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© John Goodwin/HSUS
What looks to the untrained eye like a yard of chained dogs may contain evidence of dogfighting that animal control or humane officers can contextualize for police—scars on the dogs or training equipment such as treadmills. |
Before 2001, when dogfighting finally became a felony in the District of Columbia, gangbangers caught fighting their pit bulls in the parks and back alleys of the nation’s capital occasionally encountered surprising treatment at the hands of the police.
It wasn’t excessive force or harassment; it wasn’t a matter of racial profiling. It wasn’t any of the complaints that often turn up in negative stories about law enforcement. These were good cops who just didn’t know what to do.
When Adam Parascandola started working at the Washington Humane Society, he and fellow animal control officers often arrived on the scene of dogfighting calls to find that police had simply broken up the fight and sent the people and dogs on their way—sometimes without even as much as an official warning.
The police just didn’t know how to handle the situation, says Parascandola, now the shelter’s chief operating officer. Some didn’t even recognize that they were seeing a criminal act. It took years of persistence to get local law enforcement to understand that dogfighting is a serious crime, that it’s often accompanied by other crimes, and—most importantly—that Washington Humane had resources to help deal with the problem in a more satisfying and effective way.
“We did a lot of education with the police about the law,” says Parascandola. Humane Society staff approached the police department’s second-in-command to address a number of ongoing issues and clearly impart their main message: If you come across an animal situation that you don’t understand or can’t handle, call us.
It made a difference, Parascandola says, as did the District’s elevation of dogfighting to a felony-level crime in 2001. “Now sometimes they will actually arrest the person,” he says, “but normally they’ll hold everybody there and call us and kind of consult with us.”
Offering training to local law enforcement agencies is one of the best ways to improve the relationship, says Chris Sanford, a special investigator with The HSUS who worked for the Galt Police Department in California for 26 years. While most police have a real soft spot for children and animals, Sanford says, they don’t always know how best to help them—or how to recognize when they are in danger or being abused.
Just as most animal advocates would have no idea how to effectively document and gather evidence at the scene of a homicide or burglary—watching multiple episodes of Law & Order or CSI doesn’t make one an expert—most police have received little or no training on how to handle animals or recognize signs of dogfighting, whether those signs are wounded animals or paraphernalia such as treadmills and veterinary drugs.
Mind the Knowledge Gap
Sanford recalls the scant information he received as a police trainee decades ago. “When I went to the police academy, we talked about animal cruelty, but animal fighting never came up,” he says. “As a patrolman, I used to work in a rural area of Sacramento County, and I would see cockfighting all the time, but we really didn’t do anything with it. Our attitude was, ‘We’ll call animal control; that’s something for them to deal with.’ Of course, animal control, when it comes to a case like that and with the amount of people at a cockfight, they don’t have the resources to deal with that. And there’s also a safety issue because most of the people that attend cockfights and dogfights are criminals—they carry weapons, they’re going to have narcotics.”
Mutual recognition by animal control and police that they each have services to offer the other can change both the tenor of the relationship and the nature of the response. Instead of looking at the dogfighting issue as the other agency’s problem, progressive departments identify gaps in service and areas of overlap to learn what each agency can bring to the table.
When the Boston Police Department’s youth violence and antigang units were having problems with dangerous dogs during their investigations, Scott Giacoppo of the Massachusetts SPCA saw the need for partnerships firsthand. The situation had spiraled out of control: Kids were walking around with attack-trained pit bulls, dog attacks were a topic on the nightly news, and police were encountering trained pit bulls standing guard on the properties of drug dealers they needed to arrest.
“I started working with them and went to their meetings and noticed that on their lists of people they were interested in talking to about gang activity, those were all the people I was looking at for dogfighting activity,” says Giacoppo, a former MSPCA law enforcement officer who is now the shelter’s deputy director of advocacy.
One eye-opening list provided to Giacoppo at a police intelligence meeting included names of people already under investigation. “I was like, ‘Well, I know that guy, he keeps dogs over here, and this guy’s got a really mean pit bull in his basement because I was just over there on a cruelty complaint.’ And they’re like, ‘You were there on a cruelty complaint? That guy deals drugs and guns!’ ”
The partnership progressed naturally, Giacoppo says, once the police recognized that their bad guys were his bad guys, too.
Help from the MSPCA made the job much easier for police, especially when they were issuing arrest warrants at homes protected by fighting dogs. “Before we came on board, the officers’ only option was to shoot the dog,” Giacoppo says. “That broke their silent entry because everyone in the house would wake up when they heard gunshots and the dog howling, and also the police didn’t want to do that because they identified this dog as a victim, as being a living creature that didn’t deserve to die because of this jerk.”
Once the MSPCA started providing backup and using catchpoles to remove dogs, arrests went more smoothly, animal victims were treated humanely, and the public was much happier.
The Louisiana SPCA has developed a similar relationship in New Orleans, says Kathryn Destreza, the director of humane law enforcement at the shelter. The help the organization has given the police in dealing with dangerous dogs has led to more interest in animal control cases; one police officer even serves as a liaison to the LA/SPCA.
“As we educated them more, the local police department here would go out on calls and ask us to come with them when they were doing arrest warrants because [the criminals] always had pit bulls,” says Destreza. “And it sort of built [from there] as we did more and more work with the police and started taking these dogs away from people and charging them with dogfighting.”
Multiple Crimes, Same Perpetrators
In Boston, Giacoppo also helped start a task force called Operation Dogtag. Working with officers from a community policing unit, Giacoppo and staff from other local shelters and animal control agencies conducted neighborhood sweeps to address ongoing problems simultaneously.
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© Fort Wayne Animal Care and Control
Animal control officers and police can work together on dogfighting cases, ensuring better results. |
Joining forces allowed the agencies to accomplish much more than they could have on their own. Before Operation Dogtag, Giacoppo explains, if he responded to a cruelty complaint for the MSPCA, he might have unwittingly knocked on the door of a guy wanted on drug violations. If animal control got a call about a potentially dangerous dog, they didn’t have the authority to deal with any cruelty violations. If police went on a drug or domestic violence call, they often couldn’t identify animal issues at the same address. “So what we would do is go as a team, a task force, and address every issue then and there,” Giacoppo says. “Your dog’s unregistered? Boom, we’re taking it. Your dog shows scars from fighting? We can’t prove fighting, but he’s under a rabies quarantine now. Oh, by the way, you have a warrant out for your arrest from 1982? You’re coming, too.”
At the same time, the team handed out business cards and let neighbors know they were there to help them take back their community. Whatever problem they had, whether related to drugs, guns, people, or dogs, citizens could call the taskforce. The outreach worked, empowering people to make those calls, Giacoppo says, and resulting in a total turnaround in certain areas of the city. Drug violations decreased, dogfighting decreased, and the task force received a citation of merit from the police commissioner. Now when Giacoppo talks to friends in the gang unit, they tell him they hardly ever see dogfighting anymore.
The approach used in Boston was based on the “broken windows” theory, a concept that inspired former New York mayor Rudy Guiliani’s “zero tolerance” policies and other major law enforcement reforms. The theory takes its name from an example in the 1982 Atlantic Monthly article that first described the idea: “Consider a building with a few broken windows,” the authors wrote. “If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to go break a few more windows. Eventually they may even break into the building, and if it’s unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside.”
The concept, Giacoppo explains, is that it’s best to address violations when they’re still small; the theory argues that if small problems are taken care of early, both petty and major crimes will be deterred. While some critics have questioned the validity of the idea, crackdowns on petty crime in several cities have in fact led to a reduction of major crimes as well. The premise behind “zero tolerance” goes to the heart of how people perceive their own neighborhood. People in a community where broken windows are fixed, where litter is picked up, where the area is kept attractive and is well-maintained, will feel safer. Responsible citizens won’t leave the area, and they’ll take action to protect their own neighborhoods.
“If someone is scared to walk down the street because there’s a guy on the corner with these pit bulls, that’s a quality-of-life issue for the citizens, so that is where a lot of police departments can be brought in,” says Giacoppo. “Because if we go in there saying, ‘These animals are being abused,’ they’re going to say, ‘You know what? The person abusing them is dealing guns and shooting people down the street, and I have to worry about that. Can’t help you.’ Rightfully so: If people were getting shot in my neighborhood, I’d want the police to put a high priority on that. But once we in the humane world can learn to accept where we stand and where they stand and how to mix them together, that’s when it all comes together.”
Understanding how intertwined some urban crimes are, how gang activities can gradually create a web of drugs and guns and dogfighting, many law enforcement departments are recognizing the seriousness of the crime and making the connection: Deal with the issues while they’re minor, show that you’re paying attention, and you’ll have to deal with fewer major problems down the road.
Many animal control officers echo Parascandola’s sentiments: that police who once didn’t pay much attention to the issue are now starting to take notice. As more connections are made among agencies, better team response results. Animal control agencies are learning about the training and resources police can offer them, and more and more police departments have come to understand the nexus of other crimes that tend to circle dogfights like an ugly smog: drug-dealing, weapons possession, illegal gambling.
Getting Their Attention
Still, the slow response of law enforcement agencies to dogfights is a continuing source of frustration for some animal shelters and animal control agencies that feel they don’t get support from police when they need it. While some animal control agencies have enforcement powers that allow them to give citations, make arrests, and even carry guns, many do not—and when their staff or field officers encounter a crime like dogfighting, with its common accoutrements of weapons and drugs, they need to have police on their side to provide resources and support.
For animal shelter staff, who regularly tend to animals victimized by fighters—the torn and wounded dogs who come out on the other side of the meat grinder—it can be difficult to understand what seems to be a lackadaisical attitude from law enforcement. But, says Sandy Christiansen, president and CEO of the Spartanburg Humane Society in South Carolina, usually it’s not a matter of apathy but simply competing priorities and a lack of understanding that shapes police response to the crime.
“It started as just being something where the police just needed to be educated about a particular crime being committed,” Christiansen says. “Having a crime elevated to felony status helps a lot because there’s just a lot of demands on law enforcement’s time and resources, and it becomes very difficult when there’s murders and all kinds of other really nasty stuff to dedicate a lot of manpower to a misdemeanor case.”
In the late 1990s, Christiansen ran animal control in Rochester, New York, through the contract the city had with the Humane Society at Lollypop Farm. Dogfighting was a huge problem in the inner city areas, but the police didn’t seem to be doing much about it. What helped Christiansen start a working relationship with the police was one particular case: In his first week of work, a fighting dog got loose from his owner. The dog went running through the neighborhood and eventually knocked through the screen door of a house to get at a five-year-old girl who was playing on her kitchen floor.
“The dog went in and took the kid by the head and dragged her outside and was going to kill her,” Christiansen says. “Kid ended up with like 70 stitches in her head. And the community was outraged—rightfully so—that a little kid could be playing on her own floor minding her own business and a fighting dog could break into the house and take the kid away. So then there was attention, so then my calls got taken. Sometimes there’s an event or one particular case you can use to get your foot in the door.”
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© Louisiana SPCA
Major busts have resulted from the cooperative efforts of the Louisiana SPCA, the New Orleans Police Department, and the Louisiana State Police’s Gaming Enforcement division. |
Because of its ripple effects in the community, street-level fighting may become a higher priority for police than dogfighting that occurs in isolated areas. Within big, crowded cities, the crime can have major effects on a whole neighborhood—as Christiansen’s case in Rochester showed all too tragically. The sundry criminal activities connected to dogfighting, be they drugs, guns, or other kinds of violence, will probably be noticed, feared, and complained about by citizens—even if the dogfights themselves aren’t. Police are more likely to be asked to take action by their constituents and their superiors in places where dogfighting is affecting the community’s quality of life.
When No One’s Complaining
In the more rural, isolated settings commonly used for professionallevel dogfights, getting the police involved may require a different kind of approach. Professional fighters maintain a close-knit group and are naturally suspicious of outsiders who seem eager to join their activities; infiltrating a ring may take months of undercover work and investigation.
In New Orleans, the cooperative work between the LA/SPCA and the New Orleans Police Department has had an unintended consequence: While many professional dogfighters left the city as a result of the partnership, Destreza says, some have simply taken their nasty habit to more rural areas where fewer people are likely to notice it.
“In Louisiana there’s only about 53 percent of parishes that have some sort of animal control, and that could be anything from the old man who loves animals to organizations like us that have a team of officers,” says Destreza. “The dogfighters just migrate to those parishes where they’ll be left alone.”
It’s a clever plan, but fortunately for the dogs, it doesn’t always work. In the spring of 2005, working with the Louisiana State Police’s gaming enforcement division and several other agencies, the LA/SPCA conducted successful raids on the kennels of several notorious dogfighters in the state, including those of Floyd Boudreaux, whose gamebred pits represent one of the most famous bloodlines in the dogfighting business. The raid, which uncovered treadmills, anabolic steroids, paperwork, and over 50 Boudreaux pit bulls, resulted in Boudreaux and his son being charged with animal cruelty, possession of steroids, weapons possession and 64 counts of dogfighting.
These raids were largely the product of a fairly recent working relationship between the shelter and the state police, says Destreza. The shelter’s desire to end the bloodsport of dogfighting is compatible with the gaming enforcement division’s responsibility to fight gambling-related crimes, says division captain Joe Lentini, noting that his troopers’ recognition of dogfighting’s connection to illegal gambling was key to getting their work off the ground.
“It works really well because I have funds that are dedicated to me to do certain things, none of which have anything to do with illegal dogfighting,” Lentini says. “I really don’t have funds to pay for picking up, holding, or disposing of the animals. … So without the SPCA, what am I going to do?”
Lentini says that shelters in need of police support for dogfighting cases should look for the connection that will draw law enforcement’s interest, whether that connection is narcotics or gaming or even organized crime. Louisiana state troopers who’ve seen the canine victims of dogfighting find it unbelievably sad, he says, but the good feeling of helping those animals is just one benefit of their efforts. Dogfighting casework has been a boon to the gaming division, resulting in a stream of public support, recognition from superiors, and ongoing good publicity.
“I see all kinds of connections that should interest police,” Lentini says, noting that on a recent dogfighting raid his officers seized a pound of marijuana and 16 weapons, some of them assault rifles. “So you had the dogs, the gambling aspect, you have the narcotics and the weapons violations. And that’s on almost every [bust] you get that. To me, it’s just a very attractive case. You’re not just doing a cruelty case; you’re getting a big bang for the amount of time you’re putting in there. And once I was able to sell that to the department, they see this is a worthwhile thing to do, not just that you’re helping these poor defenseless animals but you’re getting a lot of other things off the street.”
Even Exchanges
Christiansen’s seen similar results. When he assisted with a case in Schenectady, New York, in 2002, the state police were at first reluctant to get involved. But presented with evidence Christiansen and his team had gathered through game dog sites on the Internet, they assigned a detective to the case. The guy was less than pleased with his new task, and his colleagues let him know what they thought—they’d bark and growl at him whenever he’d turn up at meetings, Christiansen recalls.
The teasing continued until investigators turned up a huge bag of OxyContin. “The next thing you know, because of New York’s Rockefeller drug laws, that kid was facing an 8 1/2- to 25- year mandatory sentence,” says Christiansen. “He was going to jail for a very, very long time, and 25 dogs were taken off, and it was front page of the paper for days on end, and the media kept up with it. And next thing you know, that detective is getting praised by the highest of the commanders in the state police for responding to something that the public is so opposed to. … So all of his colleagues were then like, ‘Dag. Nobody ever says “Good job” to me!’ ”
The animal care and control field can thank dogfighters for not limiting their crimes to vicious animal abuse, since it’s often the other violations that attract police assistance.
Build a relationship with law enforcement the old-fashioned way, says Sanford: Make face-to-face contact with a detective in the relevant section, and start exploring similarities in mission and possible areas of cooperation. Target your approach based on what you know of the problem, he advises. Whether you’re making a pitch for support to a rural crimes task force, a community-policing or code violations section, narcotics or gang officers, the best way to make sure you’re heard and understood is to be seen. Sit down in person, explain who you are, what problems you’ve witnessed, what evidence you have, what support you’d like.
“You almost have to put your animal advocacy on the shelf for that moment and just say, ‘This is what I have, this is animal cruelty because this is what constitutes animal cruelty,’ and be able to enumerate it with the statute,” says Joe Pentangelo, a special agent for the humane law enforcement division of the ASPCA who also served for 21 years with the New York Police Department. If you are able to provide clear, dispassionate evidence of a crime, he says, “I think it would be nonfeasance of duty for a police officer to not entertain that.”
When you talk to the police, make it clear that while you’re asking for help, you’re also offering it. You have expertise not only in animal handling, but in recognizing all the signs of the crime they might not pick up on—the paraphernalia, the drugs, the records of fights and breedings. You can handle the dogs and make sure they’re cared for humanely.
“You have to kind of explain the mission and get face to face and they get more comfortable,” says Sanford, adding that the police often worry about getting involved with animal groups because some have a reputation for fanaticism. Letting the police get a look at you, hear your ideas, and observe your professionalism will go a long way toward countering that reluctance, Sanford says, and the end results are better for you, the police, and the animals. “Working together in coordination, the whole case will go a lot smoother, the chain of evidence works a lot better, and you prepare a better case for the prosecution.”
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