Thread: CA-Corning man in custody after cockfighting bust

Corning man in custody after cockfighting bust
Tuesday, Feb 2 2010, 11:51 am
By Howard Yune

Three men arrested after the breakup of a cockfight near Gridley will not face felony charges — a development authorities and animal welfare advocates say reflects the difficulty of cracking down on the illegal blood sport.

Butte County sheriff's deputies on Sunday detained Glester Garcia Arzate, 23, of Corning; Isaac Mesa Lopez, 32, of Chico; and Abraham Valencia, 28, of Sacramento. But on Monday, only Garcia Arzate remained in jail — on a federal immigration hold — and state laws only provide for misdemeanor charges against the three men.

Relatively light penalties and the secretive nature of animal blood sports leave cockfighting one of local law enforcement's hardest crimes to crack, according to Butte County's animal control supervisor.

"The unfortunate part is it goes on all the time, but it takes someone to call in to let us know what's going on because it's such a secretive event," K. "Beau" Beauregard said Monday. "It's held in remote places, it's a close-knit group of people, it's promoted by word of mouth and you have to know these people to know where the event is taking place."

Cockfighting arrests have been rare in the Mid-Valley, but that scarcity reflects the barriers to catching suspects in the act and not a decrease in activity, local authorities said. Because of the gambling, gunrunning and drug trafficking commonly associated with cockfighting bouts, participants usually hold the fights in obscure rural sites and delay revealing locations, dates and times until the last minute, leaving law enforcement dependent on tipsters to find wrongdoing.

"It's pretty hard to get a lead on things like this, because people are usually pretty quiet about it," said Cheryl Bohannan, Sutter County animal control supervisor.

The Butte County Sheriff's Department said at least 30 spectators ran or drove away from the Gridley cockfight, held in an orchard at the end of Ord Ranch Road.

County animal control officers found four dead roosters and more than 40 live ones at the scene, as well as a set of a dozen sharpened blades attached to roosters' legs to attack other birds during bouts, according to Beauregard. Deputies also discovered bird cages and six abandoned vehicles at the orchard, which sheriff's Detective Chris Nicodemus said may be traced to help find other suspects.

The surviving birds were taken to Oroville and are being tended by the Northwest SPCA.

Though cockfighting is illegal nationwide, California's lack of a felony penalty for the first offense makes it a magnet for gamecock owners locally and in neighboring states, which punish all such offenses as felonies, according to Eric Sakach, a law enforcement specialist for the Humane Society of the United States.

"That's part of the problem — we've become a more attractive venue because the penalty is less than in other states," said Sakach, who spent 17 years investigating animal blood sports for the Humane Society. Even if all three suspects are convicted in the Gridley case, they stand a good chance of avoiding jail time, he said.

Garcia Arzate faces possible charges of cruelty to animals, possessing fighting birds and possessing cockfighting equipment.

Mesa Lopez was cited with attending a cockfight and resisting a peace officer — for allegedly trying to escape deputies by swimming across the Feather River — while Valencia was booked on suspicion of animal cruelty. Both were released later Sunday.

The last reported cockfighting raid in Butte County was in May 2006, when deputies recovered 20 live birds and eight dead ones in west Gridley, according to the Appeal-Democrat.

Elsewhere in the Sacramento Valley, a May raid southwest of Orland netted 23 fighting roosters and 15 arrests, including six men from Yuba-Sutter. Sutter County last broke up a contest in 2003 and Yuba County in 2002, according to Appeal-Democrat archives.

Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Howard Yune at 749-4708 or hyune@appealdemocrat.com


http://www.corning-observer.com/news/ar ... hting.html

That used to be a big problem in South Florida. Infact we had undercover cops go to those places check them out place a bet and then come back and raid it. There hasn't been to much of it here at all and moved elsewhere.