bachelor’s degree from UC

Former Lennox school Superintendent Kent Taylor found dead at home in San Bernardino County – San Bernardino Sun

https://www.sbsun.com/...rdino-county/?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_content=tw-sbsun[6/11/2019 7:56:46 AM]

Riverside and a master’s of education degree fromCal State San Bernardino.

He is survived by his wife, Janet, and threechildren.

Staff Writer Brian Whitehead contributed to thisreport.

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David RosenfeldDavid Rosenfeld has been working as a professional journalist for nearly 20 years at newspapers, magazines andwebsites. He's covered murder trials, interviewed governors and presidential candidates and once did a flip in abiplane for a story assignment. Before joining The Daily Breeze in 2018 to cover El Segundo, Hawthorne andaerospace, he worked at The Beach Reporter in Redondo Beach. In his free time, David loves outdoor sports such assailing, mountain biking and golfing.

Follow David Rosenfeld @RosenfeldReport

Tags: education, Top Stories Breeze, Top Stories IVDB, Top Stories PE, Top Stories RDF,Top Stories Sun

By By RICHARD K. DE ATLEYRICHARD K. DE ATLEY | | rdeatley@scng.comrdeatley@scng.com and and BRIAN ROKOSBRIAN ROKOS | |brokos@scng.combrokos@scng.com | The Press-Enterprise | The Press-Enterprise

Charles “Chase” Merritt reacts after being found guilty in the deaths of the McStayCharles “Chase” Merritt reacts after being found guilty in the deaths of the McStayfamily in 2010. (Photo by Jennifer Cappuccio Maher, Inland Valley Dailyfamily in 2010. (Photo by Jennifer Cappuccio Maher, Inland Valley DailyBulletin/SCNG)Bulletin/SCNG)

NEWSNEWSCRIME + PUBLIC SAFETYCRIME + PUBLIC SAFETY

Charles ‘Chase’ Merritt foundCharles ‘Chase’ Merritt foundguilty of killing 4 members ofguilty of killing 4 members ofMcStay familyMcStay family

PUBLISHED: PUBLISHED: June 10, 2019 at 10:11 amJune 10, 2019 at 10:11 am | UPDATED: | UPDATED: June 10, 2019 at 6:14 pmJune 10, 2019 at 6:14 pm

Jurors on Monday found Charles “Chase” Merritt guilty in the February 2010Jurors on Monday found Charles “Chase” Merritt guilty in the February 2010

bludgeoning deaths of the four-member bludgeoning deaths of the four-member McStay familyMcStay family of Fallbrook, whose of Fallbrook, whose

bodies were found nearly four years later in two shallow graves near Victorville.bodies were found nearly four years later in two shallow graves near Victorville.

Merritt now faces a possible death sentence. The verdicts, from a circumstantial-Merritt now faces a possible death sentence. The verdicts, from a circumstantial-

evidence case, drew gasps in the courtroom.evidence case, drew gasps in the courtroom.

Jurors convicted Merritt, 62, of first-degree murder in the slayings of formerJurors convicted Merritt, 62, of first-degree murder in the slayings of former

business associate Joseph McStay, 40; his wife, Summer, 43; and their twobusiness associate Joseph McStay, 40; his wife, Summer, 43; and their two

children, Gianni, 4, and Joseph Jr., 3; in their San Diego County home. The familychildren, Gianni, 4, and Joseph Jr., 3; in their San Diego County home. The family

had just moved there from San Clemente.had just moved there from San Clemente.

The same jury will hear evidence starting Tuesday to decide whether toThe same jury will hear evidence starting Tuesday to decide whether to

recommend death by lethal injection, or life in prison without parole for Merritt.recommend death by lethal injection, or life in prison without parole for Merritt.

Defense attorney James McGee patted Merritt’s hand just before the verdicts wereDefense attorney James McGee patted Merritt’s hand just before the verdicts were

read, and at one point Merritt, in custody since November 2014, closed his eyesread, and at one point Merritt, in custody since November 2014, closed his eyes

while hearing the litany of convictions.while hearing the litany of convictions.

“Oh, my God,” exclaimed one woman among the family and friends seated behind“Oh, my God,” exclaimed one woman among the family and friends seated behind

Merritt. “Oh, God,” one man could be heard saying. Some of those on Merritt’sMerritt. “Oh, God,” one man could be heard saying. Some of those on Merritt’s

side of the courtroom bolted in tears. Their cries in the hallway could be heardside of the courtroom bolted in tears. Their cries in the hallway could be heard

inside the courtroom.inside the courtroom.

Members of the McStay family, including Joseph McStay’s mother Susan Blake,Members of the McStay family, including Joseph McStay’s mother Susan Blake,

who came with son Michael, cried and hugged as the verdicts were read.who came with son Michael, cried and hugged as the verdicts were read.

They embraced prosecutors Sean Daugherty, Britt Imes and Melissa RodriguezThey embraced prosecutors Sean Daugherty, Britt Imes and Melissa Rodriguez

and lead sheriff’s investigator Sgt. Ryan Smith after court ended for the day.and lead sheriff’s investigator Sgt. Ryan Smith after court ended for the day.

“We’re kind of shell-shocked,” defense attorney Rajan Maline said outside the“We’re kind of shell-shocked,” defense attorney Rajan Maline said outside the

courthouse, according to Law & Crime Network. Maline and McGee spoke tocourthouse, according to Law & Crime Network. Maline and McGee spoke to

reporters after meeting for about two hours, post-verdict, with Merritt.reporters after meeting for about two hours, post-verdict, with Merritt.

McGee said Merritt was “devastated, in shock, and disappointed.”McGee said Merritt was “devastated, in shock, and disappointed.”

Law & Crime NetworkLaw & Crime Network@LawCrimeNetwork@LawCrimeNetwork

##McStayMcStay - Charles Merritt's defense team spoke following the - Charles Merritt's defense team spoke following the verdict. Raj Maline and James McGee were very somber.verdict. Raj Maline and James McGee were very somber. McGee: "We're just shell shocked right now."McGee: "We're just shell shocked right now."

88 2:04 PM - Jun 10, 20192:04 PM - Jun 10, 2019

See Law & Crime Network's other TweetsSee Law & Crime Network's other Tweets

The prosecution, along with Merritt and McStay family members, declined toThe prosecution, along with Merritt and McStay family members, declined to

comment to a gathered group of news media outside the courthouse. Sancomment to a gathered group of news media outside the courthouse. San

Bernardino County District Attorney Jason Anderson noted in a statement that theBernardino County District Attorney Jason Anderson noted in a statement that the

case was still in trial.case was still in trial.

The jury in the downtown San Bernardino Justice Center courtroom of SuperiorThe jury in the downtown San Bernardino Justice Center courtroom of Superior

Court Judge Michael A. Smith affirmed their verdicts for the murder convictions,Court Judge Michael A. Smith affirmed their verdicts for the murder convictions,

as well as the multiple-murder special circumstance that made it a capital case.as well as the multiple-murder special circumstance that made it a capital case.

Brian RokosBrian Rokos@Brian_Rokos@Brian_Rokos

The jurors are being polled individually. They all affirmed thatThe jurors are being polled individually. They all affirmed that these were each of their verdicts.these were each of their verdicts.

33 10:09 AM - Jun 10, 201910:09 AM - Jun 10, 2019

See Brian Rokos's other TweetsSee Brian Rokos's other Tweets

Brian RokosBrian Rokos @Brian_Rokos@Brian_Rokos · · 2121hhReplying to @Brian_RokosReplying to @Brian_RokosThe jury found the special circumstances enhancement of MerrittThe jury found the special circumstances enhancement of Merritt committing multiple murders to be true. These are first-degreecommitting multiple murders to be true. These are first-degree murder convictions.murder convictions.

Testimony in front of the Superior Court jury began on Jan. 7, with deliberationsTestimony in front of the Superior Court jury began on Jan. 7, with deliberations

beginning late in the morning of May 30. The jurors announced Friday that theybeginning late in the morning of May 30. The jurors announced Friday that they

had come to verdicts, but the reading of them was delayed until Monday morning.had come to verdicts, but the reading of them was delayed until Monday morning.

The panel had deliberated six days, but some were partial days. Court watchersThe panel had deliberated six days, but some were partial days. Court watchers

estimated there were about 22 hours of deliberation.estimated there were about 22 hours of deliberation.

The jurors had considered both first- and second-degree murder in the case.The jurors had considered both first- and second-degree murder in the case.

Joseph McStay, 40, his wife Summer, 43, and their two sons, Gianni, 3, andJoseph McStay, 40, his wife Summer, 43, and their two sons, Gianni, 3, andJoseph, 3, were discovered dead in shallow graves just north of Victorville onJoseph, 3, were discovered dead in shallow graves just north of Victorville onNov. 11, 2013. (Courtesy Photo)Nov. 11, 2013. (Courtesy Photo)

Merritt was Merritt was arrested and chargedarrested and charged in November 2014 – a year after the McStay in November 2014 – a year after the McStay

family’s family’s skeletal remains were discoveredskeletal remains were discovered in two shallow graves west of the 15 in two shallow graves west of the 15

Freeway near Victorville. A Freeway near Victorville. A three-pound sledge hammer investigators said wasthree-pound sledge hammer investigators said was

used to kill the familyused to kill the family was buried along with their remains. was buried along with their remains.

Merritt is a former Apple Valley resident.Merritt is a former Apple Valley resident.

McStay and Merritt had worked together in the sale, design and building of large-McStay and Merritt had worked together in the sale, design and building of large-

scale custom waterworks for clients in Saudi Arabia and businesses such as Paulscale custom waterworks for clients in Saudi Arabia and businesses such as Paul

Mitchell salons. McStay found customers, and Merritt, whose business wasMitchell salons. McStay found customers, and Merritt, whose business was

separate from McStay’s, built the pieces.separate from McStay’s, built the pieces.

The pieces featured falling water over metallic sculptures and were designed asThe pieces featured falling water over metallic sculptures and were designed as

centerpieces to create an ambience for their customers’ business.centerpieces to create an ambience for their customers’ business.

Prosecutors said Merritt was being cut out of the relationship by McStay for poorProsecutors said Merritt was being cut out of the relationship by McStay for poor

performance, and on Feb. 1, 2010, McStay sent an email to Merritt stating Merrittperformance, and on Feb. 1, 2010, McStay sent an email to Merritt stating Merritt

owed him $42,845. The McStay family was last heard three days later.owed him $42,845. The McStay family was last heard three days later.

Then, prosecutors said, Merritt began looting McStay’s business, forging checks toThen, prosecutors said, Merritt began looting McStay’s business, forging checks to

himself in McStay’s name and backdating them to Feb. 4, because Merritt knewhimself in McStay’s name and backdating them to Feb. 4, because Merritt knew

that was the last day anyone would have heard from McStay, or his family.that was the last day anyone would have heard from McStay, or his family.

Defense attorneys said the men were best friends and future prospects for theirDefense attorneys said the men were best friends and future prospects for their

business relationship were too lucrative for Merritt to kill McStay and his family.business relationship were too lucrative for Merritt to kill McStay and his family.

They said the checks were an effort to keep the waterworks business going afterThey said the checks were an effort to keep the waterworks business going after

Joseph McStay disappeared, and his fate was unknown. They said anotherJoseph McStay disappeared, and his fate was unknown. They said another

business associate of McStay’s, a web designer, had disputes with McStay and wasbusiness associate of McStay’s, a web designer, had disputes with McStay and was

overlooked by investigators.overlooked by investigators.

San Bernardino County Sheriff detectives investigate a scene off of QuarrySan Bernardino County Sheriff detectives investigate a scene off of QuarryRoad, near Interstate 15, in the desert north of Victorville Wednesday morning.Road, near Interstate 15, in the desert north of Victorville Wednesday morning.Nov. 13, 2013, after multiple skeleton remains were found. The 4 bodiesNov. 13, 2013, after multiple skeleton remains were found. The 4 bodiesrecovered were later identified as Joseph McStay, 40, and his wife Summer, 43,recovered were later identified as Joseph McStay, 40, and his wife Summer, 43,along with their sons Gianni, 4, and Joseph Jr., 3, all missing from Fallbrook sincealong with their sons Gianni, 4, and Joseph Jr., 3, all missing from Fallbrook sinceFebruary of 2010. (Will Lester/Inland Valley Daily Bulletin)February of 2010. (Will Lester/Inland Valley Daily Bulletin)

The web designer has denied having anything to do the McStay family’s death,The web designer has denied having anything to do the McStay family’s death,

and prosecutors have said he was not a suspect.and prosecutors have said he was not a suspect.

After the verdicts were read, prosecutor Imes again brought up the issue ofAfter the verdicts were read, prosecutor Imes again brought up the issue of

possible jury tampering.possible jury tampering.

There was a hearing June 3 after it was learned two alternates were approachedThere was a hearing June 3 after it was learned two alternates were approached

May 30 by a defense team member after deliberations had started. He told SmithMay 30 by a defense team member after deliberations had started. He told Smith

he had asked if they would agree to interviews, after trial, for a documentary.he had asked if they would agree to interviews, after trial, for a documentary.

Smith banned him from the courthouse.Smith banned him from the courthouse.

Imes on Monday told Smith he wanted assurances, for the sake of the trial record,Imes on Monday told Smith he wanted assurances, for the sake of the trial record,

that other jurors were not contacted by the now-banned defense team memberthat other jurors were not contacted by the now-banned defense team member

during the entire length of the trial. Smith agreed to ask jurors about that onduring the entire length of the trial. Smith agreed to ask jurors about that on

Tuesday.Tuesday.

Richard K. De AtleyRichard K. De AtleyA journalist since 1975 for City News Service in Los Angeles, The AssociatedA journalist since 1975 for City News Service in Los Angeles, The AssociatedPress in Los Angeles and New York, and The Press-Enterprise, Richard K. DePress in Los Angeles and New York, and The Press-Enterprise, Richard K. DeAtley has been Entertainment Editor and a features writer. He has also reportedAtley has been Entertainment Editor and a features writer. He has also reportedon trials and breaking news. He is currently a business reporter for The P-E. Deon trials and breaking news. He is currently a business reporter for The P-E. DeAtley is a Cal State Long Beach graduate, a lifelong Southern Californian (exceptAtley is a Cal State Long Beach graduate, a lifelong Southern Californian (exceptfor that time in New York -- which was great!) and has been in Riverside sincefor that time in New York -- which was great!) and has been in Riverside since1992.1992.

Follow Richard K. De Atley Follow Richard K. De Atley @RKDeAtley@RKDeAtley

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McStay murder trial: Man is convicted of killing family and burying their bodies in the Mojave Desert - Los Angeles Times

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-mcstay-family-murders-verdict-20190610-story.html[6/11/2019 7:53:36 AM]

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McStay murder trial: Man is convicted of killingfamily and burying their bodies in the MojaveDesertBy ALENE TCHEKMEDYIAN

JUN 10, 2019 | 6:45 PM| SAN BERNARDINO

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McStay murder trial: Man is convicted of killing family and burying their bodies in the Mojave Desert - Los Angeles Times

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-mcstay-family-murders-verdict-20190610-story.html[6/11/2019 7:53:36 AM]

Charles "Chase" Merritt, left, reacts after being found guilty of four counts of first-degree murder of the McStay family, in San Bernardino Superior Court. (Jennifer CappuccioMaher / pool photo)

Nearly a decade later, so much remains unknown about the murders of Joseph and Summer McStay andtheir two young boys.

They vanished from their Fallbrook home in 2010 and, more than three years later, their bodies werefound buried in shallow graves in the Mojave Desert. But without a bloody crime scene, exactly when theydied — and where — remains a mystery.

McStay murder trial: Man is convicted of killing family and burying their bodies in the Mojave Desert - Los Angeles Times

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-mcstay-family-murders-verdict-20190610-story.html[6/11/2019 7:53:36 AM]

“What exactly happened in that house?” a prosecutor said in court late last month. “Only one personknows: the killer.”

A jury has concluded that person is Charles “Chase” Merritt, a business partner whom they convicted ofbludgeoning the family of four before burying their bodies in the desert roughly 100 miles away.

The panel found Merritt guilty of four counts of first-degree murder, reaching their verdict on Fridaymorning after about a week of deliberating. Their verdict forms were sealed through the weekend and readpublicly by a clerk in a packed San Bernardino courtroom on Monday morning.

Merritt, 62, sat at the defense table, staring ahead with his hands clasped together in front of him. Whenthe clerk announced the outcome, he closed his eyes and inhaled slightly. He held his posture for severalseconds, then dropped his head. Seated beside him, his attorney reached over and, for a moment, set hishand on Merritt’s arm.

“Oh, God,” someone in the audience shrieked. A woman on Merritt’s side ran out of the courtroom intears. Members of the McStay family wept, one wiping her eyes with a tissue.

It was an emotional end to more than nine years of tragedy in a case that drew national attention, servingas the subject of documentaries and a book. Merritt’s five-month trial was streamed live by the websiteLaw & Crime.

Proceedings are set to continue this week. The jury found Merritt responsible for multiple murders,making him eligible for the death penalty. Jurors will begin hearing testimony on Tuesday to decide hispunishment. They were ordered by a judge not to speak to reporters until after the trial’s penalty phase.

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McStay murder trial: Man is convicted of killing family and burying their bodies in the Mojave Desert - Los Angeles Times

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-mcstay-family-murders-verdict-20190610-story.html[6/11/2019 7:53:36 AM]

Prosecutors declined to comment after the verdict, saying the trial was ongoing. Defense attorneys couldnot be reached.

Susan Blake, center, the mother of Joseph McStay, leaves the San Bernardino Superior Court after the guilty verdicts in San Bernardino. (Katie Falkenberg / Los AngelesTimes)

From the start, the family’s disappearance baffled detectives, who initially believed they may haveventured out on their own and planned to return.

The home showed signs of a swift departure: uneaten bowls of popcorn on the futon, vegetables left out to

McStay murder trial: Man is convicted of killing family and burying their bodies in the Mojave Desert - Los Angeles Times

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-mcstay-family-murders-verdict-20190610-story.html[6/11/2019 7:53:36 AM]

rot. There were no signs of a struggle or forced entry.

A check of the family’s computer revealed searches suggesting an international trip, including “Whatdocuments do children need for traveling to Mexico?” Within days, their Isuzu Trooper was towed fromthe parking lot of a strip mall near the border.

San Diego County sheriff’s detectives handed the investigation over to the FBI, saying they believed thefamily was out of the country.

It wasn’t until more than three years later that there was a break in the case. An off-road motorcycliststumbled upon parts of a skull in the desert off Interstate 15 in Victorville.

Investigators unearthed two shallow graves. One contained the remains of Joseph McStay, 40, and JoeyJr., 3. The second had the remains of Summer McStay, 43, and Gianni, 4, along with a rustysledgehammer.

Joseph McStay’s skull was shattered; his wife sustained a blow to the jaw. Both boys, killed presumablybecause they could have identified the attacker, had skull fractures.

Prosecutors said Merritt, of Rancho Cucamonga, was motivated by greed and self-interest in a case theyacknowledged was built on circumstantial evidence.

Days before the disappearance, Joseph McStay accused Merritt — a welder who helped build custom waterfountains for McStay’s company — of owing him thousands of dollars.

Prosecutors said Merritt then forged checks to himself from McStay’s QuickBooks account and tried toerase the paper trail. When speaking with detectives, Merritt referred to McStay in the past tense.

Prosecutors played video and audio clips for jurors of Merritt’s interviews with CNN and withinvestigators. In one, a reporter asks Merritt if he was the last person to see Joseph McStay.

“I’m definitely the last person he saw,” he replies.

In another, an investigator questions Merritt on why he refers to McStay in the past tense.

“Oh,” he said. “I did … I don’t know why.”

For several days after the family’s disappearance, they said, Merritt’s phone went dark for hours at a time.The shadow of a truck consistent with one driven by Merritt was captured on a home security camera inthe McStay’s Fallbrook neighborhood, and Merritt’s cellphone records showed that his phone was in thevicinity of the desert grave sites two days after the disappearance.

A San Bernardino County sheriff’s investigator had testified that a DNA mixture, including a sample thatmatched Merritt’s genetic profile, was found on the gearshift and steering wheel of the Isuzu.

The defense team argued that Merritt was wrongfully accused in a case based entirely on motive.

“They’ve spun a lot of tales to you,” defense attorney Rajan Maline told jurors during closing arguments.“They’ve given you half truths.”

McStay murder trial: Man is convicted of killing family and burying their bodies in the Mojave Desert - Los Angeles Times

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-mcstay-family-murders-verdict-20190610-story.html[6/11/2019 7:53:36 AM]

Defense attorneys pointed to another of McStay’s business associates, who they said siphoned money fromMcStay’s accounts after he went missing. They argued that no boarding pass or ticket verified theprosecution’s assertion that the associate had traveled to Hawaii at the time.

In an interview with The Times before the trial, Joseph McStay’s father said he had been living in a fog fornine years. Patrick McStay, who lives in Texas and launched an online fundraiser to pay for trips toCalifornia for the trial, had investigated the family’s disappearance and chronicled his findings in a book,“McStays, Taken Too Soon: A True Story.”

After Monday’s proceeding, he and more than a dozen other loved ones walked out of the courthouseflanked by news cameras. They declined to be interviewed.

But in the middle of the crowd, Joseph McStay’s mother, Susan Blake, turned to a woman exiting next toher and smiled.

“It’s over,” she said.

Alene TchekmedyianCONTACT

Alene Tchekmedyian covers Los Angeles County’s criminal courts. She previously covered breaking news in California. Before joining The Times in 2016, she

reported on crime and policing for the Glendale News-Press and Burbank Leader. She grew up in Huntington Beach.

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44% of Inland Empire renters looking at out-of-town apartments – Press Enterprise

https://www.pe.com/...rtments/?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_medium=social&utm_content=tw-pressenterprise[6/11/2019 7:59:54 AM]

By JONATHAN LANSNER | jlansner@scng.com | Orange County RegisterPUBLISHED: June 10, 2019 at 8:30 am | UPDATED: June 10, 2019 at 12:28 pm

Are local renters getting antsy to leave town?

According to a study by Apartment List, 44% of Inland Empire searchesinvolved locals looking at units out of the two-county region. Only three ofthe 25 metro areas studied had a higher level of out-of-town searches.

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44% of Inland Empire renters looking at out-of-town apartmentsThe Los Angeles-Orange County metro got the most looks — 49% ofsearches — followed by San Diego's 15% share. Then came Phoenix andLas Vegas at 6% each.

44% of Inland Empire renters looking at out-of-town apartments – Press Enterprise

https://www.pe.com/...rtments/?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_medium=social&utm_content=tw-pressenterprise[6/11/2019 7:59:54 AM]

To be fair, searches do not mean departures. Renters are frequentmovers so folks using internet search tools can be price shopping,dreaming … or seriously pondering relocation. And while one website’sactivity isn’t a definitive picture, the study offers clues about how the localapartment market is viewed locally, regionally and nationally.

So where else are folks in Riverside and San Bernardino countieslooking on Apartment List? Not very far and perhaps to shortencommutes to work. The Los Angeles-Orange County metro got the mostlooks — 49% of searches — followed by San Diego’s 15% share. Thencame Phoenix and Las Vegas at 6% each.

Now, 33% of all searches of local rentals came from out-of-towners.Who’s looking to come here? It’s a good bet they’re from nearby andlooking at the Inland Empire’s cheaper housing. L.A.-O.C. was 49% ofthese searches followed by Las Vegas at 5% then Phoenix and SanDiego at 4%.

ICYMI: Does California need another crash to create affordablehomes?

When my trusty spreadsheet contrasted the outbound looks to theinbound searches it found Riverside and San Bernardino counties with a“net” score of -11%. That’s far more searches looking out vs. in. Only fivemetros of the 25 studied did worse.

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44% of Inland Empire renters looking at out-of-town apartments – Press Enterprise

https://www.pe.com/...rtments/?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_medium=social&utm_content=tw-pressenterprise[6/11/2019 7:59:54 AM]

Here are the national leaders and laggards from Apartment List’s report…

Who’s looking to get out of town the most? Orlando with 55% of non-local searches; then Detroit at 50% and San Francisco at 46%.

Least-likely to relocate? Minneapolis had the lowest share of outboundsearches at 20%; then San Diego at 24% and Phoenix at 25%.

What are the most popular towns? Tampa had 63% of its searchescome from out-of-towners; then Denver at 55% and Baltimore at 52%.

Sign up for The Home Stretch newsletter. Get weekly housingnews on affordability, renting, buying, selling and more.Subscribe here.

Least interest? Only 22% of searches for Detroit or New York camefrom out of town; then Chicago at 23%.

Most inbound looks vs. outbound? Best “net” score was Tampa,Florida at 35% more looks in than out; then San Diego (plus 26%) andDenver (plus 25%).

Most outbound looks vs. inbound? Least popular was Detroit at -28%;then Chicago (-20%) and New York (-16%).

3 DUI arrest after 6-car crash on Freeway in Temecula kills Murwoman

4 Triple-digit heat continues in InEmpire, but a break is coming

5 Killer of Lake Elsinore store clegets life in prison with no possiof parole

6 Charles ‘Chase’ Merritt found gof killing 4 members of McStayfamily

7 Riverside homicide victim fearebeing killed if she left abusiveboyfriend, mother says

8 Temperatures top 100 degrees Riverside, San Bernardino Couwith more heat to come

9 Woman dead after fiery crash of Winchester on Highway 74

10 1 shot and killed at grocery stoSan Bernardino; multiple suspeseen leaving area in vehicle

11 44% of Inland Empire renterslooking at out-of-town apartme

12 Police: Drug use may be a factHemet crash that left woman d

By By ROBERT GUNDRANROBERT GUNDRAN | | rgundran@scng.comrgundran@scng.com | |

PUBLISHED: PUBLISHED: June 10, 2019 at 6:07 pmJune 10, 2019 at 6:07 pm | UPDATED: | UPDATED: June 11, 2019 at 7:27 amJune 11, 2019 at 7:27 am

One man died after a shooting at a Stater Bros. grocery store in San Bernardino onOne man died after a shooting at a Stater Bros. grocery store in San Bernardino on

Monday afternoon.Monday afternoon.

San Bernardino Police Department spokeswoman Sadie Albers said the man whoSan Bernardino Police Department spokeswoman Sadie Albers said the man who

was shot and killed was in his 20s. He was shot inside a Stater Bros. near thewas shot and killed was in his 20s. He was shot inside a Stater Bros. near the

intersection of Baseline Street and Waterman Avenue in San Bernardino.intersection of Baseline Street and Waterman Avenue in San Bernardino.

The shooting happened at around 4 p.m., Albers said. Multiple suspects left the areaThe shooting happened at around 4 p.m., Albers said. Multiple suspects left the area

in a vehicle, and the Stater Bros. will remain closed for the rest of the day whilein a vehicle, and the Stater Bros. will remain closed for the rest of the day while

police investigate.police investigate.

Albers said suspect descriptions and the identity of the man who was shot and killedAlbers said suspect descriptions and the identity of the man who was shot and killed

were not immediately available.were not immediately available.

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1 shot and killed at grocery store in1 shot and killed at grocery store inSan Bernardino; multiple suspectsSan Bernardino; multiple suspectsseen leaving area in vehicleseen leaving area in vehicle

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What Causes Endometriosis Pain?What Causes Endometriosis Pain?

By By AbbVieAbbVie

Endometriosis can be hard to understand. Watch this video to learn more aboutEndometriosis can be hard to understand. Watch this video to learn more aboutendometriosis and why it can cause...endometriosis and why it can cause...

Robert GundranRobert Gundran

By Garrett Bergthold Staff Writer Posted Jun 10, 2019 at 4:08 PMUpdated at 7:35 AM

BARSTOW — Four children, ages 11 months to 6 years old, were hospitalizedwith minor to major injuries Sunday night after the minivan they were travelingin rolled over here, authorities said.

Two adults, a 35-year-old male and 24-year-old female, both from Barstow,were also transported to the hospital after the crash. Both adults suffered majorinjuries, California Highway Patrol Officer Jacob Wheeler said.

At about 9 p.m. on Sunday night, CHP officers responded to a single vehiclerollover crash along National Trails Highway, one mile west of Hinkley Road,Wheeler said.

Authorities found a 2005 Chrysler Town and Country minivan that had beeninvolved in a single accident crash. All occupants were either airlifted ortransported by ground to various hospitals, according to Wheeler.

Three of the juveniles were airlifted by Mercy Air to Loma Linda UniversityMedical Center for treatment of serious injuries, Wheeler said.

CHP officials found that all four juveniles were not wearing their seatbeltsproperly, and that two of the juveniles had been ejected from their seats duringthe crash, Wheeler said.

The cause of the crash is still under investigation. Wheeler said drugs andalcohol are not suspected to be a factor.

Garrett Bergthold can be reached at GBergthold@VVDailyPress.com or at 760-955-5368. Follow him on Twitter at @DP_Garrett.

Barstow rollover crash injures four children

Two people were found dead following a re in Twentynine Palms Sunday night. County Fire

Battalion Chief Mike McClintock said reghters were called to a re with people trapped inside a

house in the 75500 block of Valle Vista Road in Twentynine Palms at 10:24 p.m. Arriving reghters

discovered the home was fully involved with ames through the roof and throughout most of the

house. Because of the report that people were trapped inside, he said reghters aggressively

attacked the ames and performed a very risky maneuver in which they broke out windows to a room

and entered it, looking for victims. McClintock said the victims—who have not yet been identied—

were found in two bedrooms in the home. Because there were no re hydrants nearby, reghters

had to depend on water tenders shuttling water to the scene to ght the blaze. Fireghters from

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Twentynine Palms, Wonder Valley, Joshua Tree, and the Combat Center had the blaze knocked down

in about 45 minutes. McClintock said the Sheriff’s Department is investigating the cause of the re.

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VACANT HOUSE BURNS IN

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May 25, 2017

In "Local News" May 29, 2017

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FATALITY FIRE HOUSE FIRE MORONGO BASIN SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY

SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY FIRE DEPARTMENT TWENTYNINE PALMS TWENTYNINE PALMS FIRE DEPARTMENT

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Should community colleges build housing? – San Bernardino Sun

https://www.sbsun.com/2019/06/10/should-community-colleges-build-housing/[6/11/2019 8:04:56 AM]

By FELICIA MELLO | CALmattersPUBLISHED: June 10, 2019 at 1:29 pm | UPDATED: June10, 2019 at 1:29 pm

The residence hall at Sierra College houses more than 100students who pay about $925 per month for room and board.(Photo by Felicia Mello for CALmatters)

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Should community colleges build housing?An 800-bed student apartment complex is rising on the campus of OrangeCoast College, the largest community college in Orange County.

Should community colleges build housing? – San Bernardino Sun

https://www.sbsun.com/2019/06/10/should-community-colleges-build-housing/[6/11/2019 8:04:56 AM]

Matthew Polamalu was spending 1.5 hours eachday commuting back and forth to communitycollege along Southern California’s congestedfreeways when he decided he’d had enough.

He sat down at his computer and Googled“community colleges with dorms.”

“I was just looking for the full college experience,”said the psychology major. He found it in aresidence hall at Sierra College, along a winding,tree-lined road in the Sacramento suburb ofRocklin. There, Polamalu can easily stroll to theclassroom next door for math tutoring, and nolonger worries about competing with otherstudents for parking spaces.

“I’m right near all the resources I need,” he said.

Think of a community college, and you’ll likelypicture a commuter school with low-slung buildingsand massive parking lots. And you’d be right — outof California’s 114 community colleges, only 11offer on-campus housing. But some of thoseparking lots could soon become dormitories ascommunity colleges look to build their ownsolutions to the state’s affordable housing crisis.

An 800-bed student apartment complex is rising onthe campus of Orange Coast College, the largestcommunity college in Orange County. At SantaRosa Junior College, administrators kicked theirplans for dorms into high gear after the Tubbs Fireswept through the wine country town in 2017,exacerbating its housing crunch. And the LosAngeles Community College District, where onestudent in five is homeless, is one of severaldistricts studying the feasibility of building on-

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Should community colleges build housing? – San Bernardino Sun

https://www.sbsun.com/2019/06/10/should-community-colleges-build-housing/[6/11/2019 8:04:56 AM]

campus housing.

Largely built in rural areas in the 1960s, existingcommunity college dorms were small, meant toserve students from far-flung towns who couldn’teasily commute to class. But the skyrocketing costof housing has put new pressure on students,adding to potential demand.

“Our thought was to have some housing oncampus so our students can just concentrate onlearning without worrying so much about, ‘Can Imake rent?’ or ‘Where am I going to live?’ ” saidJuan Gutierrez, public information officer forOrange Coast College.

Surveys showed the overwhelming majority ofOrange Coast students was interested in living oncampus, Gutierrez said. Half of the student bodycomes from outside Orange County, he said, withmany avoiding the area’s steep cost of living bycommuting from as far as San Diego or the InlandEmpire. The project is set to open in the autumn of2020.

At Sierra College, just over 100 students live in theno-frills residence hall with about twice as many on

Should community colleges build housing? – San Bernardino Sun

https://www.sbsun.com/2019/06/10/should-community-colleges-build-housing/[6/11/2019 8:04:56 AM]

a waiting list to get in. Slots are set aside forathletes—most of whom come from outside thedistrict—international students, and former fostercare youth.

Students pay $925 per month to share a double orquad room, which includes a meal plan that theycan use in the cafeteria and nearby off-campusrestaurants.

The price was right for Polamalu’s friend MoeIrwin, a natural science major who is visuallyimpaired and uses his disability benefits to payrent. Cluttered with the typical college-student pilesof clothes and books, the space he shares with aroommate is just big enough to fit the basics, plusa few sparkly dresses Irwin wears for dragperformances.

“It’s mainly that we want independence from ourparents,” Irwin said of himself and his dorm mates.“We love them, but we recognize it’s time to go outon our own.”

With rents in the Sacramento area rising, Irwinsaid, he would likely need to share a one-bedroomapartment with at least two other people if hewanted to live off-campus.

Finding affordable solutions

Community college students facing similardilemmas without the option of on-campus housingare increasingly resorting to couch-surfing or livingin their cars. As state lawmakers debate measuresthat would allow homeless students to parkovernight on campus and provide them withhousing vouchers, building dorms offers an

Should community colleges build housing? – San Bernardino Sun

https://www.sbsun.com/2019/06/10/should-community-colleges-build-housing/[6/11/2019 8:04:56 AM]

alternate path, one that colleges can pursue ontheir own.

But it also means transforming the character ofcommunity college campuses and confrontingthorny questions, such as how to make the unitsactually affordable to students.

While Sierra College built, owns and manages itsown residence hall, both Orange Coast Collegeand Santa Rosa Junior College have opted forpublic-private partnerships with the Texas-baseddeveloper Servitas and Scion, a management andconsulting company.

Rents for the Santa Rosa project will be under$800 per bed including utilities, or about sixpercent below market rate, said Pedro Avila, theschool’s vice president of student services. Hesaid the contract prohibits any rent increaseswithout the college’s consent. Working with anexperienced developer helped the college respondquickly after enrollment dropped in the wake of thewildfires, he said, as students unable to findhousing began moving away.

“We were at the point where it didn’t matter that wewere able to provide support or vouchers, peoplewere getting pushed out of the area,” said Avila.“We’re trying to do our part and increase thenumber of units available to our students.”

Avila said he also hoped to find donors willing tosubsidize rents for low-income students.

Colleges can sometimes underestimate the extraexpenses that come with building housing,said Sara Goldrick-Rab, a Temple University

Should community colleges build housing? – San Bernardino Sun

https://www.sbsun.com/2019/06/10/should-community-colleges-build-housing/[6/11/2019 8:04:56 AM]

researcher who studies homelessness and foodinsecurity among students.

“With housing comes the need to build a wholebunch of other services. If you have students livingon or around campus, they want campus dining tobe open at different hours and they want librariesopen at different hours,” she said. “It becomes afinancial expense that is difficult for them to handleand ends up raising their prices even when theythought wouldn’t be doing that.”

Even a building with hundreds of beds might makeonly a small dent in the housing market on acampus with tens of thousands of students.Traditional dorm-style living doesn’t work forstudents with families of their own, and communitycolleges will need to decide which students getpriority in applying for the rooms.

“That’s probably going to be the most difficultconversation we haven’t had yet,” said Avila.

Community opposition can also derail a project.Last month, Ohlone College in the San FranciscoBay Area scrapped plans for a mixed-use housingdevelopment after neighbors complained that itwould worsen traffic.

Colleges as social service agencies

Despite the challenges, some advocates sayproviding housing is simply part of communitycolleges’ expanding mission. With rampant incomeinequality darkening the prospects for many youngCalifornians, they say, colleges must play the roleof social service agency if they want to remove theobstacles that can prevent students from

Should community colleges build housing? – San Bernardino Sun

https://www.sbsun.com/2019/06/10/should-community-colleges-build-housing/[6/11/2019 8:04:56 AM]

graduating.

That’s the approach taken by Compton Collegepresident Keith Curry. The college recentlyupdated its master plan to include 500 beds ofstudent housing. It already provides free breakfastand lunch to students during finals week, andCurry is lobbying to create a free lunch program forcommunity college students statewide.

“Our students are struggling; they need housing,”said Curry. “If we don’t do it, who’s going to do itfor us? Who’s going to help the underserved?That’s our job.”

Early evidence from a project in Washington Stateindicates that solving community college students’housing woes can help them graduate. TacomaCommunity College partnered with the localhousing authority to subsidize housing for studentsat risk of homelessness. After the first year, 95percent of the students who got the assistanceremained enrolled in college, according to thehousing authority, compared with 24 percent ofapplicants on the waitlist.

Community colleges have advantages that otheraffordable housing developers don’t, said DanaCuff, a professor of architecture and director ofUCLA’s CityLab who is studying opportunities tobuild housing on Los Angeles Community CollegeDistrict campuses.

“Every community college has land, either on theirexisting surface parking lots or in the air abovetheir temporary classrooms,” she said. “Andsecondly, the zoning restrictions that applyelsewhere don’t apply.”

Should community colleges build housing? – San Bernardino Sun

https://www.sbsun.com/2019/06/10/should-community-colleges-build-housing/[6/11/2019 8:04:56 AM]

The student housing of the future, she said, couldinclude a range of options for different types ofstudents—inexpensive hostels for super-commuters who only need to stay at school a fewnights a week, supportive housing for homelessstudents, and cooperatives where residentsreduce their housing costs by pitching in withcleaning and maintenance. Colleges can keepunits affordable by developing their own expertiseover time or working with non-profit developers,she said.

“Affordable housing isn’t an area where optimismreigns—it’s more like a battle,” she said. “But I feelpositive that community colleges will makedemonstration cases that others will learn from,and we’ll see a tipping point where communitycolleges will really see the advantages of providinghousing for their students.”

This story and other higher education coverageare supported by the College Futures Foundation.CALmatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan mediaventure explaining California policies and politics.

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Southern California earthquake swarm takes an unexpected turn, and that’s reason to worry - Los Angeles Times

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-earthquake-swarm-fontana-glen-avon-20190608-story.html[6/10/2019 1:34:59 PM]

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Southern California earthquake swarm takes an unexpected turn, and that’s reason to worry - Los Angeles Times

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-earthquake-swarm-fontana-glen-avon-20190608-story.html[6/10/2019 1:34:59 PM]

A flurry of small earthquakes in Fontana is taking an unexpected turn. (Orange dots represent quakes in the past week; yellow dots, quakes Friday.) (U.S. Geological Survey)

If you live in Fontana, you wouldn’t be blamed if you felt a case of the jitters.

A swarm of earthquakes has shown remarkable staying power in the area around the Southern Californiacity. Caltech seismologist Egill Hauksson said the chance that the series of tremors will turn into a largeand destructive quake isn’t particularly high.

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Southern California earthquake swarm takes an unexpected turn, and that’s reason to worry - Los Angeles Times

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-earthquake-swarm-fontana-glen-avon-20190608-story.html[6/10/2019 1:34:59 PM]

But that doesn’t mean residents shouldn’t be on their toes. The likelihood of a larger seismic event, givenhow many quakes that have occurred over such an extended period, is higher than normal, the scientistsaid.

“People ought to be concerned,” said Hauksson. “This is probably the most prolific swarm in that area ofthe Fontana seismic zone that we’ve seen in the past three decades.”

There have been more than 700 earthquakes recorded in the Fontana area since May 25, ranging frommagnitude 0.7 to magnitude 3.2, recorded Wednesday at 5:20 p.m., according to Caltech staff seismologistJen Andrews. Three of the quakes have been of magnitude 3 or greater.

The swarm initially moved northward, but something unusual began Friday when the swarm turnedaround and went south, back toward the middle of the activity and the 60 Freeway.

“This is somewhat of an unexpected evolution,” Hauksson said Friday evening. Furthermore, an analysisof the earthquakes shows that activity as of late Friday was fading pretty slowly — slower than would beexpected for a typical sequence of aftershocks following a main shock, he said.

“That would suggest it’s going to continue for — I don’t know — at least several weeks,” Hauksson saidFriday. “We’re watching what’s happening and trying to track that activity.”

By Saturday afternoon, earthquake activity had decreased significantly. “This is difficult to interpret, but itsuggests that the sequence is now decaying somewhat similar to an aftershock sequence,” Hauksson said.“There will be fewer and fewer events as time goes on.”

If there is significant renewed quake activity, it’ll probably be from a new seismic sequence, he said.

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Southern California earthquake swarm takes an unexpected turn, and that’s reason to worry - Los Angeles Times

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-earthquake-swarm-fontana-glen-avon-20190608-story.html[6/10/2019 1:34:59 PM]

Get ready for a major quake. What to do before — and during — a big one »

Hauksson said that, given all the seismic activity, residents should be ready and make sure to store “plentyof water, make sure there’s nothing that can fall on them.”

In any home in seismically risky areas of California, experts recommend removing heavy objects aroundbeds, strapping bookcases and dressers to walls, anchoring flat-screen televisions to walls, installingtoddler safety latches on kitchen cabinets, and ensuring picture frames are attached to walls with quake-friendly hooks. The last fatality in a California earthquake was from a blow to the head from an unstrappedtelevision.

Homeowners should also make sure their water heaters are properly secured to reduce the chance of ahouse fire. Homes that sit a few steps off the ground and built before 1979 should be evaluated by astructural engineer to determine whether they need to be braced and bolted to the foundation to preventthem from sliding off when shaken. Apartment owners with carports or garages on the ground floorshould also consider having their buildings evaluated to determine if a retrofit is needed.

Hauksson said the timing of the earthquakes is worth noting: shaking, followed by a lull and then a spurtof new quakes.

The earthquakes have been relatively shallow — beginning just 1 to 2½ miles under the surface. As aresult, the shaking has been widely felt, Andrews said.

Residents in the Fontana area said there is talk about how industrial wastewater ponds built in the lastseveral years off of Jurupa and Beech avenues were drained recently, right around the time the quakesbegan.

Hauksson said there could be a connection if the pond water was pumped into the ground to a significant

Southern California earthquake swarm takes an unexpected turn, and that’s reason to worry - Los Angeles Times

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-earthquake-swarm-fontana-glen-avon-20190608-story.html[6/10/2019 1:34:59 PM]

depth of at least 0.6 miles. But if the water was trucked away, he would not expect a relationship.

“This will require more research,” he said. It’s already been shown in Oklahoma that earthquakes can betriggered by water being pumped into the ground.

Seismic swarms can be worrisome — especially when they occur near faults that experts know are capableof unleashing huge, catastrophic earthquakes.

That was the case almost three years ago.

Southern California earthquake swarm takes an unexpected turn, and that’s reason to worry - Los Angeles Times

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-earthquake-swarm-fontana-glen-avon-20190608-story.html[6/10/2019 1:34:59 PM]

The magenta dots show quakes recorded from May 25 to June 6 — migrating from south to north. But quakes after midnight Friday, in black dots, changed directions andmoved south, toward the 60 Freeway. (Caltech seismologist Egill Hauksson)

On Sept. 26, 2016, a rapid succession of small earthquakes — three measuring above magnitude 4.0 —began rupturing under the Salton Sea, close to the San Andreas fault, continuing for more than 24 hours.The swarm increased the likelihood of a major quake in Southern California, at least temporarily: Expertssaid the chance of a 7.0 or greater quake on the mighty fault increased significantly, from 1 in 6,000 in anygiven week to as much as 1 in 100 during that particular week.

No large quake occurred. But the warnings did prompt some residents to prepare.

With the latest swarm, there is one silver lining: Two of the most fearsome faults in Southern California —the San Andreas and San Jacinto — are not particularly close. That means the chance of a truly large quake— the kind they make Hollywood movies about — resulting from the long-running cluster of tremors is notespecially high.

Rong-Gong Lin IICONTACT

Rong-Gong Lin II is a metro reporter for the Los Angeles Times, specializing in covering statewide earthquake safety issues and Northern California. He won

the California Newspaper Publishers Assn.’s Freedom of Information Award and the University of Florida’s Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Award.

He was a finalist for the Ursula and Gilbert Farfel Prize for Excellence in Investigative Reporting and the Knight Award for Public Service. A San Francisco area

native, he graduated from UC Berkeley in 2004.

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Triple-digit heat continues in Inland Empire, but a break is coming – Daily Bulletin

https://www.dailybulletin.com/...tm_content=tw-ivdailybulletin&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_source=twitter.com[6/11/2019 7:52:47 AM]

By CITY NEWS SERVICE |PUBLISHED: June 11, 2019 at 5:39 am | UPDATED: June11, 2019 at 5:39 am

RIVERSIDE — Desert areas of Riverside Countywill be under an excessive heat warning today andWednesday, while the Riverside and San

Triple-digit heat is expected Tuesday, June 11, 2019, throughoutRiverside and San Bernardino counties.

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Triple-digit heat continues in Inland Empire, but abreak is coming

Triple-digit heat continues in Inland Empire, but a break is coming – Daily Bulletin

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Temperatures top 100 degrees inRiverside, San Bernardino Counties withmore heat to come

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Bernardino metropolitan areas are expected to seehighs in the triple digits today.

The National Weather Service issued the warning,which will be in effect from 10 a.m. today to 8 p.m.Wednesday in the Coachella Valley, along with theSan Gorgonio Pass near Banning, Imperial Countyand eastern San Diego County.

The agency also issued a heat advisory for theSan Bernardino and Riverside metropolitan area,including Temecula and Hemet, which will be ineffect from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. today.

Daytime temperatures are expected to reachbetween 110 and 115 degrees in the CoachellaValley, and lows were predicted to be near 80degrees.

Temperatures in Beaumont could reach up to 101degrees today before cooling slightly to 95degrees Wednesday.

Even outside the desert, the weather will still behot. Temperatures in the mid- to upper 90s wereforecast for the Temecula Valley, while Riversideand San Bernardino were expected to see 105degrees, and Hemet could reach as high as 106degrees.

Ontario and Rancho Cucamonga’s high wasforecast at 103, and Redlands was expected toreach 104.

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Triple-digit heat continues in Inland Empire, but a break is coming – Daily Bulletin

https://www.dailybulletin.com/...tm_content=tw-ivdailybulletin&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_source=twitter.com[6/11/2019 7:52:47 AM]

Southern California’s extreme heat raisesconcerns over wildfire season

Flash flood watch expires for AntelopeValley, mountains, as deep marine layercovers Southern California

Weird winter weather? Record snowfallkeeps Mammoth open until August;ocean-lovers get chill with water temps inmid-50s

Storm expected to clear for sunny, breezyMemorial Day – but mountains will be cold

Forecasters warned that prolonged exposure tothe hot temperatures could lead to heat stroke,and advised people to drink plenty of water, stay inair conditioning as much as possible and check onrelatives and neighbors. Children, seniors and petsshould never be left unattended in vehicles underany circumstances, the NWS said.

Temperatures will drop slightly by the end of theweek, into the low 100s in the desert and into the80s in the Inland Empire, the NWS said.

Off-Duty L.A. Sheriff’s Deputy in Critical Condition After Being Shot in the Head at Alhambra Jack in the Box | KTLA

https://ktla.com/...them%3A+Trending+Content&utm_content=5cff83fcba8a6c00014d12cd&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter[6/11/2019 7:53:30 AM]

An off-duty Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department deputy is in critical condition after being shot in

Off-Duty L.A. Sheriff’s Deputy in Critical

Condition After Being Shot in the Head at

Alhambra Jack in the Box

POSTED 8:46 PM, JUNE 10, 2019, BY NOURAN SALAHIEH AND NERISSA KNIGHT, UPDATED AT 12:34AM, JUNE 11, 2019

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Off-Duty L.A. Sheriff’s Deputy in Critical Condition After Being Shot in the Head at Alhambra Jack in the Box | KTLA

https://ktla.com/...them%3A+Trending+Content&utm_content=5cff83fcba8a6c00014d12cd&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter[6/11/2019 7:53:30 AM]

Officers stand outside a Jack in the Boxrestaurant in Alhambra on the 2500 block of WestValley Boulevard on June 10, 2019. (Credit:KTLA)Monday, authorities said.

The suspected gunman is seen in surveillanceimages provided by the Los Angeles CountySheriff's Department on June 10, 2019.

the head at a Jack in the Box restaurant in Alhambra Monday, authorities said.

The deputy was standing at the counter in the

restaurant, wearing civilian clothes, when a man armed

with a handgun approached him and shot him once in

the head, Sheriff’s Department officials said as they

stood outside County-USC Medical Center, where the

deputy was hospitalized.

The gunman then fled the scene at about 6 p.m.,

minutes after the shooting occurred.

The shooting – at a restaurant location in the 2500 block of West Valley Boulevard – was caught on

tape, according to LASD Cpt. Kent Wegener.

Sheriff's officials said there does not appear to be a clear motive in this case.

The suspected gunman was seen driving away from

the scene in a white four-door Kia Sorento SUV with

paper plates, the Sheriff's Department said.

Surveillance video from a nearby home showed that

the suspect then stopped the car in an adjacent

residential neighborhood and changed into a black T-

shirt and dark jeans before driving away in the same

car, Wegener said.

The gunman was described as a white or Latino man in his 20s, standing at about 5 feet 9 inches to 5

feet 11 inches tall. At the time of the shooting, he was wearing a burgundy button-down short sleeve

shirt, jeans, sunglasses and a fedora.

Aerial video from Sky5 showed officers searching a dumpster outside the restaurant and speaking to

Off-Duty L.A. Sheriff’s Deputy in Critical Condition After Being Shot in the Head at Alhambra Jack in the Box | KTLA

https://ktla.com/...them%3A+Trending+Content&utm_content=5cff83fcba8a6c00014d12cd&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter[6/11/2019 7:53:30 AM]

A surveillance image shows thevehicle of the suspect involved in theshooting in Alhambra on June 10,2019.

people at a home in a nearby residential area, where several police cars were stopped.

Investigators were reviewing forensic evidence and interviewing

witnesses at the scene, authorities said.

Several customers were at the restaurant during the shooting,

LASD said.

Officials have not named the deputy.

Valley Boulevard was shut down in both directions as

investigators worked. An LASD helicopter was seen searching the

area.

“It's time to turn him in,” Wegener said. “You don’t want to be

associated with this man, and the Sheriff's Department is going to

spare no resources to locate this suspect."

The investigation is ongoing. No further details were immediately available.

Anyone with information was encouraged to call homicide detectives at 323-890-5500. To remain

anonymous, call Crime Stoppers at 800-222-8477.

LASD Deputy Shot in Alhambra Restaurant

>

L.A. County has been thinking big on mental health and public safety. Let’s not backslide - Los Angeles Times

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-alternatives-incarceration-20190611-story.html[6/11/2019 8:22:29 AM]

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L.A. County has been thinking big on mentalhealth and public safety. Let’s not backslideBy THE TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD

JUN 11, 2019 | 3:05 AM

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L.A. County has been thinking big on mental health and public safety. Let’s not backslide - Los Angeles Times

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-alternatives-incarceration-20190611-story.html[6/11/2019 8:22:29 AM]

A window into the mental health ward at the Sacramento County Youth Detention Facility. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

When states began closing mental hospitals in the second half of the last century, the plan was never tomove hundreds of thousands of patients to jails, prisons or the streets. The intention embedded in theCommunity Mental Health Act was evident in the bill’s name when President Kennedy signed it in 1963 —to build a community-based system of care that would reintegrate people with mental health andbehavioral problems into their neighborhoods with housing, treatment and easy access to services.

The hospitals kept emptying, but fewer than half the promised community clinics were built and even

L.A. County has been thinking big on mental health and public safety. Let’s not backslide - Los Angeles Times

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-alternatives-incarceration-20190611-story.html[6/11/2019 8:22:29 AM]

Los Angeles County has created a modest diversion system topluck mental patients from jails and connect them with actualhealthcare services.

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fewer were properly funded or — importantly — linked with services like housing or job training or otherprograms that are essential to sustained mental health.

In California, the state relinquished responsibility for mental health care to counties, which were ill-equipped to provide what was needed. Counties instead did what they knew how to do — law enforcementinstead of diversion to treatment. And they built what they knew how to build — jails instead of mentalhealth clinics.

The result is evident today and has been for years, in Los Angeles County and elsewhere. People who oughtto have been directed to mental health care and support now make up a significant portion of the jail andstreet populations. Those who are arrested for offenses tied to their illnesses or addictions tend to cycle inand out of incarceration without adequate treatment, and without much prospect of improvement.

Jails and criminal courts are now the focal points of our behavioral health care system. For most peoplethere is simply no entryway into care, treatment or recovery except through the criminal justice system.

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L.A. County has been thinking big on mental health and public safety. Let’s not backslide - Los Angeles Times

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-alternatives-incarceration-20190611-story.html[6/11/2019 8:22:29 AM]

The navigators of this system are armed and uniformed police — and judges, prosecutors and prisonguards. In a society abounding with medical and mental health expertise, we assign psychiatric care tothose institutions least oriented toward recovery, with the worst record of recidivism, and withpunishment as their top reason for being.

We must do better.

Over the last several years, Los Angeles County has created a modest diversion system to pluck mentalpatients from jails and connect them with actual healthcare services. But that serves only a small subset ofthe population in need. Until recently, the county’s approach to mental health care has still largely focusedon building a proposed new jail that would supplement its law enforcement staff with more mental healthprofessionals.

And then, in February, as if a light had been switched on in a dark room, the Board of Supervisors said“no” to a mental health jail and set in motion a series of initiatives that could finally result in somethingvery like the accessible, integrated community-based system of care imagined, but never built, decadesago.

Supervisors appointed an “Alternatives to Incarceration Work Group” that in its recent interim report laysthe foundation for a more sensible approach to mental health, substance abuse and a whole range ofhealth and behavioral issues most successfully dealt with outside the criminal justice arena.

The group embraces some bold solutions that will be politically challenging to deliver. Where, for example,will we site all those community clinics and housing, given today’s NIMBY pushback against proposals tobuild supportive housing for currently homeless people?

But the work group’s job is to identify the right thing to do. It falls to the supervisors to figure out exactlyhow to get it done.

Meanwhile, discussions are proceeding on a separate track at the county Hall of Administration for asuccessor to the mental health jail that the supervisors scrapped in February. Will there be a mental healthcampus of several clinics? Will all be high-security and locked? How much of the funding slated for the jailwill be spent at other locations around the county to provide better access and more decentralized,although networked, services?

Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute »

Some of the proposals that have been floated are disconcerting. There is concern that the jail plan still lives— that the only change will be calling it a hospital.

But a jail is still a jail and falls well short of the community-based system of mental health, substanceabuse and behavioral care that was long-ago promised, and has been long needed.

On Tuesday, as the supervisors are presented the interim report on smarter, more cost-effectivealternatives to jail, they will no doubt recall that the two issues — a new jail, and a community-based caresystem — are necessarily interlinked. They should also recall their historic vote in February, and realizethat this is no time to retrench or retreat.

In California, kids in custody targeted by pepper spray - Capitol Weekly | Capitol Weekly | Capitol Weekly: The Newspaper of California State Government and Politics.

https://capitolweekly.net/in-california-kids-in-custody-targeted-by-pepper-spray/[6/11/2019 8:19:25 AM]

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Pepper spray can be aimed at a specifc target, butbecause it is an aerosol its spread can be diffcult tocontrol.

In California, kids in custodytargeted by pepper spray

BY SCOTT SORIANO POSTED 06.10.2019

Pepper spray – classifed and regulated as a form of tear gas – wasused routinely on thousands of California children housed in stateand county juvenile detention facilities, according to a recentreport by the ACLU of Southern California.

A review of 10,465 documents obtained by the ACLU covering Jan.1, 2015, through March 31, 2018, showed that county and state correctional offcersused pepper spray on children at least 5,079 times – an average of 4.25 times per day.

The children included those “young as 12 and those in psychiatric crises,” the studyreported, based on documents obtained through the California Public Records Act.

Existing California law allows the use of pepper spray on children.

Pepper spray – otherwise known as aerosolized oleoresin capsicum – containscapsaicin, the principal ingredient that makes chili peppers so hot.

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The state has not carried out “a single researchstudy that evaluates the use of tear gas weaponsagainst youth.”

Some law enforcement offcers justify its use onindividuals who are deemed a danger.

But unlike a chili pepper, the capsaicin in pepper spray is concentrated. Theconcentrated capsaicin is made into an aerosol, enabling the user to use capsaicin as aweapon.

Pepper spray can be aimed at a specifc target, but because it is an aerosol its spreadcan be diffcult to control. Even a slight breeze or twitch of the wrist can result in thosenot targeted getting a face full of what California law categorizes as “tear gas.”

Hit by pepper spray, a person immediately feels pain and discomfort wherever thespray lands. When it hits the eyes – the so-called “hydraulic needle” effect – the resultis an intense burning feeling, copious watering of the eyes and, sometimes, temporaryblindness.

Skin can blister and it is diffcult to breathe. Lack of breath can cause panic attacks,which in turn can lead to stroke or heart attack.

In a 2016 study, the ACLU found that police use of pepper spray on adults led to deathin one out of every 600 cases. There is no detailed data on how pepper spray affectschildren.

Though California authorizes the use of pepper spray on children in custody, theACLU reports that the state has not carried out “a single research study that evaluatesthe use of tear gas weapons against youth, whose brains and bodies are still developing(thus more vulnerable to the short and long term impact of both trauma and chemicalexposure).”

Correctional offcers justify its use on individuals who are deemed a danger.

But the ACLU reports that “the Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC),which is empowered to establish minimum standards for juvenile detention facilities,avoids using the state-law-defned term ‘tear gas weapon’” to describe pepper spray,thus allowing it “to be carried and employed as part of approved uses of force againstyouth in California.”

This disparity in language allows the use of pepper spray against incarcerated minors,the ACLU notes.

Regardless of how the BSCC or other agencies classify pepper spray, it’s use onchildren in state and county detention clearly runs counter to the CaliforniaLegislature’s requirement that children in the system “receive care, treatment, andguidance that is consistent with their best interest” and that “juvenile hall[s] … shallnot be deemed to be, nor treated as, a penal institution … [but] shall be a safe andsupportive homelike environment.”

Some law enforcement offcers justify its use on individuals who are deemed a danger.

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In California, kids in custody targeted by pepper spray - Capitol Weekly | Capitol Weekly | Capitol Weekly: The Newspaper of California State Government and Politics.

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Only seven counties — Marin, Napa, San Francisco,San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, and Solano –have banned the use of pepper spray on juveniles incustody.

Yolo, San Benito, Sacramento, Riverside, Monterey,Lassen, Lake, Inyo, Imperial, Humboldt, Glenn,Fresno, and Alameda counties did not provideinformation on their pepper spray use.

L.A. County probation offcer Thomas Bell discussed the issue last year at a probationreform meeting, according to a Dec. 13, 2018 television report by NBC4 in LosAngeles.

“When we got 20 kids who are about my size fghting in the yard or somewhere, howdo we break that up if we don’t have pepper spray?” he testifed. “How do we breakthat up, keep them from killing each other?”

But because pepper spray cannot not be contained, the weapon may impact anyone inthe vicinity of the spray, including innocent onlookers.

The ACLU report tells the story of 14-year-old J.C. During her second day in juvenilehall, a fght broke out in the bathroom. J.C. was not involved, but she and others werepresent. Eight correctional offcers burst into the room, yelling and emptying pepperspray cannisters. The target were the two girls fghting, however the pepper sprayspared no one.

J.C. recalls, “My reaction was that I couldn’t breathe. I was trying everything I could toget out of there … because I couldn’t breathe. Because I thought I was going to die. Itried to breathe in and breathed [the pepper spray] into my nose. It got in my eyes andmouth and my whole face. “I fell to my knees right away. I felt it when I fell to myknees. I felt it and inhaled – as if I were dying. I couldn’t see because my eyes werewatery … and it was burning.”

Despite clear guidance that discourages the use of weapons such as pepper spray onincarcerated children, only seven counties — Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo,Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, and Solano – have banned the use of pepper spray onjuveniles in custody.

Los Angeles County – which operates the state’s largest juvenile justice system – has aban in place that will not take effect until at least January 2020.

The ACLU’s report covers California’s Division of Juvenile Justice, as well as the 26counties that authorize use of chemical weapons on children in custody.

The ACLU believes the number of uses to be low, as 13 counties that authorize the useof pepper spray on juveniles “refused to or did not provide data regarding thefrequency of use during the same period.” Those counties often cited theconfdentiality of the “juvenile case fle,” although the ACLU issued requests forgeneral data, not information on specifc juvenile detainees.

The counties that authorize use of pepper spray on children but did not provide

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Although 35 states have enacted bans, attempts inthe California Legislature to ban the use of pepperspray on juveniles in detention have been few.

In 2008, under threat of litigation, L.A. County andthe DoJ issued a Memorandum of Agreement thatobligated the LACPD to restrict its use of pepperspray.

information are Yolo, San Benito, Sacramento, Riverside, Monterey, Lassen, Lake,Inyo, Imperial, Humboldt, Glenn, Fresno, and Alameda.

Two additional counties, Placer and Ventura, failed to provide information in a timelymanner when requested.

Ten addition counties – Alpine, Amador, Calaveras, Colusa, Mariposa, Modoc, Mono,Plumas, Sutter, and Sierra – do not operate their own juvenile facilities, but ship theiroffenders to other counties, many of whom use pepper spray on children.

The ACLU reports that “close to 90 percent” of the state’s juvenile offenders reside inthe 48 counties that run juvenile facilities. The rest are locked up in state-run Divisionof Juvenile Justice facilities.

So far, all work to ban the use of pepper spray on incarcerated youth in California hasoccurred county by county.

Although 35 states have enacted bans, attempts in the California Legislature to ban theuse of pepper spray on juveniles in detention have been few.

In February 2018, Assembly member Ed Chau (D-Arcadia) introduced AB 2010 whichwould have criminalized the possession of “any chemical agent” by “an offcer oremployee of a juvenile facility” at a juvenile facility. The bill would have allowed theuse of pepper spray in juvenile facilities only to “suppress a riot,” with the decisionmade by an “administrator or designee,” not by a rank-and-fle offcer. All use wouldhave to be documented.

The bill – opposed by California Correctional Peace Offcers Association, CaliforniaCollege and University Police Chiefs Association, Probation and Corrections PeaceOffcer Association, and a host of police unions and law enforcement groups – died incommittee.

Chau has not resurrected the bill. However, Assemblymember Mike Gipson (D-Carson) introduced related legislation, AB 1321, in March 2019.

Unlike Chau’s bill, AB 1321 does not deal directly with the use of pepper spray onchildren in the justice system. Following amendments, AB 1321 mandates self-reporting by juvenile facilities in the form of quarterly reports on the use of “chemicalagents” against children. It also requires the Legislative Analyst’s Offce to study theissue.

Having very little law enforcement opposition, the bill passed the Assembly and is nowawaiting action in the state Senate to take action. Critics complain that other than the

LAO report, AB 1321 asks nothing more than what California’s Title 15 regulations

In California, kids in custody targeted by pepper spray - Capitol Weekly | Capitol Weekly | Capitol Weekly: The Newspaper of California State Government and Politics.

https://capitolweekly.net/in-california-kids-in-custody-targeted-by-pepper-spray/[6/11/2019 8:19:25 AM]

Between 2015 and 2017, the use of force involvingpepper spray in juvenile halls increased between192% and 338% overall.

already require.

Up until now, the most signifcant step in banning the use of pepper spray againstchildren housed in juvenile facilities has happened in Los Angeles County, home of thenation’s largest juvenile justice system.

In February 2019, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to ban theroutine use of pepper spray in L.A. County juvenile detention facilities by January2020. Any exceptions to the ban will be subject to strict reporting.

L.A. County’s ban came sixteen years after a 2003 U.S. Department of Justicedetermination that the L.A. Country Probation Department’s (LACPD) use of“chemical agents” on children “likely violated the Constitution.” In 2008, under threatof litigation, L.A. County and the DoJ issued a Memorandum of Agreement thatobligated the LACPD to restrict its use of pepper spray.

In 2016, L.A. County’s auditor-controller found that LACPD was out of compliancewith the memorandum. L.A. County demanded that LACPD provide information onpepper spray usage on juveniles.

Though LACPD balked, one key statistic was disclosed: “Between 2015 and 2017, theuse of force involving pepper spray in juvenile halls increased between 192% and 338%overall.”

The L.A. Board of Supervisors ordered more investigations and held public hearings inwhich youth who had been pepper sprayed in LACPD custody testifed. Public pressureled to the February 2019 approval of the pepper spray ban that takes effect next year.

The ACLU credits breaking the secrecy around use of pepper spray against children askey to this reform.

California county questions security deal for men-only club By SAMANTHA MALDONADOyesterday

1 of 5 FILE - In this July 29, 1971 file photo is the roadway into the exclusive Bohemian Grove, a quiet encampment 80 miles north of San Francisco in Monte Rio, Calif. A retreat for members of the elite Bohemian Club is facing renewed scrutiny for excluding women. This comes after the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors raised questions about whether sheriff's deputies should provide security for an event that discriminates by gender. (AP Photo/Sal Veder, File)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — An annual retreat in California put on by an elite club whose ranks include former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and powerful business leaders is facing scrutiny for excluding women after female county supervisors questioned whether they should continue allowing sheriff’s deputies to provide security for the event.

When the previously routine issue came up in a meeting last week, Sonoma County Supervisor Shirlee Zane scribbled a note then read it out loud: “How can we contract tax-funded services with a club that openly discriminates against women?”

After 11 years on the board and in the third year of its female majority, Zane was finally inspired to speak up, though she said she has long questioned the exclusivity of the Bohemian Grove campouts that have been held at the private Sonoma County site for nearly all of the club’s 147-year history.

“Women’s rights are being shredded throughout the country and we are kept out of decision-making,” Zane said. “This is another way it’s happening in our own backyard.”

The event from July 10-28 is for members of the Bohemian Club, headquartered in San Francisco. It maintains a confidential membership list and has long had a reputation for secrecy.

Founded by journalists and artists in 1872, the club grew to include presidents as well as various FBI and CIA directors and titans of business.

Women can enter the club’s headquarters, but they are barred from the annual July encampment where men reportedly relax, perform skits and take part in a ceremony called Cremation of Care , where they burn an effigy.

“You get up there in the redwoods ... you talk and you drink and you tell dirty stories,” club member and former California Gov. Edmund G. Brown Sr. told The Associated Press in 1987.

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors has approved the security contract for the retreat without fanfare for the past 14 years.

But last week, after Zane spoke up, Supervisor Lynda Hopkins also jumped on board in questioning the arrangement.

Hopkins is the first woman to represent her district, which includes Bohemian Grove, making her the first supervisor she knows about who has not attended the retreat.

“Bohemian Grove has always been a strange anachronism in my district,” she said. “It’s 2,700 acres of mystery I haven’t been allowed to set foot on.”

Supervisors asked county attorneys to study whether the event is discriminatory and postponed a decision on security until Tuesday.

“Just because we provide a law enforcement service for them is not an endorsement of what they do,” Sheriff Mark Essick said. “To put this on hold at the last second is really going to hamper my ability to deliver services.”

The contract for about $151,000 includes having the sheriff staff the entrance with two to six deputies to deal with protesters or trespassers and respond if needed to emergencies.

Protesters have gathered outside Bohemian Grove for years to rail against what they see as world-controlling elites and conspiracy theories. Less focus has been paid to the gender exclusivity of the event.

Without a county security contract, the Bohemian Club could pay a less expensive private company for the service, and the county would be obligated to provide emergency services if needed.

County Supervisor David Rabbitt said it doesn’t make sense to bypass potential revenue.

“I understand the controversy,” he said. However, the board has little leverage when it comes to changing membership rules or other aspects of the club, he added.

For Hopkins and Zane, it’s about the principle. They fear contracting with the club sends a message that Sonoma County, which takes pride in its progressive stances, condones keeping women out of positions of power.

“The dominant white male power structure is very much alive and well in Sonoma County, and Bohemian Grove is very emblematic of that,” Hopkins said. “They are continuing to dominate that powerful sphere and exclude women, developing relationships with powerful people that women don’t have access to.”

Representatives from Singer Associates, a public relations firm that represents the Bohemian Club, did not respond to calls seeking comment.

Most major American cities are home to at least one exclusive social group similar to the Bohemian Club, but many traditionally male-only organizations such as golf clubs and service clubs have opened their ranks to women in recent years.

Zane said she hopes there’s some movement to open the Bohemian Club as well.

But such changes might not be the highest priority for groups that advocate for women, said Kelly Armstrong, a San Francisco-based employment lawyer focused on workplace discrimination and sexual harassment.

“In the era of #MeToo and Time’s Up, people are focused on bigger fish — that women are treated equally in the workplace or schools or housing,” she said. “Whether men’s-only clubs are not allowing women to partake in their activities is of lower priority.”

Florida Lawmakers Want Pulse Nightclub Designated as National Memorial | KTLA

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Christian Malone prays as he visits the memorial tothe victims of the mass shooting setup around thePulse nightclub one day before the one yearanniversary of the shooting on June 11, 2017 inOrlando, Florida.(Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Only days before the third anniversary of the worst

attack on gay people in the U.S., members of central

Florida’s congressional delegation said Monday they

were introducing legislation that would designate as a

national memorial the gay nightclub where 49 people

were massacred by a supporter of the Islamic State.

U.S. Reps. Darren Soto and Stephanie Murphy, both

Democrats, said at a ceremony outside the former

nightclub that the designation will preserve and

protect Pulse for future generations and give it the

federal recognition it deserves. It will be three years on Wednesday that gunman Omar Mateen

opened fire at the Orlando gay nightclub on Latin night. Mateen, who had pledged allegiance to the

Islamic State, was killed in a shootout with police after a three-hour standoff inside Pulse.

Florida Lawmakers Want Pulse Nightclub

Designated as National Memorial

POSTED 5:46 PM, JUNE 10, 2019, BY ASSOCIATED PRESS, UPDATED AT 05:47PM, JUNE 10, 2019

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Florida Lawmakers Want Pulse Nightclub Designated as National Memorial | KTLA

https://ktla.com/2019/06/10/florida-lawmakers-want-pulse-nightclub-designated-as-national-memorial/[6/11/2019 7:54:51 AM]

At the time, it was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. However, the mass shooting in

2017 along the Las Vegas Strip became the deadliest when 58 people were killed.

Pulse owner Barbara Poma has established a nonprofit to open a memorial and museum at the site.

About $14 million has been raised for the $50 million project. Six design firms have been selected as

finalists and the winner will be chosen in the fall. The permanent memorial and museum are

scheduled to open in 2022.

Soto said the national memorial designation would allow the Pulse site to become part of the national

park system while still allowing for the nonprofit to maintain control over it. Also backing the bill is U.S.

Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla.

“This is an important step in preserving an LGBT historic landmark at a time when many of these sites

are being destroyed,” Soto said.

After the ceremony, several of the participants joined other activists at the local Supervisor of

Elections office to present 103,000 petitions supporting a constitutional amendment on the 2020 ballot

to ban the sale of assault weapons in Florida.

A petition must be signed by 766,200 voters in at least 14 congressional districts to appear on an

election ballot. Once 10% of that threshold is met, it can be sent to the Florida Supreme Court for

review. Organizers from the Ban Assault Weapons Now coalition said Monday that the 10%

benchmark had been passed. The coalition is made up of survivors and family members of victims of

the Pulse shooting and the massacre at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland,

Florida.

The ceremony at Pulse was interrupted briefly by the mother of Christopher “Drew” Leinonen, who

was killed at the nightclub. Christine Leinonen began shouting at Poma when she came to the

speaker’s podium. Two police officers escorted her out of the ceremony, and they were followed by

two state lawmakers and a city commissioner who talked to Leinonen for several minutes while the

ceremony continued.

Florida Lawmakers Want Pulse Nightclub Designated as National Memorial | KTLA

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Memorial Services Mark One Year Anniversary of Pulse Nightclub Shooting in Orlando

‘Gunshots Were Just Going Like Crazy’: 911 Calls Released in Orlando’s PulseNightclub Shooting

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Afterward, Leinonen blamed Poma for inadequate security at the nightclub. Authorities say an extra-

duty police officer working at the nightclub fired at Mateen from two locations outside Pulse, but didn’t

pursue him inside. Last year, some survivors and victims’ relatives, including Leinonen, filed a federal

lawsuit, claiming the city and police didn’t do enough to try to stop the shooter. The lawsuit was

dismissed in November, but the survivors and families are appealing.

Leinonen and other families also have sued Poma and her husband for negligence and wrongful

death in state court and that lawsuit is pending.

“My son’s blood is on her hands, and she’s walking around like she’s the hero,” said Leinonen, who

spoke at the Democratic National Convention in 2016. “This is Orlando. This is where everyone wants

to be in a fairy tale. Well, guess what? My son wasn’t in a fairy tale. My son was in a real-life horror

movie.”

When asked later about what Leinonen had said, Poma said, “Christine is a grieving mom. Everyone

does it differently, and this is a rough week for every mother, every survivor and every first responder.”

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