This is a collaborative report with The Hi-Desert Star and The Desert Trail
One of the Morongo Basin’s primary sources for public safety information was recently limited by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.
Throughout the 20th and now the 21st century, sheriff’s stations throughout the U.S. issued daily reports of deputy activity. Since 2019, the sheriff’s Morongo Basin station has emailed those logs to media outlets in the county and local government officials.. Called the Media Incident Details, or “media logs,” these documents included a detailed account of Sheriff’s Department activity as provided by the deputy involved as well as a summary of events, whether or not the encounter led to an arrest. Personal information such as victims’ names and addresses, or incidents involving children were redacted and not available to the media.
The media logs were provided to members of the news media, including the Hi-Desert Star, Z107.7, and the Desert Trail. They were also sent to local government officials, including city managers of Yucca Valley and Twentynine Palms.
Prior to the email version of the media logs, Hi-Desert reporters had access to the same information by visiting the Morongo Basin station in person since at least 1979. Other sheriff’s stations provided similar public call logs across the United States.
On Sept. 4, an email from an office assistant at the Sheriff’s Morongo Basin Station announced an immediate end to the distribution of call logs. The initial email said they were discontinuing the logs on direction from “San Bernardino County Counsel.”
Six days later, the Morongo Basin station’s public information officer provided a statement, saying, “the Morongo Station has received direction from the office of the sheriff to discontinue daily logs to the media.”
On the same day, a public information officer with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department sent another email on the decision, saying, “For the sake of consistency and efficiency across the department and individual stations, the decision was made to discontinue providing ‘media logs’ that were being produced by only a couple of our patrol stations.”
A list of Sheriff’s stations providing media logs in 2024 was not given. The Morongo Basin station and the Big Bear station both discontinued media logs this month.
The Sheriff’s Department is now referring members of the media to the online dispatch call logs, which provide only the time and location of an emergency phone call and the initial police code referenced as part of the call. Based on the limited data, the media can follow up with Sheriff’s Department information officers for more detail, at the discretion of the Sheriff’s Department, or file a Public Records Act request.
The sherrif’s media logs provided a more complete overview of the Sheriff’s Department’s work across our community, allowing the news media and government a comprehensive and more immediate understanding of community safety.
The media logs allowed the news media to identify larger crime patterns over time, independently investigate incidents in the context of other occurrences, and contribute to oversight of deputy responses.
Sheriff Shannon Dicus and representatives from the city of Twentynine Palms did not respond to requests for comment.
Dawn Rowe, chair of the county board of supervisors, said, “I would hope in today’s technologically advanced environment, our Sheriff’s Department would be able to provide as much information as possible to help our communities be safe.”
