Coffee w District Attorney Mike Ramos: Redlands Native Talks Past and Present

District Attorney Mike Ramos agreed to speak with Redlands-Loma Linda Patch last week. He spoke about his formative years growing up in Redlands and Loma Linda, and what he learned in this community that helped shape his approach to his work today.

Ramos also discussed his priorities as District Attorney, briefly addressed the pending Colonies case, his endorsement of a candidate in the Third District county supervisor's race, and his outlook for taking care of business regardless of who is elected.

The interview was Friday morning May 11 at Cafe Royale in Redlands. Ramos' remarks during the 20-minute interview are quoted here verbatim.

"I was born at Redlands Community Hospital and grew up on the north side of town, started on Webster Street and then we moved over to Doyle," Ramos said.

"Webster and Doyle is over kind of off San Bernardino Avenue, out that way. Part of my growing up was down in Loma Linda county area on San Bernardino Avenue, because my grandparents owned homes, and some of my aunts we had at the corner of San Bernardino Avenue and Mountain View Avenue, we had property that included four homes and then another parcel they never ended up building a house on.

"So I grew up in part of Loma Linda, part of the north side Redlands. It was a great place to grow up as a kid. Rural, a lot more rural than it is now. As you drive down San Bernardino Avenue you can see all the tilt-up buildings and the warehouses, but back then it was orange groves, farmland.

"We were near the Santa Ana, we used to go there in the summer and the spring, hang out in the water, along the train trestle and the bridge up there."

This was of course before construction of Seven Oaks Dam in Highland, when the Santa Ana River was still considered the greatest flood threat west of the Mississippi River, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

"It was flowing all the time," Ramos said. "That's where we hung out as kids. We'd go down there, for free. It was our own natural park. You had the water running through. So it was a good place to grow up as a kid. But as I got older, of course I went to school, Redlands High School.

"The big thing back then was Terrier Football, and so that's all I concentrated on. I wanted to be on the football team, so I did that. I played my senior year I played running back and split-side defensive end . . .

Ramos said he graduated from Redlands High in 1976.

"So I played in '73, '74, '75. Played against (future NFL Hall of Fame defensive back) Ronnie Lott when he was a sophomore. I played against Anthony Muñoz when he was a senior and I was a senior. He went to the Cincinatti Bengals and was an all-pro (and NFL Hall of Fame offensive tackle). It was a great experience for me. Had some great teachers and great coaches.

"Then I went on to college and there was a time when I thought about moving. My junior and senior year at UCR I was working as a student at Space Park TRW in Redondo Beach, in their computer room. My aunt and uncle were engineers. They had a house near the beach and it was just a great job for a college student. The way it worked back then they didn't take federal taxes out because you were a college student.

"And when I graduated from UCR (with a degree in sociology) they wanted to hire me. They wanted me to come back and work there. But I saw what was going on with some of my cousins and friends and all of the drugs and all the stuff that was going on near the beach and I thought, 'You know, if I'm going to raise a family, I don't want to raise them there.'

"So I came back home, got a job with the county probation department. I got a job as a night man, my senior year, at Yucaipa Youth Center, which was part of Juvenile Hall, and been with the county ever since, 30, 31 years. I worked there about three years, then I became a probation officer.

"And my daughter was born and then for sure, I knew the school system here, a great public school system. And I thought 'Why move anywhere else?' I enjoy it. This community is great. If you've lived here long enough, even back then it was very community-based, active, and a very safe place to raise kids.

"So we decided, we bought our first home here, stayed here. My dad still lived here, my brothers, it was kind of a pretty easy choice. A lot of my friends moved away, took off, and did other things. But to this day I'm glad I stayed in our community.

"You asked a question earlier about how it's helped me at my job today. It's created a good foundation for me. Values, especially community values and what they really care about as far as not only crime and safety, but education. The youth, all the activities in this community. Whether it's baseball, softball, soccer, music, the arts. I just think that's a great foundation.

"If you could take the model that we have in the community of Redlands and spread it throughout the county of San Bernardino, if you had the resources to do that, I really believe the crime rate would go down. There's a lot of different factors too, I mean socio-economic factors, cultural factors, a lot of variables. But I truly believe the way this community is run, the way the people are, even sitting in this coffee shop, you have different ages, you've got retired people, you've got people still working, people going to college, but everybody has a sense of community here. That's the big one.

"So I took that with me. Before I was D.A. I was on the Redlands School Board. Seven years. I got to be president two out of those seven years, and I really got to know the education community better. And what a fabulous world that is. Educators, just tremendous people.

"And that gave me a good foundation to be D.A. too, because I started to learn about budget issues, I started to learn about leadership.

"At the time the superintendent was Bob Hodges, a good friend of mine, and I watched him and I learned a lot from him, on how to run a great school district, empower his managers, which would be his principals, and his assistant superintendents, give them direction and let them do their jobs, and at the same time have a great working relationship with the board members, and the teachers, and the classified people, you know the people who clean the classrooms. I mean he treated everybody alike, the same.

"So I took that and applied it to the D.A.'s office and created a team. Surrounded myself with a good team . . . and used those same dynamics that Bob Hodges had, used that to run the District Attorney's Office, which is one of the largest offices in the United States, really.

"So yes, growing up here and getting involved here was a perfect foundation for what I'm doing now. . . .

"Here's what I learned. As a D.A., every decision I make impacts somebody's life. But if it comes down to a tough decision, I always side on what's best for the victim. That's what we do, is seek justice for victims. I always try to do what's right for the victim.

"When I was a school board member, we had tough decisions, or whatever decision we had to make, what are we doing as educators? We're teaching our children. So I would always try and do, make that decision based on what's best for the students.

"And I think I learned those values from my dad, and growing up in this community, our school system, when you make a decision, you think about what is the right decision to make. Not the right decision for me, an individual, but right for whatever situation you're going to be in.

"I'll analogize it to a football game. Was it more important for me to have more carries with the football? Or more important for the team to spread it and win the game? That was more important. We learned that from Coach Womack and those people. It was a team sport. To succeed you have to get along and make those decisions on what's best for the people you are in the middle of, trying to support and do your job for.

"It goes way back even deeper than that, with my grandmothers, who were devout Catholics in church. They taught me the decisions to make. . . . I went to San Salvador Church in south Colton with my grandmother every Sunday. Even when I wasn't living with her, I'd drive over there and we'd go to church. Then went to St. Joseph the Worker in Loma Linda.

"Even as a kid, she taught me to make decisions. And decisions, you're going to make, 'What would God think?' So all those things are a foundation. . . . "

All the schools Ramos attended in Redlands were public, he said.

"I went to Victoria Elementary School . . . even to this day probably one of the lower socio-economic schools, their population," Ramos said. "It gave me another good foundation of everybody's equal. It doesn't matter how much money you have. Growing up with kids, some of them my best friends, their parents struggled with money. But they're all people."

Ramos discussed his priorities as District Attorney, including his fight against gangs, human trafficking and crime prevention.

"Human trafficking is a huge problem in San Bernardino County. People don't realize. We are still a transport county. You've got the Ontario Airport, you've got the big interstates, 10, 15, 215, lot of people going between L.A., here, Las Vegas, and Nevada.

"You have certain agencies that are doing a real good job, they've been trained to track prostitution. And you have others that are just learning, and that's what we're doing right now. This coalition, we've created, the Coalition Against Sexual Exploitation. We are now out training all the police departments, the sheriff's departments, here's what to look for, here's what's occurring.

"Then you add the social media, it was Craigslist, now it's Backpage. I know the attorney generals are on top of it. Just last night on CNN, the federal government is now taking a stronger look at it because it crosses interstate lines. I think it should be a federal government issue, that they should crack down on this.

"But we're also doing a good job of prosecuting the pimps in my county. We're looking at how to really handle the johns, the people that are paying for this. Holding them responsible and sending them to a class to talk about all the different dynamics that go along with prostitution, including their own health risk. Then treating some of the younger prostitutes as victims. They've been victimized all their lives. So we're working with other departments to get them help and resources.

"We are also implementing gang injunctions where we're giving the neighborhoods back to the law-abiding citizens by holding gang members responsible for their conduct and behavior.

"San Bernardino County is number three in the country for gang member population after L.A. County and Cook County, Illinois, but I think when you look at it per capita population it is number one, really. We're out there battling. I've got some great investigators and prosecutors. It's been my priority, since 2005. I put a protocol in place. I increased my lawyers from three to 15 countywide.

"Priorities, I have several. One, you just heard about. My gang protocol. Got to really hold these gang members responsible. But as part of that, I'm really pushing intervention tools. I've got lawyers that are going to talk to elementary school children, I've got a truancy program to keep kids in school, so before I ever leave this position, I want to lay a good foundation, not just putting people in jail and prison, but what are we going to do to save the kids, to keep them from committing crimes in the first place?

"So I want to put as many prevention programs in as possible. In fact I just gave a new title to one of my chief deputies, Karen Bell. Not only is she chief over Juvenile Division, she is now going to be my prevention and intervention coordinator for the entire county of San Bernardino. So they will report to her, and we're still working on that. But that's one thing that's really a priority for me.

"My other priority is by the time I leave I want this to be an ethical, corruption-free county, where there's a good government in place. And we're getting there. We're going to hold people responsible who violate the trust of those people that elected them to office. . . .

"There's a lot of stuff going on."

Asked about the pending Colonies case, Ramos said he wishes "it would start tomorrow."

"Once the jury trial starts, like I said before, when it plays out in court, you will, the rest of the world will understand what we know and what occurred," Ramos said. "We're hoping, I wish it would start tomorrow, but in all reality we're working on discovery. I was hoping to get it to trial by the end of this year in the fall. I'm going to guess, realistically, probably sometime in 2013 maybe. We'll get it to trial.

In the upcoming race for Third District county supervisor, District Attorney Mike Ramos has endorsed James Ramos, former chairman of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, who is running to unseat incumbent Neil Derry.

"The Third District is where I live," Ramos said. "This is my community. This is where I'm raising my kids, my grandson, and I need somebody that represents me, an ethical, hardworking individual who has my same values about community, about our kids, about our youth, about education, about business, about safe streets.

"I've gotten to know James. He's that man. I've known him since 2003. He came and introduced himself to me after I was elected D.A. Never met him before. And we hit it off right then. I mean just his passion about his culture, about kids, about education, and helping various organizations in the community. He has good family values.

"And I just think he would be an excellent board member. He doesn't need to do it for the money. He doesn't need to do it for name recognition. . . . He was chairman (of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians), he's involved with community schools, he's on the statewide board of education, the governor appointed him.

"So it's not an ego thing for him. He really wants to help. And those are the kind of people we need to run this county, to run government appropriately. He's not beholden to anybody. He's transparent. He doesn't hide anything. Like I said, I think overall generally he'd be great.

"If not, I'll work with Neil Derry. Absolutely. I work with Neil now. As the D.A. my number one job is to do what's best for the citizens and the safety of the citizens of this county and seeking justice for victims. And I've had the ability to work with any board member, any elected official. I can cross over party lines.

"I'm a registered Republican but I'm a good friend with Governor Brown, and Kamala Harris, the attorney general. Democrats are very good friends of mine. It's more important to get the job done, and put aside any party affiliations or any personal issues or any political to get the job done. And that's what I've done all my life, and I will continue to do that."