Dog fighting lurks out of sight and out of control

Penny-ante urban cards a far cry from top echelon of already cruel blood sport

Barking and baring her teeth, a female pit bull terrier defends her turf in the front yard of a home in Durham, N.C., where animal control officials found 17 dogs of the same breed chained to trees, poles and pipes during a police drug raid.

Ethan Hyman/McClatchy


By Jim Nesbitt

DURHAM, N.C. -- As Karen Tiller slowly cruises the side streets and alleys of this city, she trolls for signs of an elusive felon, the urban kinsman of that traditionally rural Southern outlaw, the dog fighter.

Her search doesn't center on the high-stakes canine combat that a federal indictment accuses Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick of hosting at his rural Virginia home. Tiller focuses on the "street fighter," a spectral, city-based player who dwells at the lower levels of an already cruel blood sport.

His fights aren't bound by the rules that govern -- and often cut mercifully short -- the formal matches of dog fighting's upper echelons. And his dogs aren't the top-dollar pit bulls carefully bred and rigorously trained for the cash-heavy clashes. They're backyard fighting dogs of indifferent breeding and haphazard conditioning -- mostly pit bulls and pit bull mixes, unpapered mutts whose bloodlines can't be traced to the fifth generation.

Street fighters match their dogs in snarling, lock-jawed and bloody scraps, spontaneous frays that take place in a shed, a vacant lot or an abandoned house. In these back-street battles, the bet might be $100 or a pack of cigarettes compared with the thousands wagered on elite fighting dogs.

Sometimes there is nothing more on the line than the street cred of having the meanest, toughest dog on the block.

And when it's over, dogs, owners and spectators get long gone, leaving little other than scuffled dirt and bloody spoor in their wake. Maybe there's also a bloodstained carpet or panels of plywood used to form an instant fighting pit.

For Tiller, a Durham County animal control officer, the hunt for street fighters is like playing a shell game with ghosts.

"Bad thing about dog fighting is finding it and proving it," said Tiller, 40. "We know it's going on. We see signs of it every day. But you'd have to turn the corner at just the right time to bust a dogfight."

The elusive nature of the street fighter's game means Tiller and other Durham County animal control officers look for the footprints of a fighting operation. They try to pile up enough circumstantial evidence to get a search warrant and prove an owner is keeping dogs for fighting -- a felony in North Carolina.

They hope to spot a pit bull with fresh gashes to the head, throat or legs, wounds consistent with dog fighting. A tangle of scars on the same body parts indicates ancient battles.

'Bad thing about dog fighting is finding it and proving it,' says Durham Animal Control officer Karen Tiller.

"Bad thing about dog fighting is finding it and proving it," says Durham Animal Control officer Karen Tiller.

But they often must settle for more indirect evidence -- a heavy logging chain a pit bull has to drag around, adding strength and bulk to its chest and legs; a "break stick" used to pry apart the jaws of pit bulls locked in combat; or a rope hanging a few feet above the ground used to encourage a dog to clamp down with its powerful jaws while hanging in midair.

Sometimes, all they get is a dirt yard packed with a dozen or more barking, lunging pit bulls chained to trees, telephone poles and pipes, their coats of brown, black, white or brindle coated with dust, the sour stench of their excrement overpowering in the hot, still air.

That was the scene Tiller and two colleagues rolled up on as the mercury climbed toward the triple digits and they checked out a ramshackle clapboard house.

More than a dozen pit bulls were chained next to makeshift doghouses scattered across the front yard, side yard and steeply sloped back end of the property. When animal control officers accompanied police officers on a recent drug raid at the house, they counted 17 pit bulls and pit bull mixes and slapped the property owner with a $1,700 citation -- none of the charges related to dog fighting.

That many pit bulls crowding a single property is a strong but indirect sign of dog fighting, the animal control officers say.

"There's no good reason for somebody to own 17 dogs -- they can't afford to," said James Fitzherbert, a Durham County animal control officer.

But Fitzherbert can't be sure. Pit bulls are also popular for protection, intimidation and status. They've become "accessory dogs" for people who want to cut a thuggish figure.

"If you're looking to project a tough image, a Pomeranian on a leash doesn't cut it -- a snarling pit bull does," said Dr. Kelli Ferris, a veterinary science professor at North Carolina State University who also campaigns against dog fighting.

Street fighters also abuse their pit bulls to make them aggressive toward both people and other dogs, Ferris said. And that makes them dangerous for neighbors and animal control officers who have to handle abandoned or seized pit bulls, which are flooding shelters, crowding out other, adoptable breeds.

"A dog like this is not rehabilitatable except for a special person who knows what they've got -- a loaded gun," said Cindy Bailey, Durham County animal control administrator, as she petted a seized pit bull, nicknamed Scarface, that will eventually be euthanized.

Tiller and her colleagues know they are tracking the lower-money and less-organized end of this blood sport, its players inspired by the songs and videos of rappers such as Jay-Z or DMX and other markers of hip-hop culture who glorify dog fighting.

The federal indictment against Vick and three associates illustrates how the high end of dog fighting is no longer a backwoods and largely Southern phenomenon.

The 18-page document accuses the four of operating "Bad Newz Kennels," a dog-fighting operation based in a home Vick owned in rural Surry County, Va. But the charges also allege Vick or his associates traveled to dogfights in Maryland and New Jersey to match their pit bulls against dogs from New York and the Garden State.

This indicates dog fighting is now a big-money activity in such major cities as Chicago, New York and Dallas, said John Goodwin, manager of animal fighting issues for the Humane Society of the United States. Fueled by the growing number of urban dog fighters, it crosses lines of race, ethnicity, class and geography.

Nationwide, Goodwin estimates there are as many as 50,000 dog fighters, ranging from the serious pro to the street fighter. And where the urban and rural worlds of dog fighting collide in big-money matches, they tend to follow the traditional codes of the blood sport.

But the street-fighting game has few rules. It also has some particularly cruel twists, including "trunking," a mobile battle where two dogs are thrown into the trunk of a car and bets are placed on which dog will emerge alive when the car stops and the lid is lifted.



Mid-South breeds dogs for brutality

Here are some numbers:

Pit bulls, the most popular breed for fighting, used to fill just a tenth of all Memphis Animal Services cages; today, it's more than half.

In the past two years, close to 4,000 pit bulls have been taken in; 85 percent were destroyed by lethal injection.

Greater Memphis Reacts

Sgt. Vincent Higgins, spokesman for Memphis Police, which helps Animal Services: "They will usually have (a dog fight) in a backyard on private property. There's usually an enclave that protects the operator, so it's hard to find somebody to complain about it. Dog fighting is most often prosecuted as animal cruelty. If we want to catch them during betting, it's part of the vice group, and it's really difficult."

Source: The Commercial Appeal archives.

-- Mark Watson



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