My first thirty seconds of fame

Still on my License Checker era, I recall when I was shown in taped and aired scenes of the department for the CBS channel 2 evening news. This was in late 1981 or early 1982 during the height of the first Pit Bull hysteria that was sweeping all across the country at the time. Locally in the city of Colton a mail carrier had been bitten by a pit bull and had died from the subsequent blood poisoning he had developed. It was all over the local news but had also made the national news.

Pat English, then the program manager for the department wanted to jump on the publicity bandwagon of the Colton event. Since we didn't have the city of Colton, it was decided that the closest area with a bad loose dog problem to make a show of was a county community called Bloomington. It was always a bad problem area before, during and after this time. Pat decided to have a maximum enforcement effort and contacted the local and L.A. area news stations to announce the upcoming date.
The city of Fontana supplied their one and only ACO and it was arranged to have almost the entire field staff on hand. So the big day (morning) and we all met at 5 am at the main office in San Bernardino and all convoyed out the 30 minute drive to Bloomington. All the ACO's would be patrolling the streets of the area, all us license checkers including our supervisor were to start checking licenses at every residence beginning at 6 am, the earliest we could legally 'disturb the peace' by knocking on the doors of the residences.
No breaks, no excuses, any dogs out loose were to be picked up and we were told "license or cite" by the big boss himself. He as well as many of the staff were hoping to get their activities taped so Pat was actually there and in a new suit and there were quite a few cleaned and pressed uniforms of the ACO's and new permed hair styles on several of the women License Checkers.
We all got out there and of course at first nothings out loose. CBS had sent out a video crew and they got The supervisor Lynda and the people with her on tape waking up some residents to check for licenses. Since there weren't any loose dogs much of the early video was us license checkers going house to house checking the licenses. I was taped citing a guy that I normally would have given a break to, he answered all the right questions so normally I would have given him the chance to find his paperwork, but that morning, at that time he got a ticket. Later on some dogs were spotted out and chased, that made for some good shots I guess. I was taped again when I was helping ACO Ed Stevens loading a caught dog into his truck cages. I was able to save it on the VCR that evening and years later transferred it to DVD so I could look at it occasionally. Ah the memories!

Behind the scenes of that morning, well yes Pat had been taped giving his big speech about the job being done etc, CBS just didn't use it! He was extremely pissed off about it for quite a while. Pat was very much the 80's yuppie boss with a "my s*** doesn't stink" attitude. He was great for getting contracts and equipment for the department, he was really terrible for working with the employees. The one thing that unified the department was the hatred of him as our boss!
In 1985 he was forced to resign (fired) for misappropriation of funds. He'd been living the high life on the county's expense and it caught up with him.
That morning I'd ridden out to Bloomington in a little Datsun Animal Control Truck with my License Checker team leader Bob, and on the way out while he was driving he sat on the radio microphone while he was talking about how much he'd liked to see several of the female employees naked and more! It was broadcast to all the vehicles, luckily for him Pat must have been too busy talking and didn't hear it or Bob would really have been in hot water!
I no longer recall how many dogs actually were picked up, it wasn't many. For a few years if any early morning patrols were done, Bloomington was almost always the first place done.

There never was a "maximum enforcement" done with the whole department again though.