Thread: Cockfighting crossroads

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Cockfighting crossroads
Game fowl owners and Latino group oppose a bill to raise penalties for the 'blood sport.'
By Eric Stern -- Bee Capitol Bureau
Published 2:15 am PDT Tuesday, July 5, 2005
It wasn't too long ago - maybe 15 years - when illegal cockfighting wasn't considered much more than a nuisance in rural California.
Frank Swiggart, a detective with the Merced County Sheriff's Department, recalls breaking up cockfights in orchards deep in the Central Valley just to chase spectators off a farmer's land. Even TV's "Seinfeld" poked fun at cockfighting, in an episode in which Kramer bought a fighting rooster.

"Everyone wants to snicker and laugh and giggle because it's a chicken," Swiggart said.

But Swiggart and other law enforcement officials say cockfighting is anything but a laughing matter. Cockfighting - outlawed in the state since 1905 - is pervasive throughout California, and the events are linked to gambling, guns and drugs, officials say.

SWAT teams, helicopters and undercover stings have busted large cockfighting derbies in recent years, where dozens of people have been arrested and thousands of birds confiscated, many outfitted with blades on their legs.

Armies of county animal-control officers also are helping in the raids, and the Humane Society has begun teaching police-training courses on tagging game fowl as evidence.

Despite the crackdown, law enforcement officials say the penalties haven't kept up. It's not illegal to own a rooster, but training or causing a bird to fight or even watching a cockfight is a misdemeanor that can draw up to a year in county jail and a $5,000 fine.

State lawmakers this year are considering raising the penalty for causing or training birds to fight to a felony for second and subsequent offenses, with a maximum one-year prison sentence and $25,000 fine.

Under the state's "three-strikes" law, a felony cockfighting conviction could trigger lifetime imprisonment.

"We want to send the message that this isn't going to be tolerated," Swiggart said.

The cockfighting measure, Senate Bill 156, passed the Senate and is moving through Assembly committees.

Cockfighting is illegal in every state but New Mexico and Louisiana. Thirty-two states also have made cockfighting a felony, including California neighbors Arizona, Nevada and Oregon. Congress also is considering making cockfighting a federal felony offense.

Eric Sakach, regional director of the Humane Society, said out-of-state cockfighting organizers are flocking to California because the penalties aren't as harsh.

"The very idea of being charged with a felony is in itself a deterrent," Sakach said.

Game fowl owners are leading a spirited protest against SB 156 by Sen. Nell Soto, D-Pomona. Soto worked to strengthen cockfighting penalties in 2003 and has been determined to make the crime a felony.

The bird breeders are being helped by a Latino political group that says the idea is "mean-spirited and misplaced." Nativo Lopez, president of the state Mexican-American Political Association, wrote to Soto that cockfighting is culturally ingrained in many Latinos, and that immigrants might not understand the severity of the crime in the United States.

Soto, who is of Mexican descent, responded that the group's stance perpetuates negative stereotypes and "is an insult to the law-abiding Mexican-Americans and Latinos who are repulsed by such barbaric - and illegal - activities."

"I've been a Mexican all my life," Soto told the Assembly Public Safety Committee last week. "If people try to tell you it is part of the Mexican culture, it is not."

Michael Rodriguez, the Stanislaus County animal services director, has helped officers in several cockfighting raids in the Central Valley. He said cockfighting participants cross all races and ethnic groups.

"Cockfighting has only one culture - the almighty green culture," he said.

Maurice Ayala has been lobbying against the cockfighting bill at the state Capitol for the California Association for the Preservation of Gamefowl. He said the group's members raise the chesty roosters for fairs and poultry shows, like kids in 4-H clubs, or they're Latino or South Asian immigrants who are used to having chickens in their yards.

"We absolutely do not favor cockfighting," he said in an interview. But he then falls into a centuries-long history of the blood sport and explains that the birds fight each other because it's in their "genetic code." He said current laws against cockfighting are sufficient because prosecutors can and have charged suspected cockfighting participants with felony abuse counts.

He also disputes that cockfighting events draw other vices and turn violent. "All this is unproven scuttlebutt," he said. "The fact that they say it doesn't make it so."

Police say two men were shot to death in February at a Tulare County cockfight because of a dispute, and a man was murdered in Watsonville in March 2004 under similar circumstances. In Escalon in 2001, a referee at a cockfighting event was shot to death and two other people were wounded, police say.

In May, a major cockfighting bust in Amador County pooled 30 animal-control officers from as far away as Stanislaus and Merced counties.

Thirty people now are facing charges related to cockfighting. The ranch owner faces numerous counts, including felony conspiracy and gambling charges.

"We've got evidence going back seven years that there's been cockfighting going on out there," said Joseph J. Scoleri III, deputy district attorney in Amador.

Bill Mattos of the Modesto-based California Poultry Federation and Richard Breitmeyer, the state veterinarian, have said backyard game fowl play a major role in disseminating contagious poultry diseases because the birds are moved around frequently for fighting.

But increasing the penalties for cockfighting could make disease-control harder, one expert argues.

Francine Bradley has been vaccinating game fowl - no questions asked - since the exotic Newcastle disease outbreak in 2003 that led to the eradication of millions of Southern California birds.

Bradley, a poultry specialist at the University of California at Davis, said increasing penalties for cockfighting will drive game fowl owners underground.

"People are not going to admit to having these birds," she said. "We have had a very good relationship with the game fowl community. We have developed trust. ... We need to get the birds tested."

She keeps information about the participants in the game fowl testing program confidential. She refused to say how many there are or how many game fowl she has vaccinated.

"I don't know what people do with them," she said. "We just want them to be healthy."

In a letter to lawmakers, Bradley wrote, "You cannot legislate cockfighting out of existence."

Sakach, of the Humane Society, said that's the case with any law. But he said the increased penalty for cockfighting sends a message "to where we are in a society" and will hopefully get game fowl owners to think twice about cockfighting.

OH GOOD!! Lets move switfly to protect the cocks. That is cruel and inhumane. A $25,000 fine...WOW....these officials are taking this very seriously. What was the fine for not having records on illegal aliens working in your plant instead of Americans...$1,000 to $1,100.

Yep....it's animals. That is key to reaching the American Public. Expose all animal abuse at the hands of illegal aliens. I mean all of it. None of it is over the top.

Americans love their animals and will fight to protect them. Get the animal abuse issues to the TOP.

Yes, let's take swift action on this