Sunday, August 21, 2011
Charter School Cases Delayed...Again...Ramos Just Now Turning Over 4 year old evidence? Wow!
Monday, November 1, 2010
http://www.pe.com/columns/cassiemacduff/stories/PE_News_Local_D_cass30.30c0567.html
Blogger Bob's comments:
..
While Rex G. may have done some things I would never tolerate as a former institutional manager (such as expensing travel and meals that should have not been submitted), I can't help but think there may have been a governmental immunity defense that could have been argued on other counts but was not (that should have been argued?):
.. (1) Rex G. was hired to fill a job the County Board of Supervisors' approved (which is a governmental act that is constitutionally permissible-- a discretionary function), which had few specific requirement's, which per his review(s) and lack of disciplinary actions, he performed adequately--did the county's immunity cloak Rex G given the nature of his job?;
.. (2) The DA at trial was allowed to argue the duties, accountabilities and time keeping duties were somehow greater than what the job description and reviews required--how? The standard of Gutierrez's job performance had to be measured on what the job was and not what the prosecution created it to be (so to build its felony prosecution strategy); did the defense bring a motion in limine to prevent the prosecution from arguing the job involved anything more than what was in the reviews and job description?
.. (3)Rex G. was convicted for doing the very job the county created so someone could do--it happened to be Rex G that was hired; that the prosecution was allowed to redefine the job to create a standard is what appears to have happened--is this any less a part of the culture of corruption in this county? The ends do not justify the means or now does it in San Bernardino County?
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Scoop! Press Riverside Enterprise Endorses Ramos!! (or will)
Friday, May 7, 2010
PRESS ENTERPRISE PUBLISHES A STERILE STORY
"11:00 PM PDT on Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Corruption campaign part of San Bernardino County DA's race
It would be an understatement to say San Bernardino County District Attorney Mike Ramos has had a tumultuous second term.
He has filed bribery charges against two former county officials and his office brought the state Attorney General's office into the corruption investigation after one of the accused claimed Ramos had a conflict of interest in the case.
Ramos' two opponents in the June 8 election, private attorneys Frank Guzman and Bob Conaway, say despite Ramos' prosecution of the bribery case the district attorney also is tainted, and that favoritism from Ramos means some are escaping prosecution.
Ramos said an independent review of the case he is working on by the attorney general's office upholds the direction he is taking it. He denies his office is tied to the corruption it is investigating.
In addition to his corruption investigation, his challengers and others say Ramos is unfit to hold the office because he has been implicated in extramarital affairs -- directly by one employee. Authors of online blogs have suggested others as well.
An investigation concluded he did not harass Cheryl Ristow, an investigative technician in his office, but investigators said they did not look at her claims of an affair because she said it was consensual. Ramos is married and has two grown children.
innuendoes
Ramos says the innuendoes about alleged affairs are "absolutely" false and says the accusations are because of his prosecution of county officials.
Corruption, Ramos said, "has been such an epidemic in this county that whoever was going to take this on was going to be attacked ... I was told that three years ago: 'You start looking at this, and you start turning over the rocks, and you start holding people responsible, they will do everything in their power to take you out, get you politically, personally. They won't stop at anything.' And it's happened."
Ramos, first elected in 2002, says he is seeking a third term to complete his corruption investigation, fight gangs, and work with Sacramento and Washington to keep grant money flowing to his office during tough economic times.
Fighting corruption
Conaway, a Hinkley attorney, said Ramos' office began investigating corruption "way too late in the game."
For Ramos, "To have taken this long to subpoena the records, to wait for the attorney general to step into the fray for him -- that smells of complicity," said Conaway, who has previously run for Congress, a county supervisor seat, and a judgeship.
"How can you eradicate corruption when you are in the middle of it?" asked Guzman, a longtime criminal defense attorney who came in third in a run against Ramos in 2002.
Bill Postmus, a former county supervisor and former assessor, and Jim Erwin, a former assistant assessor and former chief of staff to a supervisor, are accused of conspiring with five unnamed and uncharged co-conspirators to provide Rancho Cucamonga developer Colonies Partners with a $102 million lawsuit settlement through bribes, extortion and threats.
Postmus had previously been charged with nine felony counts relating to misuse of public resources at the assessor's office. Erwin had been charged with 10 felony counts related to his failure to report gifts. Both have denied wrongdoing.
More efficient
Conaway said besides his criticism of Ramos's handling of the corruption probe, he believes the office can be run more efficiently.
"I know we have a large county, but we need to avoid putting people on the road," he said.
He said he would try to analyze caseloads to see where to most effectively use people.
Ramos says he has done work to make his office more efficient, and one of the measures being taken is mapping the needs for prosecutors by courthouse caseloads.
"We are looking at where the biggest number of cases are, and saying, 'Let's move our staff where we need to.' "
Ramos said he has lost 45 of his staff -- 18 of them deputy district attorneys -- through attrition over the past two years.
"We have not replaced those, and we have not asked the board (of supervisors) to replace them ... I know the situation we're all in," he said.
The office was budgeted for 526 positions for this fiscal year, but some of those posts were vacant.
He said his office was behind on reviewing about 20,000 misdemeanor out-of-custody cases.
"Don't get me wrong, we are feeling it," he said.
Guzman said he will have more oversight than Ramos does on the office's cases, and criticized Ramos for spending too much time in the state capital.
"I am a trial lawyer. I am going to be involved in many of these cases. I am not going to be in Sacramento," he said.
Ramos said his time in Sacramento has brought benefits for his office.
"With the contacts we have there we have been able to save grants that prosecute gangs, and for a truancy program," he said.
His own style for overseeing office operations is, "I don't micromanage. I set policy, I get the resources for my staff, and I let lawyers be lawyers."
Reach Richard K. De Atley at 951-368-9573 or rdeatley@PE.com"
..............................................................................................................................................
BOB's COMMENT to the PRESS ENTERPRISE ARTICLE:
The fix is in it seems for Ramos (consistent with the glowing free PR piece given to Ramos by the Press Enterprise about 6 plus months ago--a page and half of soft-ball-toss-type questions) .
The Press Enterprise IGNORED the suggestions I made about HOW to save money and improve staff efficiency, IGNORED that as an officer of the court and public official sworn to uphold the law, Ramos CAN'T have sex with people he works with (putting aside the argument that if his marital vows meant nothing, what other vows or oaths has he trashed?).
ALSO IGNORED was the record of why Ramos is a part of the corruption. When you do not protect witnesses against intimidation (like Uffer and Brown), you are sending a message to whistle blowers, that Ramos will not protect you, which chills or deters people from coming out. Further, if the people who are the best position to identify the wrongdoing are allowed to be hammered, you help hide the ongoing culture of corruption.
ALSO, when you delay asking for records on cases (like the Colonies settlement) for 3 plus years, things vanish, authors of memos forget things not precisely recorded in the memos to file and people with independent recollection because they believe no one cares, quit and vanish.
ALSO the sense one gets is that Ramos believes that if he waits long enough, the statute of limitations might run (and he can use that excuse for not following up on it--his friends skip dodge with the dough and confidently later come back for mo).
WHEN the suggestion was made by the PE reporter that Ramos was working with the State Attorney General's office, my response was, why (1) did he wait until the AG got involved, (2) could the involvement be so to misdirect the State assets being invested in this county away from Ramos' involvement as a former political ally of the indicted and or the indicted's contributors or (3) is it the old Abe Lincoln philosophy of the State AG keeping his friends close and his enemies closer?? There is much much more--I just wanted to hop in with a few comments. I was invited to appear before the editorial board of the Press Enterprise next week--after reading the De Atley whitewash, my feeling right now is that my time is better spent elsewhere.
WHEN it was pointed out that political allies got sweet deals (like the tribe member who pled guilty to attempted murder and got no jail time or the former sheriff who stole guns from an evidence locker, which are each felonies, got a misdemeanor deal), De Atley did not deny knowing it--he just, like I expected the Press Enterprise to do, just covered it up again.