City and state get serious in taking on cockfighting

When it comes to savage and inhumane crimes against animals, few rank as abominable as the centuries-old bloodthirsty sport of cockfighting.

That’s why it’s been encouraging to see action on local and state fronts in 2016 toward cracking down on the vile offense and in adding sharper teeth to Ohio’s anti-cockfighting statutes. We’re counting on law enforcement and animal advocates to build on that momentum in the new year toward eliminating all vestiges of the depraved pastime.

A cockfight is a blood sport between two roosters that takes place in a ring called a cockpit. Its history dates back at least 500 years when Antonio Piga-fetta, chronicler of Portuguese explorer Magellan, documented the sport in the Philippines.

Then, as now, the fowl fighters find themselves ensnared in a world of confinement, pain, and likely death for the sake of a moment of perverse pleasure by participants in this depraved form of illicit gambling.

Only in recent years have authorities across Ohio and the nation come to recognize the viciousness of the crime. Nowhere in Ohio is that get-tough attitude more visible than in Youngstown. Over the past year, more than 125 birds have been seized in the city from at least four suspected cockfighting rings. In January, Youngstown police and humane agents confiscated more than 50 birds from two separate cockfighting operations on the South and East sides of the city. Then, earlier this month, they raided two other East Side properties where about 75 roosters were rescued.

At one of the East Side homes raided this month, several disturbing signs of cockfighting were found, including razors attached to the shaved legs of roosters, steroids to increase their aggressiveness, bandages, medicine to stop bleeding and even a trophy for one warped winner of the debauchery.

MULTIPRONGED ATTACK

We applaud the cooperative efforts of watchful neighbors, the Community Policing Unit and Animal Charity that’s resulted in an ongoing citywide crackdown on cockfighting. An anonymous letter sent to The Vindicator from a neighbor who witnessed shipments of roosters helped authorities obtain a search warrant to raid suspected cockfighting operation on Ives Avenue. The efforts of the CPU, designed to much more closely monitor neighborhoods, once again proved its value.

Unfortunately, however, the masterminds behind the depraved activity, if convicted, will suffer little more than a slap on the wrist. That’s because the penalty for engaging in cockfighting in Ohio today is woefully lenient, a minor misdemeanor offense, punishable by a maximum fine of a paltry $250.

That’s hardly an incentive for profiteers from the sport to cease and desist. Nor is it an incentive for law enforcement officers to spend the exhaustive amount of time and investigative work necessary to locate and apprehend offenders.

Fortunately, those disincentives will disappear early next year when legislation passed this month in the waning days of the Ohio General Assembly takes effect. Provisions of Senate Bill 331 make participating in cockfighting a felony offense, punishable by a fine of up to $10,000, 40 times higher than the current next-to-nothing penalty. After many needless years of conflict, Ohio now becomes the 43rd state to enact felony-level penalties for the inhumane offense.

As a bonus for enhanced humanity toward animals, the new act also criminalizes bestiality – the lewd and lascivious sexual assaults on animals – for the first time in the state.

But those hard-fought and long- delayed victories did not come without conflict. Another provision of the SB 331 forbids local governments from enacting ordinances to regulate sales of dogs produced in unsanitary and oppressive puppy mills. That’s likely why all House Democrats voted against the bill. Animal advocates plan to fight back by planning a statewide puppy-mill referendum to reverse that attack on animal rights and home rule.

On balance, however, the legislation moves Ohio out of the Stone Age of animal protection and puts would-be cockfighters on notice that authorities now have much stronger weapons to better battle the menace. It is now up to crime fighters in the Mahoning Valley and the state to grasp them and use them aggressively.