July 2, 2025

Bishop California

The City of Tehachapi has been removed from our July 4th Independence Day celebration list in the Easter Sierra. Attempts to contact the city’s publicly elected officials have been ignored. The city also uses Placer.ai surveillance software for “economic development” reasons. The city added Flock Safety’s License Plate Readers to their surveillance toolkit in 2023.

The City of Bishop has delayed installing 10 license plate readers in the popular July 4th destination due to privacy concerns. See below for more details. This is a wise decision. We’ll see if they follow other cities who are reconsidering the use of the creepy cameras that are watching you 24-7-365.

The City of Ridgecrest uses all three No-no’s causing them to be cancelled from your July 4th holiday travel plans. The city began using Placer.ai in 2023, and the city’s new mayor vowed to cancel the contract with the company after beating Eric Bruen in November 2024. He has not been able to do so but has only been in office for 6 months. The city has reached an impasse on supporting the Indian Wells Valleys Groundwater Authority and its attempt to change SGMA with AB 1413 and AB 1466, California’s law regarding groundwater.

The City of Ridgecrest continues to shoot itself in both their feet using a double barrel shotgun. If you need a new shotgun, we recommend Guns4Us in Ridgecrest. This is an unpaid recommendation that we provide to you as a public service message.

The City of Ridgecrest also created a “City Analyst“ position to analyze the city. We’re not sure what that means so we put in a Public Records Request to City Clerk Ricca Charlon in order to find out. We’ll ask Isabel Sanchez what she does all day to “analyze the city”, suspicious that she’s passing along the information to Councilman Solomon Rajaratnam who is an employee of Desert Valleys Federal Credit Union along with former mayor Eric Bruen the CEO/Manager.

Desert Valleys recently took-over a credit union in Bishop named High Sierra Credit Union. High Sierra reported a loss at the time the merger was announced and had 514 members: “High Sierra posted a $63,661 loss and capital of 14.18% as of the same date. HSCU has approximately 514 members.” (Reported by CUToday.info) (Warning to Bishop re: Placer.ai and their big and large supporter, Desert Valleys’ CEO Bruen)

We have not received a response from the City of Ridgecrest. They’re on “vacation” according to Councilman Kyle Blades, who announced that the council meeting on July 2nd was cancelled because everyone’s “going out of town”. Blades was not asked to comment and he’s been under fire since he ran for re-election but couldn’t serve a full, four-year term due to term limits.

Chip Holloway, Executive Director of the Desert Empire Fair, sent us information about the fire at the Fairgrounds on June 28th during the fireworks show. We previously contacted the Kern County Fire Department public information officer Andrew Freeborn, and Freeborn verified the response time was eight minutes from “alarm to engagement”. Freeborn is researching the incident and if he has any additional information he will be directed to Mr. Holloway.

We have updated our Police-State Surveillance Index below and will be adding more California cities to our surveillance list including year-round “Police-State Surveillance News” in our coverage:

California police are illegally sharing license plate data with ICE and Border Patrol (June 13, 2025 via CalMatters.org)

Illinois sued over proliferation of license plate reading cameras (May 31st, 2024 via TheCenterSquare.com)

Publisher’s Note: Chambers of Commerce can choose to be helpful or not. They will be impacted by LPR’s and Placer.ai. It’s not going to do the small businesses that they rely on any good, and it’s not going to do the vast majority of their member’s customers any good either. American’s value their privacy and the 4th Amendment.

Placer.ai is a surveillance tool for large corporations that want to come into town and destroy locally owned businesses on behalf of Placer’s ‘corporate customers’. The City of Ridgecrest and Tehachapi are actively doing just that, and they’re setting up the pins to destroy small businesses. Have you seen the crap they sell in Five Below?

Police-State Surveillance Index	July 4th Celebration	Placer.AI Surveillance	License Plate Readers	Armored Bearcat	Status
City of Ridgecrest*	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	No Go Zone
City of Tehachapi*	Yes	Yes	Yes	No Response	No Go Zone
City of Bishop	Yes	No	No – On Hold	No	GO Fishing too
Lake Isabella – Kern River Valley	Yes (July 5th)	No	No	No	GO Fishing too

Municipal Police-State Grading Index *Bold = disqualified for consideration as an All-American City

IT’S NATIONAL ROADRUNNER DAY!!! AND THE WINNER OF THE 2025 ROADRUNNER OF THE YEAR AWARD IS …

Bishop California, Our All-American City for 2025

February 14, 2025 – Downtown Bishop is not camera-ready yet. Approval of security equipment on city streets delayed

10 Flock Safety License Plate Readers to cost $185,000.
Delayed per Inyo County Register due to privacy concerns.

Lake Isabella and Kern River Valley (July 5th)

Three small towns, Lake Isabella, Wofford Heights and Kernville, are tucked in Eastern Sierra and always have something going on July 4th (This year it’s Saturday July 5th), and local merchants usually scrape up enough money to buy some fireworks too. Camping, fishing and small, locally owned restaurants and diners are always a plus, and you can always save a few bucks because all of it is free!

We heard that Riverside Park in Kernville has been rebuilt after the floods a few years ago. Go check that out too.

If anyone has any pictures of the “new” Riverside Park in Kernville please send them to publisher@Roadrunner395.com. Thank you!

Pictured below is the park during the floods that came through early in the spring of 2023 along with the story we did on it.

KERN RIVER FLOOD AND DAMAGE REPORT (Photo Gallery)

Tehachapi – NO Go – Unresponsive – Placer.ai – License Plate Readers

We are updating records and wanted to verify that the City of Tehachapi is still using Placer.ai. We received no response after multiple attempts contacting city officials.

Tehachapi has been totally unresponsive to any requests for information and may be blocking our emails at the server level

7/6/23 – The Tehachapi Police Department is to install 16 Automatic License
Plate Readers (ALPR) throughout the city along high traffic areas in
and out of our retail and services districts. As the majority of
organized retail theft, vehicle theft and catalytic converter thefts are
committed in the Tehachapi area by suspects coming from
neighboring cities and towns, this program wil greatly assist in
reducing these crimes and increasing the case clearance rates

Ridgecrest – NO Go – No Event July 4th – Placer.ai, Bearcat, License Plate Readers

You had to know this was coming. July 4th Independence Day celebration. Ridgecrest doesn’t celebrate “Independence Day” on July 4th. Sorry.

Fire outside the fences of the Desert Empire Fairgrounds on June 28th, 2025 during the “Freedom Fest” fireworks event in Ridgecrest California

July 1, 2025: Statement provided by Chip Holloway, Executive Director, Desert Empire Fair:

We are a state entity, so we have to get a permit from the state Fire Marshal which we did and have for the last 30 years. It is a very thorough process, and the city also has to sign off as well since their property is adjacent to ours. We did and always have a state Fire Marshal onsite not only for the show but to supervise the technicians as they set up the show. The actual fire was much smaller than it appeared and after an investigation it seems it might have been started by illegal fireworks. I heard someone was cited just before the fire, but I haven’t been able to verify. It would have been a ticket from the FD because I did verify RPD did not issue any tickets. Nevertheless, our fireworks were going off in the same direction so who knows.

The reason we stopped the show was there were two separate spot fires, and the Fire Marshal didn’t want to risk another fire while they were handling two, luckily minor damage and no injuries and both fires were out in about 40 minutes.

Sadly, we had guys with fire extinguishers trying to get to the fire when it was very small, but the fence was too high, and the city gate locked. In the future we will have access, but that area used to be heavily watered, evidently the market price on alfalfa is not worth it right now.

We also used the same company we have used for the last 30 years Pyro Spectaculars, hopefully you can get the facts out as FB is rampant with rumors and just plain lies. THANKS