Former San Bernardino County students who were ticketed through a decades-old school citation program may now be eligible to get their money back. The California Attorney General's Office has opened a reimbursement process for youth cited before age 18 by the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department through its CleanSWEEP program for certain offenses. The program sent minors as young as 10 into traffic court for infractions ranging from loitering to marijuana possession.
A Program That Ran for Decades
According to the California Attorney General's Office, former students cited before age 18 by the Sheriff's Department through CleanSWEEP for certain offenses may qualify for reimbursement if they paid fines or fees or have a related matter pending; eligible citations may also be dismissed. The Sheriff's Department implemented CleanSWEEP in 1997, and the program operated at school districts across San Bernardino County for 25 years, as reported by The Press-Enterprise. CleanSWEEP, which stood for Success with Education/Enforcement Partnership, trained school district staff to issue citations for infractions to students ages 10 to 17.
Those citations carried real consequences. Law enforcement officials required students and their guardians to appear in adult traffic court, usually without legal representation, the outlet's report notes. Some students faced fines exceeding $1,000, and those who failed to appear in court could face even more severe punishments.
What Investigators Found
The program was suspended in 2022 amid a state Department of Justice investigation, and it was formally dismantled in January 2024. Investigators found that minors were unlawfully cited and brought to adult traffic court without legal representation, and that some minors faced hefty fines and other penalties, per the same account. The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department and the Chaffey Joint Union High School District issued unlawful citations, according to the Attorney General's Office, and the findings indicated CleanSWEEP disproportionately harmed protected student groups.
A stipulated judgment tied to the case deemed several categories of citations unlawful: tobacco-related citations issued on or after June 6, 2019, citations for daytime loitering on school grounds, and citations alleging disturbing the peace or fighting on school grounds, according to the stipulated judgment. Citations for any offense issued on or after January 1, 2019, to a child under 12 may qualify for relief. Citations issued between 2016 and 2022 for possession of under an ounce of marijuana and for daytime loitering made up more than two-thirds of all citations, the Attorney General's Office found.
Settlement Reshapes Sheriff's Policies
Attorney General Rob Bonta entered into separate settlements with sheriff's and district officials last month. The Sheriff's Department has since changed its policies to prohibit citations to minors based solely on school officials' investigations without an independent law enforcement investigation, and it now bars citations drafted or written by anyone who is not a sworn deputy or officer. Sheriff's officials also agreed that an outside expert would create additional training for student resource officers and that a data expert would analyze citation data alongside Racial and Identity Profiling Act records.
The Chaffey Joint Union High School District, for its part, adopted trauma-informed strategies, restorative justice training, mental health support, enhanced student services, and campus-wide educational supports, according to the Attorney General's Office. The state DOJ snippet credits the outcome to cooperation between the parties, describing steps taken after investigators brought their findings to law enforcement and school officials that included agreeing to permanently terminate the CleanSWEEP program altogether.
How Former Students Can Seek Help
People cited before age 18 by the Sheriff's Department for certain offenses who believe they qualify for relief can contact the Sheriff's Department at [email protected] or by calling 909-387-3406. Those seeking reimbursement or dismissal can also request assistance by calling the non-emergency dispatch lines for the Valley and Desert communications centers, and requests must be made by April 18, 2027.
Sheriff's and state attorney general's officials did not immediately provide the number of current and former students potentially affected or an estimated total reimbursement amount. A federal justice-program archive describing the program's earlier years noted that a vice principal or dean would write a juvenile citation requiring the student and parents to appear in Informal and Juvenile Traffic Court, according to the Office of Justice Programs.
