How entrenched is drug use in Fontana? Over the last four decades until the distinction was commandeered by certain cities in Mexico that host international drug cartels there, Fontana competed with areas in San Bernardino County’s High Desert as the methamphetamine manufacturing capital of the world. Now comes word that even the household pets in Fontana are addicted to the stuff.
Jack Sparrow is a two-year-old Chihuahua. Until recently, on a typical day, the diminutive canine would lethargically emerge into a wakeful state, and then languidly struggle to shake off its torpor. The dog’s malaise would persist, as in a seemingly listless manner it padded about, perhaps taking a drink at its water bowl, showing less than enthusiasm as he gnawed at some hard dog food in his food bowl. The seemingly exhausting task of taking nutrition completed, Jack would stroll toward the living room, barely able to summon up the energy to jump up onto the couch, where yet another nap would beckon.
At some point during the day, however, Jack would again awaken and when he did, he would come upon the tiny white lines of methamphetamine powder his master had laid out for him. Setting first one and then the other nostril close to the treat, Jack would inhale the acrid drug, which at first stung his sensitive canine nasal membranes, causing his eyes to water and his whole body to shudder temporarily, a physical ritual that on some occasions might be punctuated with a sneeze. But in no time, Jack would shake off his sluggishness and become a new dog and his old self once again, prancing about, standing for as long as ten or eleven seconds on his back feet, intensely interested, at least for a short while, in whatever happened to grab his interest until something equally or more interesting took up his attention. This enthusiasm would last for hours and he would yelp about this and that, almost always unintelligibly for hours on end until, his system having metabolized the dose of methamphetamine, he would grow sleepy again, and crawl off to drop into a stupor once more.
Fontana is now famous, or as it were, infamous, for its meth snorting dog, having done New Orleans and the cigarette smoking chimpanzee it features at its zoo one or two better. This is unsurprising, given the nature of Fontana, which is where two of America’s largest outlaw motorcycle gangs – the Hell’s Angels and the Devil’s Disciples – were founded, where the Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party had active chapters into the 1990s, where members of those biker gangs acted to preserve the peace at city council meetings by occupying the seats between the members of the Ku Klux Klan and members of the city’s northside African American activist groups who attended those meetings in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s, where one of the biggest outlaws in American History, Al Capone, had his vacation home, where the local newspaper for decades has had no shortage of reports on criminal activity, burglaries, robberies, assorted acts of mayhem, beatings, killings, etc., where one of its former city managers infamously set up a credit line at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas as a means of laundering the kickbacks he was receiving from the development community for his chaperoning of projects through the city’s land use permitting process.
The entire city, which has grown to become the county’s second largest city population-wise at over 204,000 residents, is still seen as a bastion of backward thinking louts, where many of the city’s natives were left brain damaged by the cloud of toxic industrial exhaust that hovered over the city after spewing from the smokestacks at the steel mill that operated there in the 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, where inbred criminals or semi-criminals have congregated for decades. Residents of nearby cities refer to the place as “Fontucky” and it is the butt of jokes such as “What do a hurricane in Florida, a tornado in Arkansas and a divorce in Fontana have in common? Someone’s fixin’ to lose a trailer.”
On July 5, Jack Sparrow’s owner, Isaiah Nathaniel Sais, brought the dog to the Inland Valley Veterinary Specialists and Emergency Center in Upland. Veterinarians observed the dog convulsing and to be hypersensitive to noise and sudden movement. Sais said he believed the dog might have overdosed on “crank,” a slang term for methamphetamine.
A toxicology test showed that Jack had indeed ingested the drug.
Sais left the care center, taking Jack with him.
Personnel at the Inland Valley Veterinary Specialists and Emergency Care Center contacted the Fontana Animal Services Team, informing them of what had occurred and that Sais had given, at the time of Jack Sparrow’s check-in, an address in the 10400 block of Hemlock Avenue in Fontana. When the Fontana Animal Service technicians went to the residence, they found Jack still suffering from the effects of the drug and they confiscated the dog.
A report on the matter was submitted to the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office Animal Cruelty Task Force unit for review, and an arrest warrant for felony animal cruelty was issued for Sais.
Fontana Police located Sais near Foothill Boulevard and Vineyard Avenue in Rancho Cucamonga on July 8. Sais was arrested without incident and booked into West Valley Detention Center on the warrant.
Jack was taken by the animal control officers back to the emergency center in Upland, where he continues in residence. As Jack undergoes treatment to wean him of his drug addiction, it is hoped by those caring for him that he will recover to the point that he will be a candidate for adoption.