FREE
City of Riverside warns about parking scam
IE’s jobless rate drops in November
PG 02
PG 23
MONDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2024- JANUARY 05, 2025
VISIT HEYSOCAL.COM
VOL. 8,
Trump’s pick to lead federal housing agency has opposed efforts to aid the poor By Jesse Coburn and Andy Kroll, ProPublica This story was originally published by ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
NO. 204
Ex-deputy charged with stalking, abducting woman By City News Service
A
n ex-Riverside County sheriff’s deputy accused of harassing and abducting a woman was charged Dec. 23 with kidnapping and other offenses. Alexander Ravy Vanny, 33, of Hemet, was arrested Dec. 19 following an investigation by the sheriff’s department’s Special Victims Unit that was initiated earlier this year. Along with kidnapping, Vanny is charged with stalking, unauthorized use of protected computer data, maliciously destroying a wireless device and committing a felony while on bail. Vanny, who is being held without bail at the Smith Correctional Facility in Banning, was slated to make his initial court appearance Dec. 23 afternoon at the Southwest Justice Center in Murrieta. The defendant had been free on a $1 million bond following an earlier arrest in June. According to sheriff’s Sgt. Mike Kelleher, Special Victims Unit detectives received word at the end of November regarding Vanny’s alleged harassment of the woman whose complaints earlier this year had prompted the original investigation into the defendant’s alleged misconduct. Sufficient evidence was gathered to book the former lawman into custody. See Deputy Page 24
Authorities report largest cannabis bust in San Bernardino County history
President Donald J. Trump listens as Scott Turner, executive director of the White House Opportinuity and Revitalization Council, addresses the audience Wednesday, April 17, 2019. | Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead
A
s Donald Trump’s nominee to run the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Scott Turner may soon oversee the nation’s efforts to build affordable apartments, protect poor tenants and aid the homeless. As a lawmaker in the Texas House of Representatives, Turner voted against those very initiatives. Turner supported a bill ensuring landlords could refuse apartments to applicants because they received federal housing assistance. He opposed a bill to expand affordable rental housing. He voted against funding public-private partnerships to support the homeless and against twobills that called merely to study homelessness among young people
and veterans. Behind those votes lay a deep-seated skepticism about the value of government efforts to alleviate poverty, a skepticism that Turner has voiced again and again. He has called welfare “dangerous, harmful” and “one of the most destructive things for the family.” When one interviewer said receiving government assistance was keeping recipients in “bondage” of “a worse form to find oneself in than slavery,” Turner agreed. Such views would seemingly place Turner at odds with the core work of HUD, a sprawling federal agency that serves as a backstop against homelessness for millions of the nation’s poor, elderly and disabled. With an annual discretion-
ary budget of $72 billion, the department provides rental assistance to 2 million families, oversees the country’s 800,000 public housing units, fights housing discrimination and segregation and provides support to the nation’s 650,000 homeless. If Turner’s record indicates how he will direct the agency’s agenda, it is those clinging to the bottom of the housing market who have the most to lose, researchers and advocates said. “It just doesn’t seem to me like this is someone who is at all aligned with what the values of that agency should be,” said Cea Weaver, director of the advocacy group Housing Justice for All. “It’s a deregulatory agenda, and it’s an anti-poor
people agenda.” Shamus Roller, executive director of the National Housing Law Project, said Turner’s views, if translated into policy, could increase homelessness. “If, at a fundamental level, you believe that people getting assistance with their rent when they’re very poor and struggling, if you think that’s actually dependence and a bad thing, you’re going to try to undermine those programs,” he said. One former colleague offered a more optimistic view of Turner’s stewardship of HUD. “My sense of him is he will try to help people,” said Richard Peña Raymond, a Democratic See Trump Page 04
By Staff
S
an Bernardino County and state authorities seized over 45 tons of processed cannabis worth more than an estimated $100 million, the largest cannabis seizure in the county’s history, officials announced earlier this month. Authorities discovered the large quantity of illegal cannabis at an Oak Hills residential property in the 5000 block of Honeyhill Road and removed and destroyed the seized marijuana in two days, according to a county statement. The record bust involved the county code enforcement and sheriff’s departments and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. The case originated in November, when the Code Enforcement Department received a complaint about a large, unpermitted structure being constructed on the property in Oak Hills, officials said. County authorities received a second complaint about a strong cannabis odor. Code Enforcement Officer Tyrone Cooper and Senior Officer Keith Bloomer from the agency’s Cannabis EnforceSee Cannabis Page 23