(Beth Clifton collage)

What happens when animal issues are overwhelmed by current events?

            HARLAN COUNTY, Kentucky;  TAIJI, Japan;  BALI, Indonesia––A trainload of coal worth $1.4 million,  blockaded for six weeks by illegally laid off miners whose last pay checks bounced,  might at a glance appear to have nothing to do with an alleged cockfighting ring run by public employees.

Increasingly violent demonstrations roiling Hong Kong for more than four months,  triggered by a proposed extradition treaty with mainland China,  might seem to have even less to do with either the plight of four captive dolphins in Bali or the ongoing annual massacre of dolphins and pilot whales in Taiji,  Japan,   each about 2,000 air miles from Hong Kong,

But the idled coal train and the Hong Kong demonstrations actually have a great deal to do with why nothing seems to be happening either to stop cockfighting in Harlan County,  Kentucky,  or on behalf of marine mammals in Bali and Taiji.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Timing is everything”

Both the coal train drama and the Hong Kong demonstrations also illustrate the maxim that “Timing is everything.”  They grabbed the headlines first––which left Showing Animals Respect & Kindness (SHARK),  In Defense of Animals,  and Ric O’Barry’s Dolphin Project standing in the shadows,  amid situations that at another time might have gone global.

Showing Animals Respect & Kindness and In Defense of Animals on August 26,  2019 jointly announced “the launch of a new campaign to expose those who participate in illegal cockfights,”  called Crush Cockfighting.

SHARK and In Defense of Animals investigators,  they said,  had extensively reviewed  “Facebook accounts of self-professed cockfighters” to “collect evidence of their illegal acts,”  and had discovered what they believed looked to be a sensational case.

“Open and brazen”

“Our inaugural report deals with Ronnie Bennet and Kyle Simpson, two Kentucky law enforcement officers who are also father and son,”  said SHARK spokesperson Stuart Chaifetz.

“We were shocked to see how open and brazen these Harlan County Detention Center employees are with their illegal cockfighting farm and operation,”  Chaifetz alleged,  adding “That may very well be because they think they are untouchable.”

The SHARK and In Defense of Animals announcement was extensively amplified by animal rights media,  but no response was forthcoming from law enforcement.  Perhaps for that reason there was also no response from mainstream media.

Three weeks later,  having heard nothing from anyone,  SHARK founder Steve Hindi emailed to Harlan County judge/executive Dan Mosley,  whose position is more-or-less comparable to that of a city mayor.

Steve Hindi

“Three weeks have passed & you failed to respond”

Law enforcement officers Bennett and Simpson,  Hindi charged,  “run a fighting rooster operation called the Cuttin Up Game Farm.  The evidence in this case is quite strong,”  Hindi wrote, “supplied by the suspects themselves via Facebook posts.  The pictures and posts are extensive and irrefutable.  The suspects obviously feel they have nothing to fear from Harlan County officials such as yourself. Three weeks have passed, and you failed to respond. This is, at a minimum, troubling.  I encourage you to respond now with information regarding the actions you have taken in this matter.”

This time,  Mosley responded almost immediately.

Dan Mosely & friends.
(Judge-Executive-Harlan-online photo)

“Economic disaster”

“Thank you for reaching out regarding the allegations involving a detention center employee,”  Mosely began.  “I apologize for not responding to the previous email regarding this situation. For the last two months,  our county has been fully engulfed in the economic disaster of trying to help more than 300 coal miners who were wrongfully laid off and had thousands of dollars clawed back from their bank accounts.  My deputy judge executive also moved on to another position out of state and his replacement did not begin his role until two weeks ago.  Not downplaying what your organization contacted me about,  but I just simply had not had the opportunity to look into this matter due to everything else we’ve been dealing with.

“Mr. Bennett is an employee at the Harlan County Detention Center,”  Mosely confirmed.  “Mr. Simpson does not work for the detention center.  Mr. Bennett works at the pleasure of the Harlan County jailer,  and neither myself,  nor the Harlan County Fiscal Court,  supervise him or anyone else at the jail. That is the responsibility of the jailer,”  who according to the Kentucky Jailers Association web site is one M.J. Burkhart.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Proper authorities” will “look into this matter”

“Furthermore,”  Mosely said,  “the Harlan County Fiscal Court does not conduct criminal investigations. I have though reached out to other entities,”  Mosely finished,  “regarding what has been alleged,  and can tell you that the proper authorities who would look into this matter are doing so.”

Perhaps something yet will come of the SHARK and In Defense of Animals investigative effort.  Meanwhile,  much of the social media evidence that SHARK and In Defense of Animals said they had gathered is––predictably––no longer online.

The alleged Harlan County jailhouse cockfighting ring case is so far a non-story for mainstream media,  even in Harlan County,  as well as something Dan Mosely did not get to right away,  because as Sydney Boles summarized on September 3,  2019 for Rolling Stone,  “On July 1st, the nation’s sixth-largest coal company,  Blackjewel LLC,  declared bankruptcy without warning,  leaving 1,700 employees out of work” as Blackjewel facilities closed abruptly,  from Wyoming to West Virginia.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Paychecks bounced

The largest number of miners laid off were the 300-plus in Harlan County,  but that was not the worst of the situation.

“Coal miners’ June 28th paychecks bounced,”  Boles continued,  “leaving many workers thousands of dollars in debt. Their final paychecks, which ought to have come on July 12th, never came.

“On July 29th, a woman who lives near a Blackjewel prep plant noticed a train being loaded with coal.  She sent a message to some Blackjewel workers,”  Boles added.

The workers stopped the train,   won a court order that has kept it stopped,  and the confrontation soon made global headlines,  coming as it did in a county that voted 85% for U.S. President Donald Trump in 2016,  but was synonymous with labor activism from the 1920s into the 1970s.

“Because of the spotlight the month-long Blackjewel protest has drawn, local journalists discovered that no Kentucky coal company was in compliance with a law that would have helped miners get their rightful pay, and that Blackjewel owed millions to a miners’ health care fund,”  Boles noted.

Dolphins at the Taiji cove.

Meanwhile in Taiji

Meanwhile on the far side of the globe,  the dolphin and whale massacre underway yet again in Taiji has attracted some attention,  between weekend outbreaks of protest in Hong Kong––but not much.

Reported Michael Dahlstrom for Yahoo News Australia on September 16,  2019,  a Monday,

“Tim Burns from Ric O’Barry’s Dolphin Project has been visiting the Japanese village of Taiji in Wakayama prefecture for 10 years,  documenting the annual hunt.  This year has proved particularly tough on the activist.”

The mayhem is the same as ever.  That very morning,  Burns told Dahlstrom,  a large pod of pilot whales who had been herded into the killing cove,  made infamous by the 2009 Academy Award-winning documentary The Cove,  “were jumping up on rocks,  getting caught in nets, then under the skiffs,  getting up on the beach – it was just pure chaos.”

Taiji scene. (Ric O’Barry’s Dolphin Project photo)

One small juvenile

Burns videotaped “one small juvenile just going in little,  tiny,  tight circles,”  whose mother had already died.

All Burns could do was document the killing and bear witness,  as Ric O’Barry’s Dolphin Project volunteers have for more than a decade,  and others have ever since U.S. film maker Hardy Jones first showed the world the Taiji dolphin killing in 1978.

“I have three police cars with me when I drive through town,”  Burns explained.  “Up on the hill there are multiple police officers.  There are plain clothes police officers up there with video cameras,  watching what I’m doing.  Also the town of Taiji has representatives wearing arm bands up there, watching what I’m doing,  trying to catch me doing something wrong.

Ric O’Barry in Taiji.
(Ric O’Barry’s Dolphin Project photo)

“Tough to not physically intervene”

“It’s really,  really tough to not physically intervene,  to not get in and try to stop this,”  Burns said.  “If I did,  it would get no media attention in Japan,  which is the main place where we need to get media attention.  We have to follow the law,  follow the rules,  the guidelines that the police set out for us,  and to be honest,  if I tried to make a break for it,  I don’t think I’d get to the water before the police got to me.”

Ric O’Barry himself,  now 79,  was arrested in Japan in 2015 on trumped-up drunk driving charges that were later dropped,  and was treated by police in a manner that appeared to violate international treaties.

(See “I shall return,” Ric O’Barry tells Taiji after torture.)

(Ric O’Barry’s Dolphin Project photo)

“Duality”

This year O’Barry has been trying to arrange the release of four dolphins and a menagerie of other animals from what he and many others have termed “deplorable conditions” at the Melka Excelsior Hotel in Lovina,  North Bali, Indonesia.

Most of the animals were moved to other captive venues in mid-August 2019,  some of the venues also questionable,  but two aged,  blind dolphins remained behind.

(See Bali hotel dolphins rescued––but will they be freed?)

“The duality of being here in Bali trying to save four dolphins while Taiji is going on at the very same time is beyond my ability to explain in words,”  O’Barry told ANIMALS 24-7.

“There are no words.  What happens in Taiji involves thousands of animals.   We have a team on the ground in both places.

Ric O’Barry at the Oscars.

Post-traumatic stress disorder

“I’m afraid post-traumatic stress disorder has kicked in once again,”  O’Barry admitted.  “It happens about this time every year. It’s been going on since my first experience at the cove in 2003.

And this is only September.  I’ll be awake until March,”  when the killing season ends,  O’Barry said.

The Cove,  a decade ago,  put Taiji at the forefront of the global activist agenda.  But not very much changed as result of the ensuing demonstrations,  petitions,  and other grassroots activity against the dolphin massacres.

Now,  ten years past The Cove,  the Taiji killing no longer has much shock value.  Most of the animal advocacy world knows just enough about it,  and is frustrated enough over it going on & on,  that they don’t want to look at it any more.

Hong Kong upstages everything

The Hong Kong unrest,  meanwhile,  is occurring in one of the world’s centers of commerce and communication––and the major portal into China,  the world’s largest nation,  for most of the western world.

Almost every reporter stationed in Asia,  serving western media,  has been focused on the ongoing Hong Kong saga,  with reason,  because people everywhere have a direct stake in it.

Merritt & Beth Clifton

Perhaps when the Hong Kong crisis is resolved,  or just peters out,  Burns,  O’Barry,  and their allies can rekindle interest in Taiji.

Until then,  about all they can do is remind Taiji that some people still care about the dolphins and pilot whales,  and are still watching.

Please donate to support our work: 

http://www.animals24-7.org/donate/ 

Grand jury found that John Ramirez (foreground) has impeded enforcement of Monterey ordinance governing cock-breeding.  (Beth Clifton collage)

Cock-breeding explodes around Carmel-by-the-Sea

            MONTEREY,  California––By the look of it,  more might have been done in Monterey County to enforce legislation against breeding gamecocks if California had remained a U.S. territory in 1850 instead of becoming a state,  four years after overthrowing Spanish rule.

            Exulted Humane Society of the U.S. president Kitty Block and Humane Society Legislative Fund president Sara Amundson on October 8,  2019 in a jointly attributed electronic newsletter,  “The federal government has filed a brief strongly defending a law that would expand the ban on cockfighting in the United States to Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories,”  effective on December 20,  2019.

“Cockfighters seeking to overturn the ban have challenged it in federal court,”  Block and Amundson elaborated.  “But the U.S. Department of Justice said that federal precedent is clear: Congress not only has the authority to ban animal fighting across all 50 states, but it can also apply it to U.S. territories.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

But feds lack jurisdiction in  Monterey County

The U.S. federal jurisdiction applies within states wherever cockfighters or cockfighting paraphernalia,  including gamecocks themselves,  cross state lines.

In Monterey County,  though,  the cockfighting industry appears to be thriving and self-sufficient,  relying on locally bred gamecocks while a local ordinance meant to stop the industry remains almost as unenforced as if it had been adopted in the 1770-1850 time frame,  when the city of Monterey,  for which the county is named,  was the capital of California under Spanish rule.

Cockfighting visibly persists in all five self-governing U.S. territories,  among them Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands in the Caribbean region,  plus Guam,  the Mariana Islands,  and American Samoa in the Pacific region.

(Greg Robbins photo)

Cockfighting more prominent in Monterey County than in Puerto Rico

Among them,  cockfighting has the largest economic presence,  albeit often exaggerated by cockfighting defenders,  in Puerto Rico––as detailed by ANIMALS 24-7 on May 26,  2019.

(See Cockfighters “win” from delay of hurricane aid to Puerto Rico.)

            But there are now arguably more active cockfighters and gamecock breeders in Monterey County,  California,  at least relative to human population,  than in either Puerto Rico or any of the other U.S. territories where cockfighting is soon to end.

Block and Amundson were quick to claim as a “victory” for HSUS and the subsidiary Humane Society Legislative Fund the extension of the U.S. federal prohibition on cockfighting to the overseas territories.

But where were HSUS and subsidiaries while Monterey became one of the western hubs of cockfighting on the U.S. mainland ?

(Beth Clifton collage)

Gamecocks under Doris Day’s nose

After all,  singer and actress Doris Day,  for whom the Doris Day Animal League (DDAL) was named in 1986,   lived in Carmel,  Monterey County,  from 1981 until her death from pneumonia on May 13,  2019.  Her home was just 22 miles from the most visible concentration of gamecock breeders in the county,  in the unincorporated Boronda neighborhood.

Merged into HSUS in August  2006,  the Doris Day Animal League was absorbed by the Humane Society Legislative Fund in mid-2018,  after former HSUS vice president Holly Hazard––the only executive director that DDAL ever had––retired.

Meanwhile,  for more than a dozen years a multitude of HSUS executives,  board members,  fundraisers,  and high donors popped up in Carmel and elsewhere in Monterey County without apparently ever seeing or saying a thing about the increasingly obvious presence of cockfighting––or about the notoriously violent California Rodeo Salinas,  for that matter.

SHARK videotaped alleged bull-baiting at the 2019 California Rodeo Salinas.
(From SHARK video)

            (See SHARK video shows dogs baiting bulls at Calif. Salinas Rodeo 2019 and District Attorney will not prosecute alleged bull-baiting at Salinas rodeo.)

“You’ll find several in plain sight”

But the rodeo goes on for just a few days a year,  behind fences.  People who do not pay admission will not see it.  The gamecock breeding industry can be seen throughout Monterey County from cars doing the speed limit.

The people associated with HSUS were,  of course,  not alone in seeing and saying nothing.

Blogged former Monterey Herald editor Royal Calkins on July 11,  2019 for his current venture, Voices of Monterey Bay,  “Spotting the illegal rooster-raising operations in Monterey County isn’t all that hard.  Cruise the backroads around Royal Oaks or Las Lomas,  little communities between Watsonville and Prunedale,  and you’ll find several in plain sight,  behind or beside houses and barns scattered throughout the hills.

(Greg Robbins photo)

“County officials are simply ignoring” gamecocks

“Acting on a complaint,  members of the Monterey County Civil Grand Jury went out earlier this year and quickly found plenty of the fighting variety,”  Calkins wrote,  “more than enough to lead to the conclusion that county officials are simply ignoring the county’s December 2014 ordinance intended to control the apparently growing industry of raising and selling roosters destined to win or die in the ring.”

(See grand jury report:  https://www.co.monterey.ca.us/home/showdocument?id=78112)

The 2014 ordinance requires anyone keeping more than five roosters to obtain a license.  The ordinance left coordinating enforcement to Monterey County director of environmental health John Ramirez.

Ramirez did not respond to telephone messages from Calkins.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Lowest priority”

Reported Calkins,  “A longtime county employee who deals regularly with Ramirez’s office and the county’s limited animal control operation said county employees are told that the rooster industry is among the county’s lowest enforcement priorities.  While investigations of illegal bird breeding can be complicated and expensive,  the budget for animal control and related activities has dramatically declined in recent years, to the point that only two employees share responsibility for animal-related enforcement efforts countywide.

“They’re told that there are lots of political and cultural issues involved and that they shouldn’t do anything unless they absolutely have to,”  wrote Calkins,  adding that “the employee feared being fired if identified.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Cockfighting not authentic Californio heritage

“While the county was drafting the ordinance,”  Calkins mentioned,  “rooster breeders told county officials that cockfighting is part of the Latino heritage and, therefore,  deserves some measure of protection.

“Elsewhere,  breeders have argued that cockfighting is part of the Filipino heritage,  the heritage of various other Asian cultures, Pacific Islander heritage and the heritage of various Anglo populations rooted in the South.”

Calkins did not mention,  however,  perhaps because he did not know,  that cockfighting was not part of the original cultural heritage of the “Californios” in the Salinas Valley and Monterey coastal region,  as the Catholicized Spanish-speaking descendants of indigenous Californians are called.

Indeed,  the ancestors of the Californios had no domestic fowl before they were subjugated by Spanish invaders in the 18th century.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Judge tossed case against ordinance

Gamecock breeders James Leahy,  Heriberto Perez,  and Miguel Angel Reyes Robles tried to mount a cultural defense in a 2016 lawsuit contending that the Monterey County rooster-keeping ordinance infringed on their  constitutional rights.  Monterey County Superior Court Judge

Thomas Wills,  however,  held that their rights were not infringed by rules “designed to protect the environment and to provide safe and humane treatment for roosters.”

Said Ramirez at the time,  in a written statement,  “The permit requirement does not prohibit applicants from owning roosters.  It only requires that they operate and maintain properties to prevent environmental and health-related impacts and to ensure animals are cared for and treated properly, and not raised for illegal cockfighting.”

“While Ramirez won’t declare the purpose of the ordinance is targeting illegal cockfighting,”  wrote Jim Johnson of the Monterey Herald,  “he leaves little doubt the new rules are expected to help weed out those who raise birds for that purpose.  He estimates there are a ‘couple hundred’ sites with five or more roosters in the county — most of them in the northern and southern parts of the county.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Couple hundred” now more than 1,000

“We believe having these restrictions,  because a lot of cockfighting operations are in unkempt conditions.  Those people (who are unable to meet the new rules) are likely raising them for illegal purposes,” Ramirez alleged.  “Hobbyists are exempt.  If they’re doing things the right way, there’s no problem.  I suspect anyone who sees the ordinance as a challenge is not doing things right.”

Added Johnson,  “Ramirez pointed out that the permit application also requires rooster keepers to attest, under penalty of perjury,  that they are not raising the fowl for cockfighting or other illegal purposes,  and have never been convicted of cockfighting.”

But the “couple hundred” rooster breeders Ramirez mentioned less than four years ago have ballooned up to more than a thousand,  according to the Monterey County Civil Grand Jury report.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Local origins

Ramirez,  a graduate of North Salinas High School,  left the region to pursue his education.  After working “as a mechanical designer in computer aided design for companies including Westinghouse and Martin Marietta,”  reported Amy Wu for the Monterey California in a 2016 profile,  Ramirez returned to Monterey County in 1989 as a hazardous materials specialist for the Environmental Health Bureau of Monterey County Health Department.

Ramirez was promoted to director of the Monterey County Health Department in 2010,  at a starting salary of $121,356.

For several years no one seems to have noticed that Ramirez not only was not enforcing the 2015 ordinance meant to inhibit raising gamecocks,  but had also in effect dismantled it by introducing bureaucratic procedures that circumvented the intent of the ordinance,  and by dismantling the Monterey County animal control department as well.

Animal control officer Fred Flintstone rushes to impound a pet rock.
(Merritt Clifton collage)

Animal control takes brunt of budget cuts

“Over the last decade,”  observed Pam Marino of Monterey County Now in May 2018,  “Animal Services staff has been whittled away,  from 24 full-time equivalent positions to 15.5 currently – which might be cut in half,”  due to a $36.2 million county budget shortfall.

Of 83 total county jobs eliminated,  the Health Department lost 43.  Animal control law enforcement,  already steeply reduced,  was cut back even more than the rest of the Health Department.

But had all of the estimated 1,000 rooster-keeping facilities in Monterey County been licensed,  as the 2015 ordinance directed,  animal control could have taken in an additional $270,000 in operating revenue,  enough to save as many as five positions.

“In 2010,”  when Ramirez became director of the Monterey County Health Department,  the Monterey County grand jury found,  “there were six full-time animal control officers and a dedicated dispatcher on staff.  By the fall of 2018 there were only two remaining animal control officers and no dispatcher.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Debraining a possibly rabid skunk

Animal control officer Cathy Stanley clashed with Ramirez at least twice as the animal control department was downsized and duties were consolidated.

In 2012,  according to the May 2015 edition of the State Employees International Union Local 521 newsletter,  “Without proper protection,  Cathy protested against management’s instruction to de-brain a skunk that was potentially infected with rabies.”

Proper protection,  according to U.S. Center for Disease Control & Prevention guidelines,  should have included rabies pre-exposure prophylaxis,  protective clothing,  appropriate tools and a location for doing the job,  and training in how to do it.

“Rather than protect its employee,”  said the State Employees International Union newsletter,   “the county accused Cathy of insubordination. After a cursory investigation,  Health Department manager John Ramirez demoted Cathy to inspect portable toilets,  and then suspended her for 10 days.”

Cathy Stanley
(Monterey County Animal Services photo)

Ramirez lost case over gag order too

Stanley won the case,  and was subsequently elected State Employees International Union Local 521 shop steward.

Later in the year,  according to the December 18,  2015 edition of the State Employees International Union Local 521 newsletter,  “Monterey County management illegally threatened to discipline SEIU 521 members in the Animal Services Department if they were caught discussing any employment matters involving other employees.

“Health Department Manager John Ramirez reaffirmed the directive in another email to staff.”

Stanley,  however,  won again before a grievance arbitration panel.

“As a result,”  the State Employees International Union Local 521 newsletter said,  “the County is required to send a clarifying email to all Animal Services employees rescinding the unlawful directive from Ramirez and notifying them that they have a right to discuss any management action that affects wages,  hours,  or terms and conditions of employment with their union representatives and co-workers.”

Stanley retired in January 2018,   before the most recent round of budget cuts.

(Beth Clifton collage)

SHARK drones exposed illegal gamecock breeders

“In August 2018,”  Showing Animals Respect & Kindness (SHARK) founder Steve Hindi recounted recently to the Monterey County Board of Supervisors,  “SHARK’s drones began documenting the illegal rooster sites,  and our results were made public on multiple occasions.  In the fourteen months that have followed,  just one illegal rooster operation has been shut down,  and interestingly,  two have popped up literally within a stone’s throw of the defunct site.

“Countywide,  we have noted an increase in the number of sites,   and those sites are holding more birds.”

While the Humane Society of the U.S. remains conspicuous by silence,  several other relatively small organizations have pitched in alongside SHARK to flush out whatever is going on in Monterey County and why.

“The Humane Farming Association is partnering with SHARK on this issue,  sharing costs,  assisting with media contacts,  lobbying, etc.,”  HFA founder Brad Miller told ANIMALS 24-7.  “And,  yes,   there does appear to be something very dicey going on with county officials.  We’re currently exploring legal options and other avenues to hold county officials accountable for their indefensible,  and highly-suspect,  non-enforcement of existing law.”

(From SHARK drone video)

Drone video led to grand jury

The Monterey County Grand Jury investigation originated,  says the grand jury report,  after  a “complainant,”  believed to be Hindi or another SHARK team member,  “who had become aware of an illegal rooster keeping operation and possible dog fighting ring in North Monterey County,  tried to no avail to bring this issue to the attention of four different Monterey County agencies” between June 21,  2018 and August 10,  2018.

“The complainant then called The Monterey County Weekly who published an article on August 30,  2018.  The publication of the article became the catalyst that brought the problem of illegal rooster keeping to the attention of the agencies who are tasked to understand or enforce” the county ordinance,  three years after the ordinance was on the books.

“Unfortunately,”  the grand jury found,  “Monterey County agencies are operating under a process,  created by Environmental Health Bureau,  that effectively modifies the implementation and enforcement  of the ordinance.  As a result,  agencies are confused about their roles,  have been poorly trained,  and the public does not know where to turn to have their concerns addressed.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Lack of leadership & oversight”

“The Monterey County Civil Grand Jury found,”  it reported, that implementation and enforcement of the ordinance failed due to three main reasons:  Lack of leadership and oversight from the Board of Supervisors and the Health Department;  the hindrance to implementation  and enforcement created by a process developed by Environmental Health Bureau;  and the unwillingness of multiple agencies to enforce it.

“We learned,”  the grand jury said,  “that, with the exception of Animal Control Services, agencies required to understand this ordinance reported never having completely read it.

“Staff within the Environmental Health Bureau instructed animal control officers to not enforce the ordinance.  Although rooster keeping permits must be renewed annually,  no permit is current in Monterey County as of the writing of this report.

“Upon passage [of the ordinance],  the Department of Environmental Health issued 14 permits between September 28, 2015  and  July  20,  2016.  Nine applicants were charged a permit fee.  Five applicants had their permit fee waived at the discretion of the Director of Environmental Health,”  the grand jury recounted.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Used individual from known illegal rooster-keeping operation as resource”

“From 2010 to November 2018,  Animal Control Services was managed and directed by the Environmental Health Bureau,”  the grand jury report explains.  “It must be noted that in November 2018,  while the Monterey County Civil Grand Jury was conducting this investigation,  the leadership and oversight of Animal Control Services was transferred out of Environmental Health and made its own division within the Monterey County Health Department.”

“At the time of the writing of this ordinance,”  the grand jury report continued,  “Animal Control Services was under the management of the Environmental Health Bureau.  Environmental Health was tasked with writing the ordinance without having the necessary qualifications and expertise in animal welfare,  domestic or livestock.  The author’s background is in hazardous waste management. The author used an individual from a known local illegal rooster keeping operation as the resource for writing the ordinance.  Animal Control Services was never consulted or included during the ordinance writing process.

(Beth Clifton collage)

How 31 days became first a year & then never

“Each agency [involved] knew little about which had jurisdiction or how to enforce the ordinance,”  the grand jury wrote.  “The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office could not make an arrest unless a cockfight was in progress.  Animal Control Services reported that they were prohibited from issuing citations by the Director of the Environmental Health Bureau.  The Resource Management Agency could not issue citations for illegal rooster keeping,  but could issue citations for code violations for inadequately constructed animal enclosures.  The Monterey County SPCA could not issue citations for illegal rooster keeping,  but could issue citations for cruelty and neglect of roosters, which could lead to possible prosecution by the District  Attorney.

“The ordinance,”  as passed,  “gave a definitive timeline of 31 days from its adoption to become effective and 180 days to be fully implemented,”  the grand jury reminded.

(From SHARK drone video)

“The Environmental Health Department created a one-year ‘soft rollout’ before fully implementing or enforcing it.  At the end of the soft roll out year it was still not fully implemented or enforced,  and four years later,  the ordinance is still not being implemented or enforced.”

“Ordinance Circumvented”

“The  Environmental  Health Bureau created  a multi-step  process that modified the provisions originally outlined,”   the grand jury charged,  under the headline “Ordinance Circumvented.”

“The author of that process injected three additional agencies into the ordinance process that were not named  in the  original  text,”   including the Resource Management Agency,  the Monterey County SPCA,  and the County Counsel.

The grand jury pointed out the possible public health risks resulting from non-enforcement of the regulations pertaining to rooster-keeping.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Newcastle disease

“Viral Newcastle disease is common worldwide.  Currently California is experiencing a severe outbreak which is rapidly spreading to Northern California counties,”  the grand jury recited.  “As of the end of 2018, there were six million documented cases in Los Angeles County alone.  During the week of March 25,  2019,  the Salinas Valley Fair,  the Monterey County Fair,  and the California Mid State Fair canceled all poultry exhibitions due to this disease.  Highly contagious, it is an acute respiratory disease that is spread easily among avian populations both wild and domestic.

“This disease kills poultry,”  the grand jury emphasized.  “The primary way this disease spreads is by moving roosters that have the disease.  Particularly devastating to domestic poultry,  it has been known to wipe out whole commercial poultry operations.  This disease is also transmittable to humans via clothing and avian contact,  resulting in conjunctivitis and influenza-like symptoms.  Viral Newcastle disease can be present in roosters before symptoms are present.

(Beth Clifton photo)

“No one was enforcing  the ordinance”

“The SPCA of Monterey County,”  the grand jury noted,  “although named in the multi-step process established by the Director of Environmental Health,  was not contacted,  trained,  or otherwise made aware of their involuntary inclusion in this process.  It was after contact by the complainant,”  whose actions instigated the grand jury investigation,  “that the SPCA began contacting county agencies to resolve the complaint,  only to discover that no one was enforcing the ordinance.   The Environmental Health Bureau provided information that indicated that no one had been issued a permit [to keep roosters] since July 2016.”

The grand jury found that blame for non-enforcement went all the way to the top.  “The Ordinance was passed before many of the current Monterey County Supervisors were in office,”  the grand jury report explained.  “The [current] Supervisors were not aware there  was a problem with illegal rooster keeping,  except within the Boronda area of North Monterey County.  The Supervisors were unaware an ordinance they passed was not being enforced.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Slow-walking against cocking

The Monterey County Civil Grand Jury made two visits to one location where some effort has been made since September 2018 to enforce the rooster-keeping ordinance on a property sublet by the landowner to “various owners” of “hundreds of roosters.”

Reported the grand jury,  “Each owner constructed his/her own substandard enclosures. Having no jurisdiction over the number of roosters being kept,  the Resource Management Agency cited for substandard enclosures and zoning violations.  There were piles of manure,  an abandoned motor vehicle,  and various piles of debris. The RMA policy is to encouraging compliance, not enforcement. The compliance process has been painstaking and slow.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“In January 2019,  after months of extensions for compliance,  forty to fifty roosters were still remaining,”  the grand  jury wrote.  “A large pile of debris,  measuring approximately fifty yards by 20 yards and seven feet high, was observed.  Efforts were made to conceal the rooster enclosures and rooster keeping with locked fencing.  The debris pile consisted of animal manure,  scrap plywood, wire,  concrete,  and other miscellaneous materials.

“Dog chained to a tree”

“An individual was living in an illegal, crudely constructed shanty on county property to the rear of the homeowner,  with a dog chained to a tree.
An abandoned dilapidated trailer was on the property.  The illegal rooster keeping operation is located adjacent to a property with a childcare facility.”

Merritt & Beth Clifton

Among the  recommendations concluding the grand jury report were that “A dedicated Assistant District Attorney for animal cruelty cases is crucial to keeping up with enforcement and prosecution in Monterey County,”  and that “Ample revenues to cover additional staff could be generated from permitting and enforcement from rooster-keeping application and permitting fees,”  assuming,  of course,  that some of the currently illegal rooster-keeping is not associated with cockfighting.

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(Beth Clifton collage)

“Social distancing” also shuts down SeaWorld, seal hunt, fur auctions, Kentucky Derby,  & the carriage horses in Central Park

            PAMPLONA,  Spain ––The 700-year-old Festival of San Fermin, featuring bullfights and the “running of the bulls” through the cobbled streets of the oldest part of Pamplona, Spain, was on April 21, 2020 indefinitely postponed due to the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic.

Scheduled for July 7-14,  the Festival of San Fermin is the latest of many postponements,  cancellations,  and quiet retreats removing from visibility some of the most prominent celebrations and symbols of institutional animal abuse.

Tripping and even felling some of the most enduring provocations to animal advocacy,  COVID-19 has in a few months accomplished much that organized protest has not.

(Merritt Clifton collage)

Animal Care Expo also cancelled––but not Earth Day

Closed for the duration of “social distancing” due to COVID-19 are the SeaWorld orca-and-dolphin-centered theme parks in Orlando,  Florida;  San Antonio,  Texas;  and San Diego,  California.  And with every passing day the Canadian Department of Fisheries & Oceans appears less likely to ever open the 2020 Atlantic Canada seal hunt,  initially postponed because of COVID-19 and now probably impossible to hold due to lack of whelping harp and grey seals on the rapidly melting ice floes in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and along the Labrador Front.

Major animal advocacy events have also been cancelled or delayed,  notably Animal Care Expo,  the signature event of the Humane Society of the U.S.,  which will not be held in 2020,  for the first time since 1992.

But April 22,  2020 activities marking the 50th annual celebration of Earth Day,  a highly decentralized event from the beginning in 1970,  have scarcely been affected––especially activities centering on animal issues,  such as advocating against opening more National Wildlife Refuges to hunting and weakening the Endangered Species Act.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Meanwhile back in Pamplona

“As of today,”  acting Pamplona mayor Ana Elizalde told media,  “it seems unlikely that the festival will be celebrated this year, but let’s wait and see how the events evolve.”

The “running of the bulls,”  made internationally famous by the 1926 Ernest Hemingway novel The Sun Also Rises,  annually attracts as many as 1.45 million tourists to Pamplona,  about 20,000 of whom actually join in running ahead of the bulls en route from holding pens to the arena.

Dangerous as the event looks,  only 15 runners are known to have been killed by bulls since 1910.

Spain by contrast has logged more than 21,000 deaths from COVID-19,  about 350 of them in and around Pamplona.

Breeding Spanish fighting bulls is heavily subsidized by the European Union.  (Beth Clifton collage)

“No place for fireworks,  bullfights,  or bull runs”

“In this context,  there is no place for fireworks,  bullfights or bull runs,” Elizalde said.

An economic mainstay of the community,  the Festival of San Fermin has been cancelled only four times in at least 228 years for which records exist:  in 1937-1938,  due to the Spanish Civil War,  and in 1978 and 1997 due to other political violence.

Cancellations of other bullfighting events have cost the Spanish bullfighting industry as much as $800 million thus far in 2020,  according to industry claims.

But bullfighting has already steeply declined in popularity.  The number of bulls killed in Spanish bullrings reportedly fell from about 16,000 in 2008 to circa 7,000 in 2018.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Fur prices collapse at online spring pelt auction

At the opposite end of Europe,  in Vantaa,  Finland,  the fur trade is blaming COVID-19 for yet another catastrophic collapse of sales at the Saga spring pelt auction.

Reported Respect for Animals,  headquartered in Nottingham,  England,  “Saga Furs,  the major fur auction house owned by the Finnish fur industry,  has released a statement announcing plans to lay off all of its staff for a three-month period.  The company has also admitted that its financial results will again be ‘in the negative.’”

Switching to an online auction format,  Saga Furs reportedly hoped to sell the pelts of 3.6 million mink,  56,000 tanuki (“raccoon dogs”) nearly 54,000 foxes,  and more than 25,000 sable,  all of them “raised in terrible factory farm conditions,”  Respect for Animals said.

(Beth Clifton collage)

41% sold,  at pennies on the dollar

But only 2,375,212 mink pelts were actually put on the block,  according to Saga Furs posted auction records,  and only 977,763 of those pelts (41%) were sold,  at pennies on the dollar compared to the peak years for the international fur trade,  now more than 35 years ago.

Only 14% of the fox pelts sold,  and only 9% of the tanuki pelts,  Respect for Animals said.

“According to Saga Furs latest financial statement,”  Respect for Animals continued,  “the company’s total sales fell by 28% from the previous year,  as the price level of mink skins fell by 24% and fox skins fell by 20%.  World mink production is also estimated to have fallen by 20% in 2018,”  but the contracting supply did not drive prices up.

Saga Furs auction profits have fallen from 26.7 million Euros since 2013 to net losses in each of the past three winters.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Kopenhagen Fur not optimistic

Kopenhagen Fur,  representing the Danish fur industry,  whose multi-day spring fur auction opened on April 21,  2020,  did not expect a profitable outcome either.  Danish mink pelt production reportedly fell from 17 million to 12 million over the past three years––but Denmark still ranks first in the world in mink raised and skinned,  since Chinese output has fallen over the same time frame from 40 million pelts per year to about seven million.

Said the Kopenhagen Fur web site,  “Kopenhagen Fur expects to sell only 18 million mink skins in 2020,”  apparently including holdover stock from previous years.

Whether Kopenhagen Fur actually sells that many would appear to be questionable.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Kentucky Derby postponed

The Kentucky Derby,  traditionally run at Churchill Downs in Louisville on the first Saturday in May,  except in 1901 when it was run on April 29,  and 1945,  when it was run on June 9,  was on March 17,  2020 pushed back to September 5––if it is run at all.

The other two legs of the Triple Crown series,  the Belmont Stakes and the Preakness States,  have been indefinitely postponed,  with running dates likely to conflict with the Major League Baseball divisional playoffs and World Series,  and with pro football,  if spectator sports resume.

Horse racing continues for televised audiences,  without spectators,  at a variety of venues.  The Del Mar and Santa Anita tracks in Southern California,  notorious for spates of thoroughbred deaths and injuries in 2016 and 2018-2019,  respectively,  are closed,  but at least a dozen horses have died so far in 2020 on the Los Alamitos track in Cypress,  California.

“Balaam and the Ass,” by Rembrandt van Rijn, 1626,  inspired the ASPCA logo.

Carriage horses vanish from Central Park

Carriage horses working the streets of busy cities,  however,  have infuriated more animal advocates,  for longer,  than any other horse issue.  Though the carriage trade involves very few horses compared to the racing industry and wild horses removed from the western range,  it is prominent in many big cities,  especially New York City,  where alleged cruelty to carriage horses incited protest from time to time even before Henry Bergh founded the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in New York City in 1866.

“The horse-drawn carriage trade in NYC is currently not operating,”  the Coalition To Ban Horse-Drawn Carriages reported on April 20,  2020,  the carriage trade having been shut down by order of New York state governor Andrew Cuomo on March 22,  2020,  several days after restaurants, bars and schools were closed.

The Coalition To Ban Horse-Drawn Carriages expressed concern for the fate of the estimated 170-180 horses currently belonging to more than 60 carriage owners.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Where did the horses go?

“The horses are privately owned and the owners are not obligated to tell the Department of Health where they are––whether they are on farms or have been sent to auction for sale,”  the Coalition To Ban Horse-Drawn Carriages said.

“It is possible that some horses are in their midtown stables and hopefully cared for by staff,”  the coalition continued,  while noting,  “There are no pastures in NYC,  and if exercised,  the horses would need to be walked up and down the street,”  where none are known to have been seen.

“Owner/drivers will need to continue to pay rent for stable space in the NYC stables and outside of the city,”  the Coalition To Ban Horse-Drawn Carriages mentioned.  “Do they have the money to weather the storm or will they dump their horses?”

(Beth Clifton collage)

As the present New York City carriage horse stables are in an area slated for development,  it is possible that the carriage horse industry there,  at least,  is at an end––unless the city reopens to tourism soon,  and assuming tourists are willing to return in significant numbers to the city.

COVID-19 as of April 21,  2020 had killed 10,667 New Yorkers,  more than twice the toll in the whole of China,  and more than the toll in all but four of the other 203 nations and island territories where COVID-19 cases have occurred.

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Scene from Pine Knot cockfight.
(Beth Clifton collage based on SHARK video)

Showing Animals Respect & Kindness caught the “great escape” on video

            PINE KNOT, Kentucky––Duane Pohlman, chief investigative reporter for the Cincinnati television station WKRC,  aired quite a scoop about cockfighting continuing in Kentucky on Monday,  July 6, 2020,  using undercover video collected by Showing Animals Respect & Kindness (SHARK) with Humane Farming Association Funding.

At that,  though,  Pohlman overlooked perhaps the two most remarkable accomplishments of the months-long investigation.

Not aired by WKRC was a recorded telephone call made by SHARK investigator Stuart Chaifetz to Kentucky State Police on June 6,  2020,  informing them of a cockfight in progress in a barn behind Honest Abe’s bar,  at 303 Low Gap Road in Pine Knot.

The Kentucky State Police dispatcher promised Chaifetz that state troopers would respond.  Chaifetz promised to call back in two hours for an update.

But SHARK was already prepared to document what happened next.  A SHARK hidden camera captured two Kentucky State Police cars arriving at the scene of the cockfight––and then backing aside to allow 33 vehicles,  mostly new-looking pickup trucks,  to make their escape.

Someone,  evidently,  had tipped the cockfighting crowd off.

(SHARK image)

Familiar outcome

The SHARK video was sharp enough to permit identification of many of the license plates,  but because the state troopers did not witness illegal activity,  no one was arrested.

This was a familiar outcome for SHARK.  A year ago,  assisted by In Defense of Animals,  SHARK investigators exposed the alleged cockfighting activities of Harlan County,  Kentucky Detention Center employees Ronnie Bennet and Kyle Simpson,  who are also father and son.

“We were shocked to see how open and brazen these Harlan County Detention Center employees are with their illegal cockfighting farm and operation,”  Chaifetz alleged,  adding “That may very well be because they think they are untouchable.”

The SHARK and In Defense of Animals exposé was extensively amplified by animal advocacy media,  including ANIMALS 24-7,  but there was no coverage from mainstream media,  and no response was forthcoming from law enforcement.

(Beth Clifton collage)

No cockfighting on Fourth of July

The Pohlman report,  meanwhile,  was in production for approximately 19 days.  Rumors that it was to be broadcast on July 6,  2020,  or possibly a day earlier,  may have reached the alleged cockfighters.

That much is not certain.  What is certain is that even though the Fourth of July is traditionally a big day for cockfighting nationwide,  there was no cockfighting behind Honest Abe’s bar over the Fourth of July weekend.

Explained Pohlman,  “SHARK,  an animal rights group founded and run by Steve Hindi from Chicago,  has stood up for a variety of animals for decades,  but funding from Humane Farming Association is allowing the group to focus its efforts on cockfighting.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Drone video

Hindi and Chaifetz demonstrated to Pohlman how they discovered the alleged cockfighting operation in Pine Knot,  Kentucky,  and keep it under surveillance,  using drone video.

Hindi estimated that they were “Probably looking at 150-plus vehicles” on the Saturday that Pohlman accompanied SHARK.

The SHARK team identified license plates from Illinois,  Indiana,  Alabama,  and “lots, lots from Tennessee,”  Hindi told Pohlman

Pine Knot,  a hamlet of about 1,300 people,  ten miles north of the Tennessee border,  only looks as if it is lost in the hills.  In actuality,  Pine Knot is only a few hours’ drive from 14 of the biggest cities in what might be called the “cockfighting belt,”  including Asheville,  Atlanta,  Birmingham,  Charlotte,  Chattanooga,  Cincinnati,  Columbus,  Evansville,  Greensboro,  Huntsville,  Indianapolis,  Lexington,  Louisville,  and Nashville.

Drone video of cars at alleged cockfight in Pine Knot, Kentucky.  (From SHARK video.)

“Betting was fast and furious”

Continued Pohlman,  “A high-definition camera hidden in a cap on Hindi’s head began rolling,  capturing video of a man in the driveway, charging each car that was entering.”

The parking fee was $30.

“Inside,”  Pohlman narrated,  “Hindi’s hidden camera captured a lot of cash exchanging through lots of hands. The betting was fast and furious as bid-shouting competed with the constant crowing from fighting roosters.

“While some say the fighting is natural,”  Pohlman observed  “the video clearly shows the roosters walking away after injuring the other bird.  The video also shows their handlers,  who are often the owners,  coaxing the birds back into battle,  even though the roosters have already often suffered fatal injuries.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Roosters have just two legs”

“The U.S. Animal Welfare Act is supposed to make cockfighting a felony,”  Pohlman explained,  and energetic law enforcement could certainly be expected to confirm the interstate transportation of gamecocks and cockfighting paraphernalia that would invoke federal penalties,  “but in Kentucky,  it’s still listed as a misdemeanor.  And the language within Kentucky’s animal cruelty law is confusing and difficult to enforce,  stating it’s a crime to be ‘…a spectator or vendor at an event where a four (4) legged animal is caused to fight for pleasure or profit.’

“Of course, roosters have just two legs.”

But Pohlman focused on the possible public health risk posed by cockfighting,  also a frequent vector for disease outbreaks among factory-farmed poultry.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Disease risk

More than 1.2 million poultry were killed in California alone during 2019 to control an outbreak of Newcastle disease linked to birds raised and transported by cockfighters.

Upward of 200 million poultry have been killed worldwide since 2003 to control the H5N1 avian influenza,  which has been spread chiefly by cockfighters and has killed about 375 humans,  mostly women who kept small backyard flocks in the developing world.

Said Pohlman,  “As disturbing as the cruelty [of cockfighting] is,  another threat becomes apparent in this large crowd packed inside the arena:  a crowd that gathers while a pandemic continues to rage.  In the video,  you can clearly see hundreds of people standing shoulder to shoulder inside an arena with no masks to protect against the spread of COVID-19.”

Cockfighter trying to resuscitate gamecock.
(From SHARK video)

Bacteria, avian coronaviruses, bird flu

University of North Carolina at Greensboro professor of chemistry and biochemistry enumerated for Pohlman some of the other zoonotic diseases that may be spread by cockfighters:  “Salmonella,  listeria,  hypobacteria,  campylobacter.”

There are also avian coronaviruses.

“And major diseases like avian influenza can threaten chickens,  other poultry and,  even though the risk is slight,  can be a threat to humans too,”  Pohlman summarized.   “According to a report from Congressional Research Service,  which researches topics for U.S. lawmakers,  more than 48 million chickens,  turkeys and other poultry were euthanized to stem the spread of avian influenza in 2014-2015.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Keeping the birds “alive and kicking”

“Despite these viral and bacterial hazards,”  Pohlman explained on,   “blood and other fluids from the roosters mix directly with humans in cockfights.  In disturbing sections of the [SHARK] undercover video,  Local 12 watched as the handlers blew on the backsides of birds, sucked on their necks,  and in one case, a handler stuck the entire head of the rooster in his mouth.

“When we asked what was happening,  Local 12 was told all of these are common techniques in cockfighting to keep the birds alive and kicking.”

Wayne Pacelle posed for this photo while still president of the Humane Society of the U.S.

Who else had a leak?

As well as the apparent leaks of SHARK and WKRC investigative findings to the alleged cockfighting participants,  there might also have been a leak somehow to Animal Wellness Action,  a Los Angeles-based organization headed by former Humane Society of the U.S. president Wayne Pacelle.

Headlined the Chatanooga Times Free Press on July 2,  2020,  just four days ahead of the Pohlman broadcast,  “Persistent’ cockfighting in eastern Tennessee worrisome during the COVID-19 pandemic, animal welfare officials say.”

Recited Pacelle to reporters Elizabeth Fite and Allison Shirk Collins,  paralleling on-camera statements Chaifetz made to Pohlman,  “If a bird is stabbed in the lungs or some other part of the respiratory system, some of the cockfighters will literally put their mouth over the bird’s mouth and suck the fluids that are filling the passageway of the birds in order to give them a little bit of new life, because they are gambling on the outcome.”

Beth & Merritt Clifton

Like the Pohlman exposé,  the Chatanooga Times Free Press article spotlighted the risk of COVID-19 spreading through cockfighting arenas.

“While cockfighting is a felony in 42 states, it is not in Tennessee,”  Fite and Collins mentioned.

Fite and Collins also spotlighted a recent report from Animal Wellness Action and the affiliated Animal Wellness Foundation that Tennessee breeders sold 148 gamecocks to Guam between November 2016 and September 2019.

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The post Kentucky state cops let 33 cars leave alleged cockfight before investigating appeared first on Animals 24-7.

Top row, left to right: accused killers Robert Wiggins, Tony “T.J.” Wiggins, & Mary Whittemore. Bottom row: murder victims Brandon Rollins, Damion Tillman, & Keven Springfield.  (Beth Clifton collage)

Doesn’t everyone order 10 double cheeseburgers at McDonald’s after killing three catfishers?

            FROSTPROOF,  Florida––Brandon Rollins,  27,  Keven Springfield, 30,  and Damion Tillman,  23,  were shot to death at Lake Streety,  Florida,  on the night of July 17,  2020,  much as the three of them had cornered and killed countless feral pigs.

But Rollins,  Springfield,  and Tillman were not accompanied that evening by the pack of pit bulls and Catahoula hounds that they bred at the nearby Rollins family home and often deployed against pigs.

Instead of killing pigs on the night they were murdered,  Rollins,  Springfield,  and Tillman hoped to kill catfish.

Keven Springfield pit bull meme posted to Facebook

Killing animals is a way of life

Recreationally killing animals is a way of life in and around Frostproof,  Florida.

Status among young men in Frostproof,  as in many depressed rural areas,  tends to be bought with bragging rights about what they have killed,  where,  and how.

If nothing else could be killed that night,  killing a catfish would do,  on the pretext of eating the fish.

Never mind that ready-cleaned catfish go for less than the cost of a night’s fishing at Publix,  the 1,252-store grocery chain founded by former Piggly Wiggly clerk George Jenkins at nearby Winter Haven in 1930.

Back then,  in the depths of the Great Depression,  local young men aspired to kill and sell animal carcasses by the multi-million.

T.J.Wiggins,  homicide suspect.

T.J. Wiggins:  230 felony charges by age 26

Alleged triple murderer Tony “T.J.” Wiggins,  26,  charged with killing Rollins,  Springfield,  and Tillman,  was actually only hunting Springfield,  Polk County sheriff Grady Judd indicated to media.  Presumably T.J. Wiggins had no thought of eating Springfield,  nor of selling his corpse,  nor of bragging about the deed,  though all of this remains conjecture.

But whatever T.J. Wiggins had in mind,  he shot both Rollins and Tillman repeatedly at close range too,  after shooting Springfield,  according to sheriff Judd,  to get rid of witnesses.

T.J. Wiggins,  accompanied to the killing field by his girlfriend Mary Whittemore,  27,  and his brother Robert Wiggins,  21,  had already logged 230 felony criminal charges against him since age 12,  had served two state prison terms,  and was out on bond,  Judd said,  for allegedly breaking a man’s arm with a crowbar.

Whittemore and Robert Wiggins were both charged as accessories to murdering Rollins,  Springfield,  and Tillman.

Keven Springfield and wild pigs he apparently kept as bait for his dogs.

“What’s more wholesome” than killing for the hell of it?

T.J. Wiggins,  as a convicted felon,  was not allowed to possess firearms or ammunition,  but Whittemore on July 9,  2020 allegedly purchased the ammunition that T.J. used to kill Rollins,  Springfield,  and Tillman in Lake Wales,  about 10 miles south of Frostproof and the murder scene.

Whittemore,  Judd said,  had no previous criminal history,  while Robert Wiggins had just one misdemeanor arrest.

Victims Rollins, Springfield,  and Tillman reportedly had no criminal history.  Judd repeatedly depicted them as innocents.

            “What’s more wholesome than three buddies going fishing?” Judd rhetorically asked,  at a media conference at the crime scene on July 18,  2020.

But the three buddies were in truth habitual recreational killers,  whose lives centered on killing animals until the hunters became the hunted and they themselves became the trophies.

Brandon Rollins’ pit bull puppies.
(Facebook photo)

Murders followed cockfighting bust

Hours earlier,  Cyril Rollins,  56,  responded to a cell phone call from his son Brandon and found him dying,  with Springfield and Tillman already dead at the scene.

The alleged motive for the murders,  Judd indicated after the suspects were arrested,  was apparently that T.J. Wiggins believed Springfield had stolen a truck belonging to T.J. Wiggins,  and had sold the engine to a third party.  Whether anything of the sort had actually happened,  and when,  is unclear.

Judd indicated that the suspects,  when questioned,  apparently agreed only that they celebrated the shootings by ordering 10 double cheeseburgers at a nearby McDonald’s restaurant.

In absence of an evident motive,  meanwhile,  observers looked toward the most recent previous major crime in the area,  the arrests on April 20,  2020 of 13 alleged cockfighters at 1940 West Frostproof Road.

Victim Brandon Rollins favorite pastime was hunting wild hogs with his dogs.

Road to hell is unpaved

This was less than a mile,  as feral pigs and pit bulls run,  from Lake Streety.  A dirt access road along the northeast side of Lake Streety,  apparently the very road along which Rollins,  Springfield,  and Tillman were murdered,  makes a direct connection to the cockfight location.

Jorge Luis Ocasio-Montanez and Carmen Idalia Rivera-Rodriguez,  both 56,  and 11 of their guests,  all fellow Floridians,  were apprehended after Judd and deputies arrived to find “wounded and bloody roosters,  a fighting ring,  acrylic spurs and scales,  sparring gloves with spurs, vitamins,  antibiotics,  performance-enhancing drugs,  and blood-clotting ointments,”  a Polk County Sheriff’s Office media release detailed.

It was the biggest cockfighting bust in Polk County since Judd and deputies in June 2015 impounded more than 120 gamecocks from a site in Winter Haven,  about two miles from the nearest Publix.  The Polk County Sheriff’s Department had been tipped off to a cockfight in progress by a pizza delivery driver.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Why call for pizza instead of going to Publix?

“We really appreciate this pizza delivery driver calling us,”  Judd said.  “Frankly,  I can’t understand,”  Judd added,  “why someone would ask for a pizza delivery during an illegal cockfight.”

The pizza joint was nearly twice as far from the scene as Publix.

Sheriff Judd has a long history of busting cockfights––more,  perhaps,  than any other U.S. sheriff.

But cockfighting,  though a felony in all U.S. states and territories since 2008,  remains as much a part of recreational animal killing in much of the country,  especially in the South,  as hunting,  fishing,  and even dogfighting,  though dogfighting has been technically illegal in most of the U.S. for more than 100 years.

Lloyd Plumbar. (Facebook photo)

Cockfighters go down on their knees

Lloyd Plumbar,  40,  self-anointed pastor of Holy Fight Ministries of Denham Springs,  Louisiana,  contended in a recent federal court lawsuit that cockfighting is central to the practice of his religion,  and therefore should be recognized as a constitutionally protected religious right,  or rite,  even if it is illegal in Louisiana and all other states.

Testified Plumbar’s attorney,  Jim Holt,  “Reverend Plumbar,  Holy Fight Ministries and its congregation hold the sincere religious belief that cockfighting represents that while they strive for Christ,  they have a necessary symbolic physical manifestation,  an epiphany through the fighting cock,  a religious mandate of the struggle between good and evil,  a struggle for life or death for the salvation of the soul,  and thus cockfighting is an integral and essential part of their religious faith.”

U.S. District Court Judge Brian A. Jackson.

Cockfighting “more commercial than religious”

Responded U.S. District Judge Brian A. Jackson,  in Baton Rouge,  Louisiana,  dismissing the case on July 14,  2020,  “Several photographs taken during a police raid were offered by [the government]” in evidence.

“The photos depicted a cockfighting arena littered with discarded food and alcohol containers; a handwritten betting ledger;  ‘cockhouse’ fees and membership rules;  rooster corpses;  and other indicators of a commercial cockfighting operation.  Signs were discovered in the area,  including one reading ‘Milk Dairy Game Club House Rules,’  and another smaller sign reading ‘Holy Fight Ministries’—apparently the only indicator of any religious object in the facility.”

Concluded Judge Jackson,  “[Plaintiffs] are unlikely to succeed on the merits of their claims [1] because Defendants have provided satisfactory evidence to show that the state has a compelling interest in enacting a law banning cockfighting and [2] because the evidence casts doubt upon the type of institution operated by Plaintiffs.  In other words,  the evidence suggests that the cockfighting activities were more commercial in nature than a bona fide religious ritual.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Did deputies say they were at church?

Patrick Robinson,  sheriff of Clay County,  Kentucky,  and Kentucky governor Andy Beshear,  among others,  have yet to respond in any meaningful way to cockfights exposed on July 6,  2020 by Duane Pohlman, chief investigative reporter for the Cincinnati television station WKRC,  and a day later by ANIMALS 24-7.

Both exposés were based on weeks of undercover videography of at least three illegal cockfighting arenas by investigators for Showing Animals Respect and Kindness [SHARK],  funded by the Humane Farming Association.

As ANIMALS 24-7 headlined,  Kentucky state cops let 33 cars leave alleged cockfight before investigating. 

            But that was not all.  SHARK caught two Clay County sheriff’s deputies on video,  who “Instead of shutting down the illegal fight,  acted like hired security and protected the cockfighters,”  alleged SHARK media contact Stuart Chaifetz.

Clay County, Kentucky sheriffs deputies videotaped by SHARK at cockfight.

“Laughing & joking”

“The Sheriff’s office went so far as to claim there was nothing going on when questioned by a SHARK investigator,”  namely Chaifetz himself,  who called to report the cockfight in progress.

Summarized SHARK founder Steve Hindi,  “You can see cockfighters laughing and joking with officers as the illegal animal fighting and illegal gambling continued,”  exactly as previous undercover video investigations at other Clay County cockfighting venues documented in 2008 and 2009.

Wrote Hindi to Sheriff Robinson,  “On June 20, 2020,  an illegal cockfight was held in Manchester [Kentucky],   at its usual location off KY-11. This is nothing new. It is apparent that you and your officers have known about this illegal activity for a long time.

“On this particular date, SHARK personnel were in Manchester,  acting on a tip.  Stuart Chaifetz,  one of our investigators, called your office to report the illegal cockfight,  illegal gambling, violations of COVID-19 rules,  and the involvement of children in gross,  indefensible animal abuse.

Scene from Pine Knot cockfight.
(From SHARK video)

“See video here”

“Chaifetz called a few times,  and later in the evening,  I also called,”  Hindi summarized.  “We were given a string of lies from your officers,  ranging from a claim that you had no one to send to the cockfight location,  to a claim that you sent someone there and nothing was going on,  to a claim that cockfights are legal in Kentucky.  All of these are lies.  See video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnndyfjioR4

“You probably know by now,”  Hindi told Robinson,  “that we had a presence inside the cockfight.  As a result, we have extensive video documentation of your officers who did not enforce the law.  These officers chose to completely ignore their duty to protect and serve the public.  They also ignored violations of federal law.

“It came as no surprise when we learned that there is no police report about the incident.  This is how corruption works.  It appears your office has operated this way for a long time.

Drone video of cars at alleged cockfight in Pine Knot, Kentucky.  (From SHARK video.)

Questions

“We want answers,  justice,  and a Clay County Sheriff’s Office that actually does its job,”  Hindi said.  “Toward that end, I have the following questions:

“Who was the officer who falsely claimed there was nothing happening at the cockfight location?

“Who were the officers that responded to Mr. Chaifetz’ call about the cockfight?

“Why was the cockfight not immediately shut down?

“Why is there no police report of the incident?

“Is there,  or will there be an internal investigation into this matter?

“Have the officers that went to the cockfight and failed to act been disciplined?

“Who is the property owner of the cockfight location?

“What action has been taken against the owner of the cockfight property?

“Who were the people managing and/or working the cockfighting, and what action was taken against them?

“Why did Deputy Wes Bromley (Badge #1108) claim that cockfighting is legal in Kentucky?

“Do you support the position that cockfights are legal in Kentucky?”

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd.

One more big question

Asked ANIMALS 24-7 in March 2016,  Why is cockfighting the blood sport most often linked to murder?

One reason may be that cockfighting appears to enjoy the most protection from corrupt law enforcement.

But this is not the case in Polk County,  Florida.  There,  Sheriff Grady Judd enforces the law against cockfighters.

Beth & Merritt Clifton

Other crimes and various legal forms of recreational animal abuse lead to murder in Polk County,  but cockfighting seems to have had nothing to do with why the three bullet-riddled bodies of Brandon Rollins,  Damion Tillman,  and Keven Springfield were found sprawled in and around their pickup trucks on July 17,  2020 at Streety Lake,  Frostproof,  Florida.

Please donate to support our work: 

http://www.animals24-7.org/donate/ 

The post Triple murder in Frostproof: pig hunting, cockfighting, Publix & pizza appeared first on Animals 24-7.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Apathy thwarts “Call To Action BBQ”

VERBENA, Alabama––One inept attempt to rally nationwide support for cockfighting,  convened on short notice amid a global pandemic,  scarcely means the multi-million-dollar cockfighting industry is unraveling,  protected as it is by “good old boys” in legislatures and law enforcement.

But that fewer people rallied in defense of cockfighting on August 22,  2020 at Brent Easterling’s L&L Game Farm near Verbena,  Alabama,  than the few hundred who often attend local cockfights does tend to suggest that most cockfighters would rather continue to defend their industry with bribes and backroom political deals than by standing up for it in the open.

Clay County, Kentucky sheriffs deputies were videotaped by SHARK at a cockfight.

Response to SHARK exposés

The “Call To Action BBQ,”  as Easterling billed the rally,  was called after Showing Animals Respect & Kindness (SHARK),  funded by the Humane Farming Association,  “targeted three major illegal cockfighting operations in Kentucky,”  SHARK summarized in a July 27,  2020 media release.

“All three,”  SHARK explained,  “were highly organized criminal ventures located in buildings built specifically for cockfighting,  including multiple fighting pits,  stadium seating,  vendors,  concession stands,  and extensive illegal gambling.  The cockfighting operations were in the counties of Butler,  McCreary and Clay. We are happy to report that all three of these locations have been shut down,”  SHARK concluded,  “as well as a fourth location,  again in Butler County.”

(See Kentucky state cops let 33 cars leave alleged cockfight before investigating.)

Brent Easterling.  (Facebook photo)

Planning political defense

The four cockpit closures in less than 60 days,  along with judicial rulings that made cockfighting illegal in the U.S. territories of Guam,  Puerto Rico,  and the Virgin Islands,  visibly rattled the cockfighting industry.

Easterling,  with gamecock breeders Jim Collins of Puerto Rico and Mario Maldonado of Houston,  Texas,  began promoting the “Call To Action BBQ” circa July 21,  2020 as,  in Collins’ words,  a venue for “discussing some general ideas and what our first steps will be,  based on the blueprint they have used against us,”  toward mounting a political defense of cockfighting.

Robert Hayes Gore reintroduced cockfighting to Puerto Rico on July 1, 1933, shortly before being removed from office due to corruption.

KKK allies returned cockfighting to Puerto Rico

Cockfighting has survived in the U.S.,  despite being outlawed in most states for most of the time that the U.S. has existed,  through political connections and bribery of law enforcement––and returned to prominence in Puerto Rico in 1933,  35 years after being banned there,  through an alliance of politically well-positioned cockfighters from Kentucky,  associated with the Ku Klux Klan,  with those cockfighters remaining in Puerto Rico.

(See the latter half of Cockfighters “win” from delay of hurricane aid to Puerto Rico.)

But cockfighters have rarely if ever sought public political support.  Anti-cockfighting laws have often been passed by initiative when obstructed by allies of cockfighting in state and local legislatures.

Seldom have cockfighters even seemed to imagine that most of the public might condone cockfighting,  long associated as it has been with a variety of crimes against humans.

            (See Why is cockfighting the blood sport most often linked to murder?)

Ricardo Rosselló, Ricardo Llerandi, and Jenniffer González-Colón standing beside cockfighters.  (Beth Clifton collage)

Anti-corruption marches

Easterling,  Collins,  and Maldonado might have deluded themselves that they could win public political support by mobilizing because of the success of a series of anti-corruption marches in Puerto Rico that brought the July 22,  2020 resignation of former governor Ricardo Rosselló,  a Democrat.

Ricardo Rosselló’s leading political opponent,  U.S. Congressional Representative Jenniffer González-Colón,  a Republican,  has been photographed attending cockfights and has embraced cockfighting as a symbol of Puerto Rico,  even though barely a third of Puerto Ricans have ever even seen a cockfight,  and baseball eclipses cockfighting in popularity.

But Rosselló also embraced cockfighting.  Both Rosselló and González-Colón lobbied against the language in the 2018 U.S. Farm Bill that extended the federal prohibition of cockfighting to U.S.-held overseas territories.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Attempted “rainbow” coalition

The alliance of Easterling,  Collins,  and Maldonado sought to unite white southern cockfighters,  traditionally associated with the Ku Klux Klan,  and currently inclined to sport the Confederate battle flag and “Trump” bumper stickers on their vehicles,  with dark-skinned cockfighters of Spanish-speaking and Caribbean ancestry.

Such attempts,  indicative of the axiom that “politics make strange bedfellows,”  have failed before.  While cockfighting thrives––behind closed doors––among the gamblers of many Spanish-speaking and Southeast Asian ethnic communities,  cultural and linguistic differences have repeatedly inhibited the formation of an authentic “rainbow” coalition in defense of cockfighting.

(Beth Clifton collage)

COVID-19

But the “Call To Action BBQ” was up against more than just racism among cockfighters,  surveillance by SHARK,  and the cost of traveling long distances.

COVID-19 also had a role in thwarting the organizers’ ambitions.  Attending public gatherings is discouraged under social distancing guidelines,  and masking is required at public gatherings in Alabama,  but several “Call To Action BBQ”  invitees made plain via social media that they would not attend any event at which they would be required to wear a mask.

SHARK,  meanwhile,  alerted media and law enforcement that Easterling,  described as “a cockfighter who has a criminal history of racketeering related to drugs,”  would be hosting what SHARK media contact Stuart Chaifetz on August 17,  2020 called in a media release a “COVID -19 Super-Spreader Event.”

Chilton County sheriff John Shearon.

Hard to prosecute an offense with a $50 fine

Chaifetz also complained to Chilton County sheriff John Shearon that the “Call To Action BBQ” could become a “COVID -19 Super-Spreader Event.”

Responded Shearon,  “I had a discussion yesterday with the event organizer [Easterling]  about what was going on.  He stated there will not be any chicken fights going on there.  He stated that there will only be a political rally and barbecue.  He stated they have already talked to the State Health Department about the barbecue and they stated that as long as the food was not sold,  it was fine.  The organizer stated they will be handing out face masks when the people get there.

“I explained to him they need to wear the mask and socially distance and he stated they would. He stated there will be probably three hundred people there at the event. I  can’t tell him or anyone else how many people they can have on their property.  He stated that anyone was welcome to come see that they were not violating any laws.

“Chicken fighting is a violation in Alabama that carries a fine of $50.00 if convicted,”  Shearon added.  “It is hard spending our citizens’ tax dollars on something that is only a violation.  When and if it ever becomes a felony,”  Shearon said,  “then we can deal with it and can be justified.”

Shearon recommended that SHARK might “reach out to our lawmakers” toward making cockfighting a felony.

Jim Collins.  (Facebook photo)

Collins urged civility

Jim Collins,  during the days leading up to the “Call To Action BBQ,”  appeared to spend much and perhaps most of his social media time urging fellow cockfighting enthusiasts to be careful about what sort of evidence they posted online,  where,  and what sort of behavior they demonstrated,  especially in making threats of violence against SHARK.

Collins’ many postings admonishing civility among cockfighters appear to have begun soon after Brenda Schory of the Kane County Chronicle revealed on July 29,  2020 that “Steve Hindi, founder of Showing Animals Respect and Kindness,  reported six threatening and obscene voice mail messages to the Kane County Sheriff’s Office,  believing them to be related to the group’s recent shut down of four cockfighting rings in Kentucky.

Cockfighter trying to resuscitate gamecock.  (From SHARK video)

“Sick, twisted people”

“According to sheriff’s reports,”  Schory continued,  “the threatening messages were reported on July 27 and he provided the recordings from the same male voice to deputies.  The deputy called the number – and the man answering let loose a similar stream of obscene invective at the deputy, reports stated.

“The deputy completed a grand jury subpoena request for records and sent it to the Kane County State’s Attorney’s Office for approval,  the report stated.

“Hindi said he also reported the threatening messages to the FBI.”

Observed Hindi,  to Schory,  “Even though [cockfighters] are committing crimes,  they tell themselves they are great patriots.  They have the American flag and the Confederate flag up at[cockfights],” Hindi said.  “It’s incredible for people who are fixated on watching two birds peck each other to death with razor blades and gaffs on them.  These are some of the sickest,  most twisted people in society – and very dangerous.”

Mario Maldonado.
(Facebook photo)

Opening bank account

As matters developed,  “Call To Action BBQ” participation could apparently have been counted in the low dozens,  not the hundreds.

Posted Easterling afterward,  “I would have loved to see a better turnout and I have had numerous people text and say that a ‘certain’ organization scared them from coming!  I respect everyone’s opinions,  but we just can’t let that happen in the future!  What we and Mr Jim Collins are trying to accomplish will have to have a much larger following!

“Mario Maldonado will set up a PayPal account today and the bank account is in the process of being opened up!”  Easterling said.

“This is for game fowl farmers,  horsemen,  cattlemen,  coon dog owners,  etc.,”  Easterling finished.  “This is not [to] support cockfighting,  this is to support our rights to own game fowl!  Before long,  if we don’t step up,  there will be no gamefowl rights,  no horse racing rights,  no coon hunting rights,  no rights at all.”

Merritt, Sebastian, & Beth Clifton.

Easterling’s statement overlooked––besides any recognition of animal rights––every human right actually recognized in the 10-article U.S. Bill of Rights and/or among 30 rights recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights advanced by the United Nations.

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The post Pro-cockfighting rally draws fewer participants than local cockfights appeared first on Animals 24-7.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Cockfighting may be accelerant behind COVID-19 explosion

MONTEREY, California––The 50,000-acre River wildfire,  destroying at least 13 homes,  and the 7,000-acre Carmel wildfire,  razing 50 homes,  reportedly forced the evacuation of more than 500 animals to the SPCA for Monterey County shelter during the fourth week of August 2020––and then forced the animals’ re-evacuation to the Monterey County Fairgrounds.

That burning issue easily upstaged the ongoing failure of Monterey County code enforcement and law enforcement to effectively address another long-smoldering issue, the open proliferation of cockfighting and unlicensed game fowl breeding––and that failure in turn may explain another heated topic in the county,  the continuing explosion of COVID-19 cases at a rate significantly higher than the norms for the state of California.

The crude COVID-19 case rate for Monterey County,  17.5 cases per 1,000 people,  with 55 deaths so far,  is identical to the state rate,  but the state rate is skewed by extremely high rates in a relatively few counties.

(Beth Clifton collage)

COVID-19 rates & cockfighting converge

Over the fourteen days from August 14,  2020 to August 28,  2020,  according to public health data evaluated by the Los Angeles Times,  the six California counties with the highest new COVID-19 case rates are Fresno,  Kings,  Madera,  Stanislaus,  Merced,  and Monterey,  all rural or semi-rural counties,  albeit that some have significant population centers.

All six counties have markedly larger Hispanic or Latino populations than the California norm of 39.4%,  according to U.S. Census Bureau data,  at 53.8%,  55.3%,  58.8%,  47.6%,  61.0%,  and 59.4%,  respectively.

“After adjusting for population, Latinos are now 3.3 times more likely to test positive than white people,”  the Los Angeles Times noted,  without suggesting a reason why.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Cockfighting hotbeds

What the Los Angeles Times analysis did not mention,  probably because the analysts had no reason to be aware of it,  is that Fresno,  Kings,  Madera,  Stanislaus,  Merced,  and Monterey counties have all been reputed cockfighting hotbeds for decades,  largely due to notoriously lax law enforcement.

Cockfighting is practiced by criminal elements among many ethnicities.  In the Appalachians,  most cockfighters are Anglos.  In some big cities,  many cockfighters are of Southeast Asian ancestry.

In California,  however,  as throughout the Southwest and Midwest,  94.4% of the cockfighters arrested since 2015 have had Hispanic/Latino surnames.

(Beth Clifton collage)

HFA & SHARK sue Monterey County

On August 27,  2020 the Humane Farming Association,  headquartered 133 miles north of Monterey in San Rafael,  California,  and the Chicago-based animal rights organization Showing Animals Respect & Kindness (SHARK),  jointly filed suit in the California state court for Monterey County,  charging the county with “refusing to enforce its anti-cockfighting ordinance,  allowing over a thousand illegal rooster-keeping facilities across the county to operate,  perpetuating animal cruelty as well as depriving taxpayers of hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue from fees assessed on violators.”

Non-enforcement of the ordinance may explain at least some of the high rate of COVID-19 infection in Monterey County.

Weak enforcement of anti-cockfighting laws might also explain the high rates of COVID-19 infection in Fresno,  Kings,  Madera,  Stanislaus,  and Merced counties.

Cockfight. (From SHARK video)

No masks at cockfights

“Even amid the global coronavirus pandemic,”  says the Humane Farming Association and SHARK lawsuit,  “large crowds congregate to bet on illegal cockfights;  a recent investigation uncovered hundreds of spectators gathering,  without wearing masks or social distancing,  while human handlers sucked blood from the necks and heads of wounded roosters.”

Explained the plaintiffs via PR Newswire,  “While the county requires individuals with five or more roosters to obtain a permit,  there is not one valid permit on file.

“According to the lawsuit,”  the PR Newswire continued,  “Monterey County is required by its local anti-cockfighting ordinance to act on the public’s complaints of illegal rooster-keeping operations in order to shut them down.  The county is also required to collect fees from rooster-keeping facilities operating in violation of the law.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Advancing Law for Animals

Through aerial drone investigations,”  the Humane Farming Association and SHARK said,  they “have discovered numerous illegal rooster-keeping operations.  These unlawful operations hold dozens or hundreds of roosters,  without a permit,  often in squalid conditions,  and operators should be subject to prosecution.

Although the Humane Farming Association and SHARK have repeatedly reported a laundry-list of violators to Monterey County,”  they charged, “the county refuses to undertake its mandatory duties under the law.”

Represented by Advancing Law for Animals,  a nonprofit law firm which has previously represented the Cincinnati antivivisection society Stop Animal Exploitation Now and the Diane Warren Foundation in successful animal advocacy cases,  the Humane Farming Association and SHARK seek “a court order requiring,  among other things, Monterey County and related divisions/departments to perform inspections mandated by law, and collect revenue as required from violators,”  summarized the PR Newswire.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Cockfighting suspect cited for “social distancing” violation

Testified Showing Animals Respect & Kindness founder Steve Hindi in October 2019 to the Monterey County Board of Supervisors,  “In August 2018,  SHARK’s drones began documenting the illegal rooster sites,  and our results were made public on multiple occasions.  In the fourteen months that have followed,  just one illegal rooster operation has been shut down,  and interestingly,  two have popped up literally within a stone’s throw of the defunct site.”

In the ten months since then,  Monterey County authorities appear to have been involved in only two more cases of cockfighting-related law enforcement.

“Sheriff’s deputies cited a man for violating the [state-wide] shelter-in-place order [imposed due to COVID-19]  after receiving a call about cockfighting in North Monterey County,”  reported Tom Wright for the Monterey Herald on April 6,  2020.

“They found what appeared to be a cockfight and 12 people ran off,”  Wright continued.  “Two people were detained as deputies found 112 roosters and seven dead roosters.  The person who appeared to be in charge was cited for cruelty to animals and violating the order,  while the other person detained was cited for drug possession.”

Javier Morales Vaca.
(Monterey County Sheriff’s Office)

Cockfighting-related murder suspect sent back from Mexico

Six weeks later,  recounted Joe Szydlowski for the Salinas Californian on May 20, 2020,  Monterey County sheriff’s deputies finally apprehended Javier Morales Vaca,  41,  of Watsonville,  who had been wanted since March 6, 2004 for allegedly killing Ramon Villegas, 45, with a gunshot to the head at a cockfight in Salinas.

“Deputies believe after killing Villegas, Vaca went on the lam for 15 years,”  Szydlowski wrote.  “He eventually ended up in Tijuana, Mexico,”  where he was caught at a traffic stop and turned over to the U.S. Marshals Service.

Vaca now “faces charges of murder,  attempted murder,  assault with a deadly weapon,  and robbery,”  Szydlowski said.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Ordinance unenforced

ANIMALS 24-7 on October 20,  2019 reported that the Monterey County ordinance requiring game fowl keepers to be licensed,  adopted in December 2014,  remained almost as unenforced as it might have been in the 1770-1850 time frame,  when the city of Monterey,  for which the county is named,  was the capital of California under Spanish rule.

(See More cockfighters than stars in Doris Day/Clint Eastwood country?)

Blogged former Monterey Herald editor Royal Calkins on July 11,  2019 for his current venture, Voices of Monterey Bay,  “Spotting the illegal rooster-raising operations in Monterey County isn’t all that hard.  Cruise the backroads around Royal Oaks or Las Lomas,  little communities between Watsonville and Prunedale,  and you’ll find several in plain sight.

“Acting on a complaint,”  Calkins wrote,  “members of the Monterey County Civil Grand Jury went out and quickly found plenty of the fighting variety,  more than enough to lead to the conclusion that county officials are simply ignoring the county ordinance intended to control the apparently growing industry of raising and selling roosters destined to win or die in the ring.”

            (See grand jury report:  https://www.co.monterey.ca.us/home/showdocument?id=78112)

Grand jury found that John Ramirez (foreground) has impeded enforcement of Monterey ordinance governing cock-breeding.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Grand jury blames environmental health boss Ramirez

The Monterey County Civil Grand Jury placed most of the blame for non-enforcement of the ordinance on county director of environmental health John Ramirez.

Ramirez,  who did not respond either to telephone messages from Calkins or an email from ANIMALS 24-7,  reportedly told subordinates that “There are lots of political and cultural issues involved [with cockfighting] and that they shouldn’t do anything unless they absolutely have to,”  according to Calkins’ summary of the situation.

“While the county was drafting the ordinance,”  Calkins mentioned,  “rooster breeders told county officials that cockfighting is part of the Latino heritage and, therefore,  deserves some measure of protection.”

Yet cockfighting was not part of the original cultural heritage of the “Californios” in the Salinas Valley and Monterey coastal region,  as the Catholicized Spanish-speaking descendants of indigenous Californians are called.

Indeed,  the ancestors of the Californios had no domestic fowl before they were subjugated by Spanish invaders in the 18th century.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Cultural defense fails

Gamecock breeders James Leahy,  Heriberto Perez,  and Miguel Angel Reyes Robles tried to mount a cultural defense in a 2016 lawsuit contending that the Monterey County rooster-keeping ordinance infringed on their  constitutional rights.  Monterey County Superior Court Judge,  Thomas Wills,  however,  held that their rights were not infringed by rules “designed to protect the environment and to provide safe and humane treatment for roosters.”

For several years no one seems to have noticed that John Ramirez not only was not enforcing the 2014 licensing ordinance,  meant to inhibit raising gamecocks,  but had also in effect dismantled it by introducing bureaucratic procedures that circumvented the intent of the ordinance,  and by dismantling the Monterey County animal control department as well––on the pretext of reducing budget deficits.

“In 2010,”  when Ramirez became director of the Monterey County Health Department,  the Monterey County grand jury found,  “there were six full-time animal control officers and a dedicated dispatcher on staff.  By the fall of 2018 there were only two remaining animal control officers and no dispatcher.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Animal control dismantled

Had all of the estimated 1,000 rooster-keeping facilities in Monterey County been licensed,  as the 2015 ordinance directed,  animal control could have taken in an additional $270,000 in operating revenue,  enough to save all five of the eliminated positions.

“At the time of the writing of this ordinance,”  the grand jury report continued,  “Animal Control Services was under the management of the Environmental Health Bureau. Environmental Health was tasked with writing the ordinance without having the necessary qualifications and expertise in animal welfare,  domestic or livestock.  The author’s background is in hazardous waste management. The author used an individual from a known local illegal rooster keeping operation as the resource for writing the ordinance.  Animal Control Services was never consulted or included during the ordinance writing process.

(Merritt Clifton collage)

Bureaucracy

“Each agency [involved] knew little about which had jurisdiction or how to enforce the ordinance,”  the grand jury continued.  “The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office could not make an arrest unless a cockfight was in progress.  Animal Control Services reported that they were prohibited from issuing citations by the Director of the Environmental Health Bureau.  The Resource Management Agency could not issue citations for illegal rooster keeping,  but could issue citations for code violations for inadequately constructed animal enclosures.

“The Monterey County SPCA could not issue citations for illegal rooster keeping,  but could issue citations for cruelty and neglect of roosters, which could lead to possible prosecution by the District  Attorney.

“The ordinance,”  as passed,  “gave a definitive timeline of 31 days from its adoption to become effective and 180 days to be fully implemented,”  the grand jury reminded.

However,  “The Environmental Health Department created a one-year ‘soft rollout’ before fully implementing or enforcing it.  At the end of the soft rollout year it was still not fully implemented or enforced,  and four years later,  the ordinance is still not being implemented or enforced.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Local animal advocates also did nothing

While the Monterey County Civil Grand Jury addressed only inaction by public agencies,  considerable blame could also be placed with the local animal advocacy community,  particularly in the affluent coastal city of Carmel,  for failing to hold the public agencies accountable.

Singer and actress Doris Day,  for instance,  for whom the Doris Day Animal League (DDAL) was named in 1986,   lived in Carmel from 1981 until her death on May 13,  2019.

Her home was just 22 miles from the most visible concentration of gamecock breeders in the county,  in the unincorporated Boronda neighborhood.

Merged into the Humane Scoiety of the United States in August  2006,  the Doris Day Animal League was absorbed by the Humane Society Legislative Fund in mid-2018,  after former HSUS vice president Holly Hazard––the only executive director that DDAL ever had––retired.

Beth & Merritt Clifton
(Beth Clifton collage)

Meanwhile,  for more than a dozen years a multitude of HSUS executives,  board members,  fundraisers,  and high donors popped up in Carmel and elsewhere in Monterey County without apparently ever seeing or saying a thing about the increasingly obvious presence of cockfighting ––or about the notoriously violent California Rodeo Salinas,  for that matter.

(See SHARK video shows dogs baiting bulls at Calif. Salinas Rodeo 2019 and District Attorney will not prosecute alleged bull-baiting at Salinas rodeo.)

Please donate to help support our work: 

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The post Wildfires, COVID-19, & cockfighting besiege Monterey County appeared first on Animals 24-7.

(Beth Clifton collage)

BL Cozad garbled Bible & U.S. Constitution

            MORGANTOWN, Kentucky––If cockfighting advocate BL “Billy” Cozad had ever actually read the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit Agenda 21,  instead of blindly denouncing it,  he might have found that certain passages in it better support his arguments than anything he misquoted and misrepresented from the Bible and the U.S. Constitution during a bizarre two-hour debate on September 6,  2020 against Showing Animals Respect & Kindness founder Steve Hindi at the Morgantown Community Center in Morgantown,  Kentucky.

(The debate is posted at https://www.facebook.com/sharkonlineorg/.)

Cozad,  however,  has apparently never realized in at least a decade of public railing against Earth Summit Agenda 21 that 54 of the 55 references to animals in it appear in recommendations encouraging more productive animal agriculture.

The sole exception is a single sentence on page 229 calling for “Promotion of research on,  and validation of,  methods constituting a replacement for those using test animals (thus reducing the use of animals for testing purposes).”

Steve Hindi (left) & BL Cozad (right).
(From SHARK video)

Steve Hindi finds new way to mark Labor Day

Time was,  more than 30 years ago,  when Hindi would mark the Labor Day weekend each year by going shark fishing off Montauk,  New York.

In 1990,  however,  Hindi detoured on his way to Montauk to watch the 55th  annual Fred C. Coleman Memorial Pigeon Shoot in Hegins,  Pennsylvania.

Hindi was so appalled at the cruelty and disrespect of animal life he saw there that he gave up fishing and hunting,  became a vegan,  started Showing Animals Respect & Kindness (SHARK),  and spent his next nine Labor Day weekends making a protest pilgrimage to Hegins.

Since the Hegins pigeon shoot ended in 1999,  Hindi has dedicated his Labor Days––and much of the rest of his time and personal resources––to documenting and exposing other forms of animal abuse in the name of entertainment,  mostly other pigeon shoots and rodeos.

Clay County, Kentucky sheriffs deputies were videotaped by SHARK at a cockfight.

Cockfighting exposés

An investigative partnership with the California-based Humane Farming Association,  however,  recently turned Hindi’s attention toward cockfighting,  and led to the Morgantown debate,  in which Hindi and companion Janet Enoch faced down about 40 cockfighters,  many of them toting sidearms.

Explained SHARK spokesperson Stu Chaifetz,  “This past June,  SHARK investigators did a groundbreaking undercover operation where we filmed three major cockfighting operations,”  and documented several Kentucky sheriffs and sheriff’s deputies watching cockfights and/or allowing cockfight attendees to leave cockfights before they could be arrested.

(See Kentucky state cops let 33 cars leave alleged cockfight before investigating.)

BL Cozad Jr.  (From SHARK video)

“We welcome this opportunity”

“Our operation ignited a fierce and hateful response from the cockfighting community,”  continued Chaifetz,  “including our investigators receiving numerous death threats and racist messages.  One prominent cockfighter,  BL Cozad from Oklahoma,  challenged us to a debate.

“According to a Facebook message sent to us by Mr. Cozad,  Kentucky county sheriffs would be at the debate, apparently at the invitation of Mr. Cozad.”

Drone video of cars at alleged cockfight in Pine Knot, Kentucky.
(From SHARK video.)

No sign of law enforcement

Said Cozad,  “We’ll see if little Stevie [Hindi] has the guts to call the three sheriff’s ‘corrupt’ when they’re standing there in person.”

Hindi accepted.

Explained Chaifetz. “We welcome this opportunity to confront the sheriff whose deputies we filmed cavorting with cockfighters instead of following the law and shutting those cockfights down.”

But no one from any branch of law enforcement bothered to appear.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“If you fight roosters, you are a criminal”

The Morgantown Community Center audience,  overwhelmingly stacked against Hindi and Enoch,  mostly sat in stony silence,  while Cozad,  at times an online Holocaust denier,  issued allegations such as that prohibiting cockfighting could lead to another Holocaust.

Insisted Hindi in three-minute round after three-minute round,  sticking narrowly to just a few talking points,  “If you fight roosters, you are a criminal.  That’s a fact.”

Hindi emphasized that cockfighting is currently illegal in all 50 U.S. states,  the District of Columbia,  and in the U.S. overseas territories,  and that the current anti-cockfighting legislation has been upheld,  repeatedly,  at every level of the judiciary.

Hindi could have further pointed out that cockfighting was also illegal in every U.S. state,  the District of Columbia,  and all U.S. overseas territories for most of the 20th century,  and was illegal in much of the U.S. for most of the 19th century as well.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Cockfighting banned in Massachusetts since 1641

In fact,  cockfighting was illegal in parts of what is now the U.S. even before the U.S. existed.  The first state law that prohibited cockfighting,  adopted by Massachusetts in 1836,  built upon a tradition of jurisprudence dating back to the Massachusetts Bay Colony charter of 1641.

While some exceptions to the cockfighting bans of the past 100 years have at times been allowed in some states and other jurisdictions through acts of state legislatures and executive orders of territorial governors,  no appellate court has ever found that the same branches of government that have permitted cockfighting lack the jurisdiction to forbid it.

No court with jurisdiction to rule on constitutional matters has ever recognized a constitutionally protected right to engage in cockfighting,  or in any form of animal fighting,  under any portion of the Bill of Rights.

Seventy-two appellate courts,  however,  have upheld laws forbidding cockfighting.

(See https://www.animallaw.info/cases/topic/animal-fighting?order=field_primary_citation&sort=desc&page=1.)

BL Cozad in Big Bird bubble.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Cozad argued against banning bestiality

Hindi departed from his focal issue chiefly to challenge cockfighters,  if they truly believed Cozad’s claims the cockfighting is constitutionally protected,  to quit running and hiding from videography and law enforcement,  and instead accept arrest,  in order to fight their case through the courts.

“If you think what you do is legal,”  said Hindi time and again,  “then invite us to film your fights and let’s see what happens.  Do you have the courage of your convictions or are you cowards?”

Only occasionally did Hindi target Cozad himself,  pointing out,  for example,  that Cozad was in January 2019 criminally charged with threatening a court clerk.

Hindi also pointed out that Cozad has argued that bestiality is also a constitutionally protected right,  playing a recorded conversation in which Cozad claimed exactly that.

The most remarkable part of Cozad’s argument then was that it not only contradicted 231 years of U.S. jurisprudence,  but also contradicted the very Biblical teachings,  in the Book of Leviticus,  elaborating on a single sentence in Genesis,  that Cozad claims give humans dominion over animals and therefore permit cockfighting.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Pagan,  Nazi,  Communist?

Cozad,  for his part,  from his opening statement and repeatedly thereafter,  alleged that Hindi is a pagan,  a Nazi,  and a Communist.

For the record,  Hindi is none of the three.  As the Christian fundamentalist-raised owner of a business called Allied Tubular Rivet for the past 35 years,  named after the Allies who defeated the Nazis in World War II,  Hindi would be an unlikely suspect to be in any way associated with either pagans,  Nazis,  or Communists.

Moreover,  if there is one thing that probably 99.9% of all pagans,  Nazis,  and Communists might agree upon,  it is that paganism,  Nazism,  and Communism are inherently incompatible concepts.

Adolf Hitler did invoke Teutonic paganism in establishing his short-lived Third Reich,  1933-1945,  against the opposition of some self-professed pagans who soon found themselves in concentration camps,  but there was never a place for paganism or any religion in the doctrines of Communism.  Eventually about 30 million Russians,  Germans,  and others died over the incompatibility of Nazism and Communism.

Cockfighter trying to resuscitate gamecock.  (From SHARK video)

Cozad contends cockfighting is “method of harvest”

Undeterred,  Cozad simultaneously argued that cockfighting is a religious freedom,  contrary to jurisprudence,  and that the exercise of paganism,  which has been protected by the U.S. Constitution ever since the Constitution was written,  is not.

Claimed Cozad,  as he has repeatedly in GameFowl News and other cockfighting media,  “Instead of defending and protecting the freedoms of U.S. citizens,  our legislators vie for the support of well-funded special interests and champion their causes even at the expense of the inalienable rights,  freedoms,  culture,  heritage,  animal agriculture industries,  and adverse effects to U.S. citizens lives these laws have.”

Alleging that cockfighting is a form of animal agriculture,  though hardly anyone eats gamefowl,  Cozad contended that “The method of harvest of gamecocks has been allowing them to fight another gamecock for more than 3,000 years.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Links cockfighters to Black Lives Matter

“Understand that animal welfare laws are the same thing that Adolf Hitler used in the early days of Nazi Germany,”  Cozad continued,  apparently unaware or just plain not caring that most of the 32 “animal protection laws” adopted by Nazi Germany were thinly disguised cover for the oppression of Jews,  gypsies,  and other minorities.  The first two of those laws banned kosher slaughter;  the last one barred Jews from keeping pets.

(See Animals In The Third Reich:   Pets,  Scapegoats,  and the Holocaust.)

“Every raid by government agents creates situations where the agents may hurt, cripple and even kill people no matter what the issue is that the law is meant to address,”  Cozad said,  linking defense of cockfighting to Black Lives Matter.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Paganism & animal worship”

“What you advocate,”  Cozad accused Hindi,  “is that these government agents should make raids,  rip families apart and create these situations where gamecock farmers may be killed because your personal opinion of chickens outweighs the right of these farmers to harvest their livestock,  earn a living and provide for their families.

“God gave man dominion over the earth,  animals,  fish and fowl,”  Cozad asserted.  “Our constitution is written to ensure each man is equal in these God given rights.  To advocate as you do that the God-given rights of the gamecock farmer can be taken away over your personal desire to protect chickens amounts to paganism and animal worship,  as you have personally chosen to put animals (chickens) above the lives of gamecock farmers.”

This collage has nothing to do with Agenda 21. Neither did Cozad’s claims.
(Beth Clifton collage)

“U.N. Agenda 21,  the pagan’s bible”

Time and again Cozad returned to his claim that opposition to cockfighting is somehow rooted in “U.N. Agenda 21,  the pagan’s bible.  Our common fight,”  Cozad said of himself and fellow cockers,  “is actually Biblical in nature,  our God-given rights versus the Satanic animal worshiping paganism in U.N. Agenda 21.  The U.N. Agenda 21 Charter is their earth and animal worshiping pagan bible.”

Earth Summit Agenda 21 was in truth a 351-page discussion document,  which set ecological goals for the year 2021 in connection with agriculture,  economic development,  and forestry.

As 2021 is now only months away,  Earth Summit Agenda 21 is now obsolete and due for updating.

Never a charter of anything,  nor a treaty,  nor in any way purporting to make law,  Earth Summit Agenda 21 was ratified in principle as a set of longterm recommendations by 178 governments at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,  from June 3 to June 14, 1992.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Nothing Cozad said was in “Agenda 21” really is

Nowhere is there any mention in Earth Summit Agenda 21 of “animal rights,”  of the word or concept “humane,”  nor of any particular form of religion or government.

There is no mention in Earth Summit Agenda 21 of pagans or paganism,  no mention of Nazis,  no mention of Communists,  and not even one mention of birds,  nor of any animal species or order,  let alone anything about gamefowl or gamecocks.

But B.L. Cozad,  bluntly put,  did not do his homework in preparation for the debate,  even though Earth Summit Agenda 21 is easily downloadable and text-searchable at https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/outcomedocuments/agenda21.

Claimed Cozad,  “The United Nations Agenda 21 plan is meant to destroy the Constitution of the United States,”  which it never references in any manner,   “bringing us one step closer to the very real,  very current New World Order,”  also never mentioned in Earth Summit Agenda 21,  “which many say is a Satanist-connected cult.”

Satan,  by the way,  is also never mentioned in Earth Summit Agenda 21.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Recommendations for boosting animal agriculture productivity

So what does Earth Summit Agenda 21 actually recommend?

The first mention of animals anywhere in the whole 351 pages,  on page 95,  calls for “Increasing the protection of forests from pollutants,  fire,  pests and diseases and other human-made interferences”  including “the uncontrolled introduction of exotic plant and animal species.”

Introductions of exotic plant and animal species are again mentioned in passing on page 149.

After the initial mention of animals,  the word “animal” comes up several times in contexts such as discussing how deforestation and soil erosion lower “potential for human and animal carrying capacity,”  specifically in connection with encouraging more efficient agriculture.

“Pests affecting animal health also cause heavy losses and in many areas prevent livestock development,”  Earth Summit Agenda 21 notes on page 141.

Page 142 recommends for governments “to improve and implement plant protection and animal health services,”  so as to obtain better yields from plant and animal husbandry.

What Florida looked like when iguanas were most abundant, & may look like again by 2100, at the current pace of global warming.  (Beth Clifton collage)

Two sentences on climate change

Several Earth Summit Agenda 21 passages call for research to “update existing inventories of natural resources,  such as energy,  water,  soil,  minerals,  [and]  plant and animal access to food,  as well as other resources, such as housing, employment,  health, education  and demographic distribution in time and space.”

There is a single sentence,  partially repeated once,  recommending “Evaluation of the effects of ultraviolet radiation on plants and animals caused by the depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer.”

This,  and 33 mentions of effects of climate change other than associated with animals,  has caused considerable consternation on the part of fossil fuel industry advocates over the past two decades,  during which the referenced climatic effects,  usually referenced as global warming,  have become ever more self-evident to just about everyone.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Making better use of manure for fertilizer

Pages 154 through 156 encourage use of biotechnology “To increase to the optimum possible extent the yield of major crops, livestock, and aquaculture species.”

Pages 161,  206,  217,  and 220 mention animals in the context of developing “processes to recover energy and provide renewable energy sources, animal feed and raw materials from recycling organic waste and biomass,”  preventing manure runoff from harming fisheries,  and preventing “contamination of water sources with animal excrement in order to prevent the spread of diseases.”

The last recommendation of Earth Summit Agenda 21 relevant to animals,  on page 299,  calls for “research on mechanization that would optimize human labor and animal power and hand-held and animal-drawn equipment that can be easily operated and maintained,”  taking into account “farmers’ available resources and the role of animals in farming households and the ecology.”

In other words,  if some farmers in the developing world have access only to animal power and the work they can do with their own muscles,  they should at least have plows and carts that turn the soil and draw loads efficiently.

Steve Hindi talks to cockfighters about drugs.  (From SHARK video)

Missed his chance

So what could Cozad have used from Earth Summit Agenda 21?

Pages 120,  125,  and 139 include language calling for governments to “Build an inventory of different forms of soils,  forests,  water use,  and crop,  plant and animal genetic resources,  giving priority to those under threat of extinction.

“Some local animal breeds,”  says Earth Summit Agenda 21,  “in addition to their socio-cultural value,  have unique attributes for adaptation,  disease resistance and specific uses and should be preserved.”

Cozad might have cited those passages in defense of preserving rare gamecock breeds.

Beth & Merritt Clifton

But Cozad didn’t,  because his claims about Earth Summit Agenda 21 were as ill-informed as everything else he said.

Now he cannot make use of what Earth Summit Agenda 21 actually says,  except to openly align himself with what he has already denounced as “pagan” and “Satanic.”

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The post Cockfighter Cozad missed chance to hide behind U.N. “Agenda 21” appeared first on Animals 24-7.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Public records requests reveal how cops killed Joseph Lee Pettaway;  threatened Steve Hindi

MANCHESTER, Kentucky;  MONTGOMERY, Alabama––“White privilege,”  in parts of the rural South,  could be defined as being able to find out through public records requests that corrupt and sadistic cops might want to kill you before they actually do it.

This,  anyhow,  appears to be the major difference in outcome between public records requests submitted by Showing Animals Respect & Kindness founder Steve Hindi in Clay County,  Kentucky,  and those submitted by survivors of Joseph Lee Pettaway,  a black man who was killed by a police dog in Montgomery,  Alabama, on July 8,  2018.

“The Pettaway family,  after a two-year court fight,  “successfully subpoenaed the bodycam footage of the incident,  according to new filings in an ongoing lawsuit,”  disclosed Niara Savage of the Atlanta Black Star on October 3,  2020.  “The Montgomery Police Department had previously refused to confirm that footage of the incident existed.”

Joseph Lee Pettaway

Attacked as “burglar” in mother’s house

Joseph Lee Pettaway, 51,  “was at a house owned by his mother,”  Savage recounted.  “He had been caring for her,  helping her fix up the home,”  which had been temporarily vacant,  with the electricity turned off,  “and had a key and permission to sleep there.”

Homeowner Lizzie Mae Pettaway,  now 87,  lived in another house about a block away,  and all ten of Pettaway’s brothers and sisters also lived in the neighborhood.

A person whose identity has not been disclosed observed Pettaway entering the home,  called 911,  and reported that a burglar was inside.

“Police K-9 handler Nicholas Barber and his dog Niko arrived on the scene to search the premises,”  Savage explained.  “Niko ran inside and found Pettaway,  lunged at him,  and clamped down on the man’s body.”

Montgomery,  Alabama has a long history of involvement in civil rights cases.  Above:  Martin Luther King Jr. during the 1955-1956 Montgomery bus boycott that brought him to national prominence as a civil rights leader.

Police dog training––and police officer training,  or lack thereof

The Montgomery Police Department told Jennifer Horton of WSFA-12 News that the homeowner had “approved a K-9 unit entry,”  a point that the Pettaway family lawsuit disputes.

The attack itself raised issues pertaining to police dog use and training that were extensively reviewed in a January 2015 ANIMALS 24-7 guest column,  Police dogs should be trained as officers, not equipment,  by Dutch behaviorist Alexandra Semyonova.

But inappropriate police dog training was much less the issue than allegedly inappropriate police officer training and response,  both before Niko was sent into the house to apprehend a “suspect” who had every right to be there,  and after Pettaway was bitten on the femoral artery.

Unidentified Montgomery police officer with K-9.  (Montgomery Police Department photo)

Bled to death while cops did nothing

“Barber stood by and failed to remove the dog from Pettaway for almost two minutes, according to court documents,”  said Savage.  Her account was supported by other journalists who have seen the Pettaway family lawsuit,  in public statements by Pettaway’s sister Yvonne Pettaway-Frazie,  who was a witness to the police dog attack and the death of her brother,  and by local media reportage published soon after Pettaway’s death.

“Niko tore an artery in Pettaway’s groin.  He ultimately bled out and died,”  Savage summarized.

Alleges the lawsuit,  “Despite Mr. Pettaway’s obvious and profuse bleeding and his apparently going into shock,  no policeman examined or evaluated [Pettaway’s] wound and no policeman administered any of the most basic,  essential,  obvious and immediately required care to stem or reduce his bleeding.”

(Montgomery police department photo)

“Annoyance” and “embarrassment”

Removed by police from his mother’s home after the fatal bite,  Pettaway was allegedly left to lie on  the pavement outside until an Emergency Medical Services team arrived.  Pettaway was pronounced dead soon after he was transported to a hospital.

“The officers allegedly stood by joking and taking pictures of Pettaway as he bled out.  There had been no indication that he was armed or attempting to flee,”  wrote Savage.

“The family is now fighting the ‘confidential’ designation of the footage” obtained through the public records request,  “and wants it to be released to the public,”  Savage finished,  “but the city [of Montgomery] is fighting to keep the video under wraps,  saying it would create ‘annoyance’ and ‘embarrassment’ for the officers involved,”  and might spark ‘civil unrest.’  The matter will be addressed at a hearing sometime this month.”

Affirmed the USA Today reporting team of Abbie VanSickle, Challen Stephens, Ryan Martin, Dana Brozost-Kelleher and Andrew Fan,  “The city is fighting to keep the video from going public,  arguing in court that it would cause “annoyance, embarrassment” for officers who were acting in good faith and could end up “facilitating civil unrest.” Officials did not respond to requests for comment.”

The house where Joseph Lee Pettaway died.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Arson destroyed the scene

The scene of the fatal attack,  and possibly important primary evidence,  went up in smoke the night after Joseph Lee Pettaway died..

“Less than 24 hours after Pettaway’s death,”  reported Melissa Brown of the Montgomery Advertiser on July 11,  2018,  “the home burned in a house fire that Montgomery fire officials said caused ‘total loss.’

Montgomery Fire/Rescue Lieutenant Jason Cupps told Brown that the fire was believed to have been arson,  “though an investigation is ongoing and no arrests have been made,”  Brown said.

“My agents had completed the scene processing well before the fire occurred,”  State Bureau of Investigations captain Joe Herman told Brown,  insisting that,  “In no way did the fire have any effect on our ongoing investigation.”

“Shark guy” Steve Hindi. 
(Merritt Clifton photo)

“Shark guys gonna go missing”

Meanwhile in Clay County,  Kentucky,  WTVQ television news reported on September 30,  2020,  Showing Animals Respect & Kindness is “calling on the FBI to investigate and Governor Andy Beshear to pursue action,”  after documents obtained by Showing Animals Respect & Kindness (SHARK) through a public records request were found to include a written statement by Clay County Sheriff’s Department public affairs officer Trent Baker that “Shark guys gonna go missing.”

Undercover video investigations conducted by Showing Animals Respect & Kindness (SHARK),  funded by the Humane Farming Association,  in June 2020 exposed and shut down illegal cockfighting venues in three Kentucky counties:  Clay,  Butler and McCreary.

“As part of its undercover work,”  a SHARK media release explained,  SHARK “submitted public records requests to the [Clay County] sheriff’s office to find out what officers knew about” the cockfighting operation,  at the Laurel Creek Game Club in Manchester.

(See Kentucky state cops let 33 cars leave alleged cockfight before investigating.)

(Beth Clifton collage)

“The deputies did nothing”

Two sheriff’s deputies were on June 20,  2020 videotaped in attendance at the Laurel Creek Game Club during a series of cockfights,  in uniform.

“The deputies did nothing to stop the illegal cockfighting or gambling,”  SHARK alleged.

Documents obtained through the public records request “suggested law enforcement from state trooper Logan Wolfe to Clay County Sheriff Patrick Robinson knew about the fights,”  the SHARK release said.

Robinson contended in a July 2020 interview with the Lexington Herald-Leader that the deputies had been unaware that cockfighting is a criminal offense.

Emails obtained by SHARK show Wolfe saying,  “we all have a black eye no matter what we do,”  as result of the SHARK exposés.  He [the owner of the cockfight venue] asked me if it was illegal,  and what to do,”  Wolfe continued.

Clay County, Kentucky sheriffs deputies were videotaped by SHARK at a cockfight.

Hindi:  “I take it very seriously”

“He more or less wanted to know what we could do to continue to let him fight chickens…he said we’ve done it for years,  and always gotten away with it.  He led the conversation to believe that the SO [Sheriff’s Office] and KSP [Kentucky State Police] has let him do it.  Now,  that’s true,”  Wolfe acknowledged.  “We don’t stop it,  because no one knows for sure what the crime is.  Other than gambling.”

The Trent Baker remark that “Shark guys gonna go missing”  appears to have been made on July 22,  2020.

Said “SHARK guy” Steve Hindi,  “I take it very seriously when a member of the sheriff’s office makes a threat,  and an individual in the sheriff’s office saying someone is going to disappear is as direct as it gets.  I take the man at his word, and intend to take appropriate legal action,”  for which purpose SHARK has retained a Kentucky law firm.

Beth & Merritt Clifton

Commented Humane Farming Association national director Brad Miller,  “Law enforcement officials have acknowledged allowing a major criminal enterprise to operate unimpeded.  Shockingly, they also make threatening and incriminating statements about the lives of SHARK investigators. We believe the FBI should immediately investigate possible criminal acts and civil rights violations.”

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The post Black man killed by police dog; white man threatened by cop caught at cockfight appeared first on Animals 24-7.

Reconception of A Traitor to His Species cover, by Beth Clifton.

by Ernest Freeberg

322 pages,  hardcover.  $30.00.

Basic Books

Hachette Book Group

1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

www.basicbooks.com

Reviewed by Merritt Clifton

Perhaps the first question to ask about a new biography of Henry Bergh,  of whom more than 50 have reputedly been written already,  with at least four close to hand here at ANIMALS 24-7,  is why does anyone need yet another?

Anticipating that question,  A Traitor To His Species author Ernest Freeberg answers it in his subtitle,  Henry Bergh & The Birth Of The Animal Rights Movement.

A 2013 fictionalized Henry Bergh biography, by Gary Kaskel.

Not just the familiar story

The Freeberg book is not just the familiar story of Henry Bergh,  founder of the American SPCA,  or of Henry Bergh who helped to launch both the animal protection movement and the child protection movement,  linked for more than a century as simply “the humane movement.”

Freeberg of course recounts how Bergh helped to rescue the abused child Mary Ellen Wilson,  declaring that if she could not be protected as a human being under the laws of New York state,  she could at least be protected as an animal.

Freeberg also recites how Bergh led a raid on Kit Burns’ dogfighting arena that climaxed with Captain Aliare of the New York Police Department descending through a skylight into the middle of the ring,  between two pit bulls,  warrant in hand,  to arrest Burns and the participants.

Pit bulls were used in rat-killing contests, as well as dogfights to the death, at Kit Burns’ Tavern in mid-19th century New York City.

The great leap

While Freebergh,  like most Bergh biographers,  omits any mention of Aliare by name,   he avoids the common misattribution of Aliare’s death-defying leap to Bergh himself.

Then 58 years old and a rather big man to do any such thing at any age,  but always quick to take an active role in a bust,  Bergh in truth waited with other police officers and ASPCA agents to grab dogfighters and spectators who fled out the front door.

Merely retelling those Bergh stories,  perhaps in greater detail and with more accuracy than most of Freeberg’s legion of predecessors,  is not what Freeberg is all about in A Traitor To His Species.

Thomas Edison.
(Beth Clifton collage)

The light bulb overhead

Freeberg is a different sort of biographer,  previously best known for The Age of Edison,  Electric Light and the Invention of Modern America (2014)  a comprehensive biography of electrical device inventor and popularizer Thomas Edison.

The life and times of Thomas Edison had also already been thoroughly covered by generations of others.

Freeberg,  however,  in The Age of Edison emphasized the context of Edison’s activity in transforming the animal-powered world of all preceding history into the electrically powered world of today,  adding a century of additional perspective to the facts.

Freeberg in A Traitor To His Species addresses specifically Henry Bergh & The Birth Of The Animal Rights Movement.

Diana Belais.
(Beth Clifton collage)

The first animal rights activists

There was no “animal rights movement,”  nor even any rumor of such a movement,  in Bergh’s own time.  British author and animal advocate Henry Salt would not coin the phrase “animal rights” until 1892,  four years after Bergh died.

Bergh directly inspired Diana Belais,  who cofounded the short-lived First Church of Animal Rights in 1921,  33 years after Bergh’s death,  but Belais herself was more than half a century ahead of her time.

Henry Spira (1927-1998) did not found Animal Rights International,  initiating the modern animal rights movement with a string of unprecedented campaign victories,  until 1976.

Henry Spira’s 1976 campaign against cat sex experiments at the American Museum of Natural History was the first to stop a federal funded animal experiment in progress.

From the humane movement to the AR movement

Nonetheless,  among the triumvirate who form the pantheon of acknowledged founders of the humane movement––Bergh,  Massachusetts SPCA founder George Angell,  and Carolyn Earle White,  founder of the Pennsylvania SPCA,  Women’s Humane Society,  and American Anti-Vivisection Society––Bergh more than any of the others directly presaged the animal rights movement as we have seen it evolve.

From Spira,  a lone man with a bullhorn decrying cruel experiments on cats in 1976 at the American Museum of Natural History,  adjacent to Central Park in New York City,  the modern animal rights movement has grown in less than 50 years to a multi-national cause represented by hundreds of organizations,  raising hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

Bergh,  however,  initiated campaigns anticipating practically every major focus of the animal rights movement.

ANIMALS 24-7 editor Merritt Clifton channeling ASPCA founder Henry Bergh, confronting current ASPCA president Matt Bershadker,  former Humane Society of the U.S. president Wayne Pacelle,  & former Best Friends Animal Society president Gregory Castle.  (Beth Clifton collage)

Bergh might have booted ASPCA successors in the keister

Time and again Bergh also saw those campaigns coopted by institutional pragmatists,  settling for short-term symbolic gains ahead of longterm change––just as the moral energy of the animal rights movement has time and again been coopted and subsumed to the realities of the intensive fundraising needed to support organizational infrastructure.

Under Bergh,  the ASPCA was much more like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals,  founded in 1981,  than like any incarnation of the ASPCA itself post-Bergh.

Indeed,  though Freeberg imagines Bergh would be pleased with his institutional legacy,  it is easier to imagine the often impetuous reformer booting many of his ASPCA successors and most ASPCA board members of the past 132 years squarely in the buttocks than to imagine him being the least bit happy with the compromises and timidity characterizing their alleged leadership.

Bergh clearly did not found the ASPCA to become anything like what it is today,  with no role in humane law enforcement,  his own focal concern,  presenting no visible challenge to the modus operandi of any mainstream industry.

“Balaam and the Ass,” by Rembrandt van Rijn, 1626, fairly obviously inspired the ASPCA logo.

Won over critics & alienated friends

Freeberg makes all of this evident,  including in documenting the many self-defeating facets of Bergh’s character,  each also with parallels in the modern animal rights movement.

Bergh,  for instance,  at once won many critics over with earnest sincerity,  and alienated friends with an evident lack of any sense of humor.

Worse,  Bergh appalled many people who generally endorsed his aims with misanthropic indifference toward human suffering in many contexts,  though certainly not all.

Freeberg details,  for instance,  how Bergh campaigned for the return of public flogging as a punishment for cruelty to animals,  seeking to undo one of the first achievements of the humane movement,  before Bergh’s birth,  before the movement even had a name.

Actual cover of Henry Bergh & The Birth Of The Animal Rights Movement.

Didn’t really know animals

Attentive readers will remember the multitude of cruel and bizarre punishments that animal advocates recommended circa 2007 for football player and convicted dogfighter Michael Vick,  most of them abolished by humanitarians before the invention of football as Americans know it.

Finally,  like all too many animal rights zealots,  Bergh did not really know very much about animals,  and indeed never even had a pet dog or cat.

Though Bergh certainly recognized cruelty to animals when he saw it,  his lack of understanding of animal needs and behavior meant that time and again he lost in public debate to abusive animal-exploiting opponents he should easily have defeated,  had he been able to explain with greater authority why their defensive excuses were just plain wrong.

(Beth Clifton collage)

From Genesis to the lives of the saints

A multitude of people have at various times prominently and enduringly championed the cause of animals,  among whom it is difficult to say which remain most influential.

The very names of some,  who espoused a vegan diet as a commandment from God in the Biblical Book of Genesis,  are perhaps permanently lost to history.

Among those animal advocates who are still remembered,  appearing in the earliest written traditions of their respective cultures,  are of course the Hebrew prophet Isaiah,  who lived circa 800 years BCE;  the Jain teacher Mahavira,  599-527 BCE;   his contemporary Siddhārtha Gautama,  called the Buddha;  and the Greek mathematician Pythagoras,  a contemporary of both,  but on what was then almost the far side of the settled world (570-495 BCE).

From the Middle Ages,  a “Christian” era which in many ways was one long celebration of ghastly cruelty to both animals and humans that would have appalled Jesus Christ,  came the pro-animal examples of St. John of Rila (876-946),  St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226),  and Richard of Wych (1197-1253).

“Humanity Dick” Martin in 1824 won the first British cruelty conviction after presenting an abused donkey as evidence––trumpeted by the media of the day as having called the donkey as an expert witness.

RSPCA inspired Bergh

A generation before Henry Bergh’s time,  there were the parliamentarians William Wilburforce (1759-1833) and Richard “Humanity Dick” Martin (1754-1834),  who in 1820 pushed to passage the first British law prohibiting cruelty to animals.

In 1824 Wilburforce and Martin participated in founding the organization called since 1840 the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals [RSPCA],  whose primary role ever since has been to enforce British humane law.

By the time Henry Bergh (1814-1888) founded the American SPCA in 1866,  in acknowledged emulation of the RSPCA,  the RSPCA had already inspired other spinoffs throughout the British Empire.  It subsequently inspired many more.

The original Morris Animal Refuge, the first animal shelter in the U.S., which started out no-kill in 1858, but was unable to remain no-kill after taking the Philadelphia animal control contract in 1874.

First humane societies

Indeed,  at least a decade before the ASPCA existed,  there were already several “humane societies,”  as we know them today,  scattered around the U.S. Northeast,  operated mostly by young women working with budgets of next to nothing,  enjoying little presence in the news media of the day,  and no political influence.

These young women did,  however,  provide what would later be called humane education to school children,  did some animal rescue work,  and sometimes experimented with operating dog and cat shelters.

These proto-“do-gooder” societies tended to timidly co-exist in the shadows of the much larger,  more militant,  and at the time much more fashionable anti-slavery societies.

The ardent abolitionism of the anti-slavery societies conspicuously faded after the U.S. Civil War ended the enslavement of Americans of African descent in the secessionist South,  and introduced racial integration as an often fractious reality in the North.

Henry Bergh

The Gilded Age

Amid that transition,  other “do-gooder” causes flourished in what Bergh biographer Freeberg prefers to call the Gilded Age.

Culturally,  the Gilded Age was the U.S. manifestation of what are often more broadly referenced as “Victorian” times,  when Queen Victoria was on the British throne and the sun literally never set on her global empire.

But Victoria,  influential though British culture remained in the U.S.,  more than 100 years after the American Revolution,  was never Queen of the United States.

The fashion of gilding furniture to make “ordinary” wood appear to be precious metal is,  as Freeberg observes,  an appropriate metaphor for an era in which cruelty and injustice were both widely recognized,  and generally addressed with cosmetic solutions,  which moved the issues out of the sight and minds of middle and upper class Americans.

When elephants died, P.T. Barnum exhibited their bones.

“The Great Meddler”

Henry Bergh,  as Freeberg demonstrates through example after example,  was very much a product of the gilded age.  Bergh was at best a dynamic,  charismatic,  yet thoroughly impractical moralist.

Inheriting affluence,  as the son of the successful New York shipbuilder Christian Bergh,  Henry Bergh in his youth took no interest in the family business.

Instead,  as a dropout law student,  and an enthusiastically incompetent poet and playwright,  Bergh drifted for decades,  with his equally affluent British wife Catherine,  amid European high society.

Bergh might have been a candidate for “Upper Class Twit of the Year,”  had Monte Python’s Flying Circus existed then to lampoon him,  except that,  Freeberg says,   “Along with a fortune and a high position in New York society,”  once he and his wife settled in New York,  “he inherited a strict code of moral responsibility.”

This led eventually to Bergh’s nickname,  “The Great Meddler,”  reputedly conferred by showman P.T. Barnum.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Exiled to St. Petersburg

Taking up abolitionism,  Freeberg recounts,  Bergh “joined a committee to raise money to purchase cannons for the [Union] army.  Like many other Northern Republicans,  he dearly hoped the [Civil] war would soon deliver a sound thrashing to the slaveholding secessionists.  But privately he went much further,  longing for a military coup in Washington to overthrow the incoming Lincoln administration,”  which Bergh believed was entirely too conciliatory toward the South.

Whether Abraham Lincoln was ever aware of that is unclear.  Perhaps Lincoln sent Bergh to St. Petersburg as U.S. ambassador to Russia as an honor,  as it appeared to be,  or perhaps just to be rid of him.

Either way,  though,  it was in St. Petersburg that Bergh famously intervened on behalf of a whipped horse.  Becoming aware of the existence of the RSPCA,  Bergh stopped in London on his way back to the U.S. to learn everything he could about how it operated.

Then,  upon his return to New York,  Bergh––after writing several letters to public officials and newspapers deploring the treatment of impounded stray dogs––in 1866 convened the first public meeting of the ASPCA.

Ernest Freeberg.  (University of Tennessee at Knoxville photo)

Campaign histories

Rather than tracing Bergh’s subsequent career in chronological progression,  Freeberg focuses on a dozen of his most storied campaigns,  following each one by itself from where it began to where Bergh left it,  and then succinctly summarizing where the issue stands today.

Chapter headings include:

“A Radical Gospel of Kindness,”  describing Bergh’s unsuccessful early campaign on behalf of sea turtles and terrapins who were cruelly captured and shipped alive to New York City for slaughter;

“Horse Trolley,”  recounting how Bergh challenged transport magnate Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt and the entire New York City transportation infrastructure on behalf of abused and overworked horses;

ASPCA horse ambulance.  (Beth Clifton collage)

Barnum & Bergh

“Barnum & Bergh,”  detailing Bergh’s many conflicts with showman P.T. Barnum,  who nonetheless professed himself to be Bergh’s greatest admirer;

“Henry Bergh & Kit Burns,”  the Irish-American gangster and animal fighting entrepreneur whose career partially inspired the 2002 Martin Scorsese film Gangs of New York;

“America’s First Energy Crisis,”  about the equine influenza epidemic of 1872,  which had impact comparable to the COVID-19 pandemic of today;

“Market Murder” and “Civilized Slaughter,”  detailing how Bergh’s efforts against cruelty to animals in the meat industry contributed inadvertently to the rise of factory farming;

“Genteel Ruffians,”  describing Bergh’s losing battle against pigeon shooting;

“War on Dogs,”  which demonstrates that Bergh was more deeply involved in the evolution of high-volume killing in animal shelters than previous Bergh biographies have indicated,  partly because of his poor understanding of germ theory,  rabies,  and anti-rabies vaccination,  then just being developed;

William Temple Hornaday, founding curator of the Bronx Zoo.
(Carrick-Overbrook Historical Society photo)

“Bergh’s Perverted Philanthropy Challenged”;  “What About Cruelty to Humans?”;

Animals as Spectacle

and finally,  “Animals as Spectacle,”  recounting Bergh’s later clashes with P.T. Barnum,  along with his unsuccessful attempt to close the Central Park Zoo,  which was founded in 1864 and became notorious as a haphazard menagerie several decades before the 1899 opening of the Bronx Zoo.

Evolving into the New York Zoological Society,  and then becoming the Wildlife Conservation Society of today,  the Bronx Zoo in 1983 subsumed and reformed the Central Park Zoo,  but that was almost a century after Bergh’s time.

Indeed,  the Central Park Zoo was reopened in 1988, after five years of renovation,  exactly 100 years after Bergh died.

A pigeon & Beth Clifton take varying views of Merritt Clifton posing as Henry Bergh.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Vowed to protect all animals

“In his improbable career as America’s first crusader for animal rights,”  Freeberg sums up,  Bergh “shocked his peers when he vowed to protect all animals,  not just those considered useful or loveable…Often denounced as a traitor to his species,  he forced his fellow citizens to reckon with aspects of our treatment of animals that most would rather ignore.

“Bergh was among the first to raise many of the uncomfortable questions we are still trying to answer,”  Freeberg continues.  “More than anyone,  Bergh forced his fellow citizens to reckon with what one journalist called ‘a new form of goodness,’  a call to our conscience that we continue to struggle with today.”

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(Beth Clifton collage)

ASPCA founder Henry Bergh hated pigeon shooters,  except when he wanted something from them

Henry Bergh,  who founded the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1866,  might have perfectly understood Showing Animals Respect & Kindness founder Steve Hindi’s frustration,  expressed on November 14,  2020 in his ANIMALS 24-7 guest column “Talk can’t stop pigeon-shooting psychopaths.”

Bergh felt much the same about pigeon shooters,  and several times made efforts to stop pigeon shoots comparable to Hindi’s 30-year campaign against pigeon shooting wherever it occurs,  from the Philadelphia Gun Club to Altus,  Oklahoma,  a community that can barely be found on a map.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Political deals

On the other hand,  Bergh might have drawn Hindi’s scathing denunciation for political deals which in effect threw pigeons out to be shot by the thousands for the next 150 years,  to win marginally stronger ability to prosecute dogfighters.

“A few years ago,”  recalled Hindi,  “the Humane Society of the United States and the Federated Humane Societies of Pennsylvania,  to secure a new humane law in Pennsylvania,  gave pigeon shoots some legal cover they never had before.  There was lots of money to be raised from the ‘success’ of a new humane law,  so pigeons were thrown under the bus to keep the National Rifle Association quiet and agreeable.”

The “new humane law” that Hindi mentioned enabled felony prosecutions under circumstances which occur fewer than a dozen times per year in Pennsylvania,  with fewer animal victims than birds are left wounded after a typical pigeon shoot.

(See Did HSUS & Humane Pennsylvania sacrifice pigeons to NRA demand?)

Former HSUS president Wayne Pacelle cut the deal that sacrificed thousands of pigeons to win passage of “Libre’s Law,” applicable to barely more than a dozen cruelty cases per year.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Names, faces, & species have changed.  The politics have not.

The names and faces have changed in the past 150 years of activism against pigeon shoots,  and the targets today are rock doves netted in big cities rather than passenger pigeons,  now extinct,  who were trapped in rural areas.

However,  as Henry Bergh biographer Ernest Freeberg details in A Traitor to His Species,  the politics of the issue have scarcely changed at all.

            (See A Traitor To His Species:  Henry Bergh & The Birth Of The Animal Rights Movement.)

Begins Freeberg,  introducing the saga of Bergh and the pigeon shooters,  which continued from 1869 until at least 1882,  “James Gordon Bennett Jr.,  who inherited the New York Herald from his father,  “was a notoriously strong-willed and self-indulgent playboy and avid sportsman,”  who “patronized pigeon-shooting contests.”

Pit bulls were used in rat-killing contests, as well as dogfights to the death, at Kit Burns’ Tavern in mid-19th century New York City.

Aristocrats clucked

Under Bennett,  Freeberg notes,  the New York Herald editorial page “sometimes clucked at the unsavory blood sports pursued by lowlife immigrants” such as the Irish-American gangster Kit Burns,  whose tavern hosted nightly contests in which pit bulls killed rats and each other for the entertainment of gamblers..

But pigeon-shooting “enjoyed a different pedigree and the sanction of prestige,”  Freeberg continues.  “Along with fox hunts,  which Bergh also despised,  the shooting matches allowed wealthy American sportsmen to indulge in entertainments pursued by some of the British elite.”

Aligned with Bennett was fellow media magnate Robert Roosevelt,  editor of The Citizen,  and uncle of Theodore Roosevelt Jr.,  “the future president who would one day become America’s most famous protector and slayer of game animals,”  Freeberg recounts.

Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe hosts an annual fundraising dove shoot. See Trump booster Inhofe to host live pigeon shoot & dove hunt for details.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Bergh “expected the elite to set a good example”

“While Bergh depicted the shooters as monstrous bullies mowing down the Lord’s favored symbol of peace,  [Robert] Roosevelt and other upper-crust sporting men considered themselves manly defenders of America’s fast-vanishing wildlife,”  because their private hunting estates offered protected habitat for their favored “game” species.

“The fault line that continues to divide many sport hunters from the opponents of animal cruelty first opened wide in this debate,”  Freeberg mentions.

Bergh argued that the dogfighter Kit Burns and “arrogant millionaires like Roosevelt and James Gordon Bennett Jr. held the same view of animal cruelty:  they professed to oppose every form of it but their own.

“As a member of the same class as Bennett and his sporting comrades,”  Freeberg writes,  Bergh “thought that the privilege enjoyed by these men only made their crime worse.  He expected the elite to set a good example for the lower classes.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Bergh flinched”

Unfortunately,  “Facing the scorn of powerful men with guns,  Bergh flinched.  Suspecting that few judges would find pigeon shooting cruel or cross the men who ruled New York,”  Freeberg continues,  “Robert Roosevelt taunted Bergh,  daring him to arrest a trapshooter so that a test case might resolve the matter.  The ASPCA board authorized Bergh to take up that challenge,  but instead he withdrew.  While insisting that pigeon shooting matches were cruel,  Bergh conceded in a public letter that he had moved too far ahead of public opinion––a problem that had rarely slowed him down before.  He agreed not to interfere,  and only suggested that sportsmen should find an alternative,  nonliving target to fire upon.”

Worse,  Bergh compromised his opposition to pigeon shooting in writing,  in what proved to be a particularly self-defeating manner.

“When a [pigeon shooting] tournament was held in early 1871,”  Freeberg explains,  “Bergh sent its promoter a letter assuring him that the ASPCA would not interfere ‘for the present.’  Rather pathetically,  he asked only that his agent be allowed to help wring the necks of those birds wounded but not killed by a shot.  Bergh planned to denounce the trap shoots in print and surveil the tournaments for signs of excess cruelty,  hoping this strategy would gradually move public opinion his way.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

“The most extravagant shooting match of the age”

By December 1871,  Bergh felt emboldened.

“When Bennett’s Herald announced in December 1871 that Jerome Park in the Bronx would host ‘the most extravagant shooting match of the age,’  Bergh sent a public warning that the event was illegal and that he intended to prosecute,”  Freeberg writes.  “Perhaps he drew fresh resolve from conversations with Horace B. Claflin,  a wealthy merchant who served on the ASPCA board of directors.”

Claflin,  “whose mansion adjoined the Jerome Park shooting grounds,  offered grim first-hand testimony about the carnage produced by pigeon shoots,”  recounts Freeberg.  “On tournament days he found his lawn littered with mangled birds––some dead,  others suffering.  Claflin nursed some of them back to health and assured Bergh he would do all in his power to help put a stop to these events.”

Caged pigeons awaiting death at pigeon shoot.  (SHARK photo)

Bergh finally raided a pigeon shoot in 1872

In January 1872,  Bergh and an ASPCA deputy raided a pigeon shooting tournament organized by former minstrel singer Ira Paine at Fleetwood Park in the northern New York City suburb of Westchester.

“Bergh and his men broke up the contest,  threatening the men with arrest,”  Freeberg details.  “In defiance,  the shooters mocked Bergh and then released a couple of birds,  tossing them up in the air and blasting them to the ground.  Bergh picked up the maimed birds and held their quivering bodies up for the men to view.  They accused him of cruelty for not wringing the birds’ necks at once.

“Though Bergh disrupted the match,  he still hesitated to charge the men and initiate a test case that he expected to lose.”

Bennett then announced a pigeon shoot with a $2,000 prize,  defended by “an injunction barring Bergh and his men from interfering,” continues Freeberg.

Henry Bergh

Bergh underestimated his support

“The powerful editors of the sporting papers,”  backed by New York City mayor A. Oakley Hall,  meanwhile “called for a change in the law to strip Bergh of his authority to call for the help of the police in enforcing the anticruelty law––the foundation of his power to act.”

But Bergh seems to have had much more public and political support than he realized.

“Ever since he had broken up Ira Paine’s tournament in the winter of 1872,  a lawsuit had been winding forward,”  Freeberg mentions,  “in which the promoter demanded $1,000 in damages from Bergh to cover his financial losses.

(Beth Clifton photo)

“Bergh was probably as surprised as anyone when a judge [in 1874] dismissed Paine’s lawsuit,  declaring pigeon shooting tournaments ‘clearly illegal’ under the anticruelty law.  The court agreed with what Bergh had been saying from the start,”  Freeberg summarizes,  “that trapshooting amounted to ‘a needless mutilating and killing.’”

Of course the affluent and well-connected pigeon shooters were scarcely ready to give up.  Instead,  Bennett in 1875 promoted a pigeon shooting championship with a $10,000 prize.

This is when Bergh committed what was probably the most grievous blunder of his entire career in humane work.

(Beth Clifton photo)

Remained silent on amendment that exempted pigeon shoots

“Though Bergh’s campaign showed signs of success in court––and the court of public opinion––the cause suffered a major setback in the New York legislature in 1875,”  Freeberg writes.

“Eager to pass a law that gave him more power to shut down working class sports such as dogfights and cockfighting,”  Freeberg explains,  “Bergh pushed for an amendment allowing his agents to seize any property used by promoters of these events.  To win support for this measure,”  which appears to have rarely if ever been used,  “Bergh remained silent on another amendment,  inserted at the request of wealthy sportsmen,  that exempted pigeon shooting by ‘incorporated sportsmen’s clubs’ from the anticruelty law,  as long as the shooters took precautions to ‘immediately kill’ birds only wounded by the shot,”  as Bergh had conceded would be acceptable in his 1871 letter to the pigeon shoot promoter.

“Protected by this law,  the bird shooting tournaments continued,”  Freeberg sums up,  “and Bergh would spend years pushing for a repeal,  without success.”

Artist Barry Kent MacKay & one of his paintings of passenger pigeons.

Led to extinction of the passenger pigeon

Because Bergh had agreed to this catastrophic legislative compromise,  Freeberg adds,  “he had no legal right to intervene” when in 1881 the New York Sportsmen’s Association held a 10-day shooting tournament that annihilated more than 16,000 of the more than 20,000 passenger pigeons who were reportedly trapped for the event in Oklahoma.

This was the last great passenger pigeon flock ever seen.

Theodore Roosevelt Jr.,  the future president,  was in 1882 elected to the New York State Assembly,  and introduced a Bergh bill to ban pigeon shooting,  but “failed even to get the ASPCA a hearing before the proposal was defeated,”  Freeberg says.

Purple martin.  (Beth Clifton photo)

And no,  Bergh did not invent the “clay pigeon”

Bergh improbably blamed immigrants,  who had no involvement in pigeon shooting and little political influence in Albany,  the New York state capital,  for his humiliating defeat.

Meanwhile,  Freeberg finishes,  “As market hunting and trapshooting wiped out the vast flocks of passenger pigeons,”  whose abundance had fueled enthusiasm for pigeon shooting,  “some shooting clubs looked for other wild birds to kill.  House sparrows,  purple martins,  and even bats were tried.”

Many Bergh biographies previous to A Traitor to His Species erroneously credit to Bergh the invention of the “clay pigeon” that eventually replaced the use of passenger pigeons in trapshooting contests,  at least until rock doves were substituted.

Merritt & Beth Clifton

In truth,  Bergh and the ASPCA merely offered cash prizes to anyone who might invent an artificial “pigeon” that trapshooters would prefer to live birds,  with minimal success.

The “pigeon shooting psychopaths,”  as Hindi calls them,  have never voluntarily backed away from bloodshed,  but might have been stopped 150 years earlier,  had Bergh only stuck to his guns.

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(Beth Clifton collage)

Three-year-old suffered 15 skull fractures & broken nose and jaw in Rogers’ tiny home town

OOLOGAH, Oklahoma––“No man can be condemned for owning a dog,”  alleged humorist Will Rogers,  who also famously professed to have never met a man he didn’t like.

“As long as he has a dog, he has a friend,”  Rogers claimed,  “and the poorer he gets,  the better friend he has.  If there are no dogs in heaven,  then when I die I want to go where they went.”

Born on the Dog Iron Ranch,  two miles east of Oologah,  Oklahoma,  four years after his Cherokee parents Clem Vann Rogers and Mary America Schrimsher built the homestead,  Will Rogers (1879-1935) might have changed his mind about both dogs and men,  had he seen three-year-old Sivya White-Cook.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Week-long visit to father’s family became prolonged hospital stay

On November 20,  2020,  Sivya White-Cook suffered 15 skull fractures and a broken nose and jaw,  allegedly inflicted by her uncle Richard’s pit bull at her paternal grandmother’s home in Oologah,  “and had to have part of her face reconstructed,”  posted her maternal grandmother Jeannie Furst,  of Lawrence,  Kansas,  to GoFundMe.

Sivya White-Cook,  who lived with her mother Renee Cook in Lawrence,  was attacked “during a week of visitation with her father,”  Jeannie Furst explained.

“Her face and head are stitched,  and she is also being subjected to a series of rabies shots,  due to the lack of vaccination records for the dog. It is too early to tell if there are any brain injuries as a result of this attack,”  Furst continued.

“Rogers County Sheriff Scott Walton says Sivya was with her father,”  Michael White,  “and grandmother,”  Shannon White.  “Initially the grandmother told deputies that Sivya had been attacked by a stray dog,”  reported Jordan Tidwell of News On 6 in Tulsa,  Oklahoma,  forty miles south.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Grandmother told sheriff the pit bull was a stray

“She [Shannon White] later admitted it was their own dog who had attacked the little girl,”  Tidwell added.

“The child had moved a food bowl,  the grandmother sees the dog mauling the child,  throws herself on the dog, and also gets bit,”  Walton told Tidwell.

“We have a three-year-old victim here who did nothing wrong,”  Walton continued.  “I don’t think that little girl could visualize she was doing anything wrong when she moved a bowl of food away from an animal.”

Walton had prior experience with the Oologah branch of the Oklahoma pit bull subculture.  Eight years earlier,  in January 2012,  Walton led a raid on the Oologah home of Steven Yeubanks,  then 34,  who was charged with cropping the ears of pit bulls without a veterinary license and “trading the dogs and stolen property in five states,”  Tulsa World staff writer Zack Stoycoff summarized.

Curtis “C.J.” Wickham

Suspect tried to skull pit bull victim with TV set

Walton is also among the many Oklahoma peace officers who are on the lookout for Benjamin Ryan Spence,  34,  charged on November 10,  2020 with second-degree murder and assault with a deadly weapon,  with bail set at $525,000.

Spence on October 22,  2020 allegedly set his three pit bulls on Curtis “C.J.” Wickham,  26,  and then tried to slam homeowner Champaign Walker’s flatscreen television down on Wickham’s head as he lay dying.

“Witnesses told police Wickham was the ex-boyfriend of the owner of the home,”  reported Kelsy Schlotthauer  for the Tulsa World,  “and that he had returned in search of his cellphone.  Spence was the homeowner’s new boyfriend, and he answered the door ‘yelling’ and stepped out onto the porch before striking Wickham and starting a fight,  police were told.

“One witness described Wickham ‘getting the best of Ben (Spence)’ before they heard Spence tell his dogs to ‘sik em,’  according to a probable cause affidavit.”

Benjamin Ryan Spence is wanted in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for second degree murder.

Earlier threatened to stab victim in the face

The affidavit,  Schlotthauer wrote,  “further states that a passerby overheard the commotion and tried to intervene by striking the dogs with a wooden plank,  and that a neighbor fired a gun into the air as the passerby and the homeowner tried to ‘corral’ the dogs,  but nothing deterred the animals,”  or Wickham,  apparently.

Walker reportedly told police that “the dogs had torn Wickham’s clothing from his body and he wasn’t moving” before Spence “grabbed her flat screen TV and threw it at him,  narrowly missing his head,”  Schlotthauer recounted.

“Investigators later recovered a text message Spence had sent to the homeowner the day before,  threatening to stab Wickham in the face,”  Schlotthauer added.

The Spence pit bulls were known to be vicious.  Neighbor John Efird told media that,  “They even killed my girlfriend’s daughter’s chicken,”  leading to previous calls to police about the pit bulls’ behavior.

Walker’s three-year-old daughter was also present in the small wooden frame home during the fatal pit bull attack on Wickham.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Well-known to police

Both Wickham and Spence were well-known to police.

Wickham on January 7,  2019 was arrested as a passenger in a Chevy Malibu that had been reported stolen,  after an eight-mile,  10-minute pursuit through downtown Sand Springs,  Oklahoma.

Also arrested were the driver,  Trey Coffee,  21,  and fellow passenger Tanner Taube,  21.

Reported Tulsa Channel 2,  “Coffee made numerous traffic violations,  and then drove into an alleyway suspected as being an area used for fencing stolen metals.  Police said Coffee tried to break into a home in the area after the pursuit ended, but was unsuccessful.  About 100 pounds of [allegedly stolen] copper wire were found in Coffee’s vehicle.  Coffee had also multiple warrants for his arrest,  one of which was for walking away from a Department of Corrections halfway house.  He was arrested on eluding,  kidnapping,  and multiple other complaints.”

The kidnapping charge was apparently filed because Wickham and Taube testified that they had asked Coffee to stop and let them out of the car.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Priors

Taube had previously been charged with possession of marijuana with intent to distribute,  assault and battery,  and larceny from a retailer.

Spence,  whose pit bulls killed Wickham,  had history of having been sued in 2012 for causing injuries to others in a car crash,  and having been convicted in 2013 of possessing a firearm and ammunition after former conviction of a felony.  The latter charge,  according to court records,  came after “Tulsa police officers observed him [Spence] and three others in a hotel room with drug paraphernalia,”  and found after arresting Spence that he was also wanted on four outstanding misdemeanor warrants.

A charge of driving under the influence,  leading to a personal injury accident,  and a charge of obstructing a police officer were brought against Spence on September 15,  2019.

Rylee Marie Dodge

At least five girls mauled by pit bulls in three years

Meanwhile back in Oologah,  Sivya White-Cook joined a rapidly growing list of little girls who have been killed or disfigured by pit bulls recently in small-town Oklahoma.

For instance,  Rylee Marie Dodge,  age 3,  was fatally mauled by a pit bull in Duncan,  Oklahoma,  on January 14,  2018.  Her grandmother was injured in attempting to rescue her.  Her father,  Jason Dodge,  told Jarred Burk of RNN-Texoma that the family had only acquired the pit bull five days earlier.

Haylee Bischel,  age 7,  survived a mauling by two of a neighbor’s pit bulls that left her in critical condition on June 24,  2019,  in rural Cleveland County,  south of Oklahoma City.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Lily Davidson,  age 9,  was attacked and dragged by two loose pit bulls on October 14,  2019,  after her school bus dropped her off near her home in Kellyville,  an even smaller community than Oologah,  about as far southwest of Tulsa as Oologah is northwest.

A three-year-old who was facially mauled 50 miles north of Oologah in Caney,  Kansas on April 15,  2020 technically was not an Oklahoma victim,  but Caney is right on the state border.  The child was rushed to the nearest hospital,  the Ascension St. John Jane Phillips Medical Center in Bartlesville,  Oklahoma,  before being transferred to a Tulsa facility for more advanced treatment.

Karen Wilkerson.  (Facebook photo)

Three seniors killed by pit bulls in four years

Not all of the recent victims,  of course,  are little girls.

Cecille Short,  killed by two of a neighbor’s pit bulls while walking near her Oklahoma City home on April 6,  2017,  was 82.  The pit bulls’ owner, Demetris Burks,  32,  of Oklahoma City,  has yet to be tried on long-pending second degree manslaughter charges.

            (See Pit bull fatality leads to judge ouster in Oklahoma.)

            Karen Wilkerson, 76, of Broken Bow,  Oklahoma,  was on September 11,  2020 killed by two pit bulls apparently kept by one of her daughters.

            (Details of the case appear in Pit bull advocate involved in breeding killed in South Carolina,  the title of which pertains to a different case.)

            Wilkerson died only a dozen miles from where retired Christmas tree farmer Cledith Ray Davenport,  79,  also of a Broken Bow address,  was allegedly killed by a neighbor’s pit bull/blue heeler mixes on December 14,  2019.  One of Davenport’s schnauzers died in the same incident.

Victor Garces

Other victims

Other recent rural Oklahoma pit bull fatalities included Allen Bruce,  56,  of Bennington,  killed on September 28,  2019,  and Victor Garces,  12,  of Hollis,  killed on December 13,  2019.

(See “National Pit Bull Awareness Month” opens with two pit bull fatalities.)

            Garces may have been a schoolmate of Gage Thornhill,  then age 4,  who on October 19,  2013 suffered a skull fracture and multiple other injuries that left him unable to walk.  The Thornhill attack came just a few blocks from where Garces’ mauled body was found.

(See Pit bulls kill four in eight days approaching Christmas 2019.)

Earl Tudor & Jack Swift, 1915.

Earl Tudor legacy vs. that of Will Rogers

Much of the Oklahoma pit bull mayhem,  including that associated with drug trafficking,  can be ascribed to the legacy of Earl Tudor (1893-1977),  a much longer lived contemporary of Will Rogers,  though it is unlikely the two ever met.

Rogers left Oologah in 1901,  failed at ranching in Argentina,  succeeded in show business as a trick roper in South Africa,  and returned to the U.S. to perform at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904.

From there,  instead of turning left to go home,  Rogers turned right to go to New York City,  where he made good in vaudeville.  Rogers later crossed the U.S. to work in the Hollywood film industry,  appearing in 21 feature films,  while producing a weekly syndicated newspaper column from 1922 until his death,  adding a weekly radio broadcast to his workload in 1929

Dogfighter & pit bull breeder Earl Tudor, circa 1951.

“Lawyers and judges bought whiskey from him”

Tudor meanwhile reputedly engaged in bootlegging,  gambling,  organizing illegal prize fights,  gamecock breeding,  and,  especially,  in raising fighting pit bulls and dog fighting in Hobart,  Oklahoma,  diagonally across the state from Oologah.

According to longtime acquaintance,  fellow dogfighter,  and distant neighbor Randy Fox on Pit Bull Chat Forum,  Tudor “was not always honest in his dogfighting.  He knew all the tricks of the trade.  Scotty Nelson said Earl Tudor stole things and said he committed various crimes and he could be right.

“I am from that county,”  Fox said,  “and lived 10 miles from Earls home.  I don’t recall reading any of that in the Democrat Chief,  the Hobart newspaper.  I checked various records for his criminal doings and found none.  So if he did these things, he didn’t get arrested for them.

“He was pretty slick at getting out of trouble,”  Fox allowed.  “You will have to remember that lawyers and judges bought whiskey from him also.”

Oklahoma dogfighter & pit bull breeder Earl Tudor late in life.

Introduced others to dogfighting

Tudor notoriously got younger people started in dogfighting,  including Danny Dewayne Burton,  76,  now of Comanche,  Oklahoma.

Burton,  then residing in Duncan,  Oklahoma,  was at age 34,  in April 1978,   arraigned with three other men including fellow “name” dogfighter Donnie Wayne Mayfield,  then 21,  at Ben Wheeler,  Texas,  “after what may have been the largest raid in the bloody,  secretive history of professional dog fighting in Texas,”  according to Associated Press.

Altogether,  the raid resulted in 235 arrests.  Burton,  Mayfield,  and the two others arraigned with them were believed to have been the organizers.

That was scarcely Burton’s only bust.  At age 49,  in July 1994,  Burton and Claudia Barbara Zimmerman, 21, also known as Claudia Barbara Davis and Claudia David,  who lived with Burton,  were charged with training 11 pit bulls for dogfighting.

Merritt, Teddy, & Beth Clifton

While details of the case are unclear,  Burton was released from the Federal Correctional Institution in El Reno,  Oklahoma,  on April 15,  1999.

Generation after generation,  dog fighting,  pit bull breeding,  and selling “cur” pit bulls to fund the mayhem spread across Oklahoma.  Now children––and many others––are paying the price.

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(Beth Clifton collage)

Cockfighting promoters advertise in open defiance of the law;  SHARK demands enforcement

BIG LAUREL, Kentucky––Will sundown on Saturday,  January 2,  2021 bring a new age in Kentucky cockfighting law enforcement,  or just another hangover from a long history of police indifference toward culturally entrenched crimes,  from moonshining to wife-beating and statutory rape?

Whatever happens that evening at the Pinemountain Game Club in Big Laurel,  Harlan County,  may tell the story.

Cockfighting calendar

The Pinemountain Game Club proprietors in November 2020 allegedly published a cockfighting calendar listing 17 meets,  from November 28,  2020 to March 27,  2021.

A second page of the calendar reportedly lists further meets through June 2021.

The calendar reached the Chicago-based organization Showing Animals Respect & Kindness [SHARK] through an informant several weeks later.

That was too late for SHARK,   which specializes in high-tech investigations of animal-related crime,  to do much about the first scheduled events.

Captain Ryan Catron, Kentucky State Police Post #10,  Harlan.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Info shared with Kentucky State Police Post 10

SHARK had plenty of time,  however, to verify the information in the calendar and tip off Kentucky State Police Post 10,  including Captain Ryan Catron,  with all the particulars of the December 19,  2020 cockfighting card.

Provided to Kentucky State Police Post 10 in Harlan,  the Harlan County seat,  besides the cockfighting schedule, were maps, photographs of the location,  and even the names of some of the primary suspects.

“Our investigators were told that this cockfight would be shut down,”  recounted a SHARK media release.

“Unfortunately that’s not what happened.  We surveilled the cockfighting location,”  SHARK founder Steve Hindi said.  “At approximately 3:00 p.m.,  vehicles began arriving for the illegal fight.  The investigators drove to Troop 10 to inform the police.  The police would only say that the matter was under investigation and refused to give out any further information.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“More than 50 vehicles”

“Upon returning to the cockfight location,”  Hindi continued,  “we counted more than 50 vehicles and brought a picture of that back to Troop 10.

“Later on,”  at the advertised starting time of 7:00 p.m.,  “we counted at least 100 vehicles, meaning this was truly a major criminal event,”  Hindi said.

Irrespective of whether cockfights were underway, the gathering was clearly more than 10 times as large as the maximum size for social gatherings and more than four times the maximum size for gatherings at indoor recreation facilities,  venues,  event spaces,  and theaters announced in response to COVID-19 concerns on November 18, 2020 by Kentucky governor Andy Beshear.

Beshear reiterated his social distancing orders on December 10 and December 14,  2020.

Fighting rooster tires and doesn’t want to fight.  (Beth Clifton collage)

Cops on scene but didn’t act

There was also an evident question as to whether the Pinemountain Game Club met fire safety code requirements for hosting gatherings of that size,  especially with some of the potential fire exits blocked,  as appeared to be the case.

At approximately 8:30 p.m.,  after SHARK personnel including Hindi took documentation of the gathering to Kentucky State Police Post 10 in Harlan in person,  they  marked Kentucky state police cars and one unmarked police car,  traveling in convoy,  were observed driving slowly past the Pinemountain Game Club on Kentucky Highway 221,  but without stopping.

Were they there to interfere with the cockfighting,  or to protect it?

“I got a very tight,  cold feeling in my gut, because we went through this with the state police in June over a cockfight location in McCreary County,  Kentucky,”  Hindi said.

“This is no different,”  Hindi added,  “than during Prohibition when crooked cops took payoffs to let gang-run establishments serve alcohol.”

Woman plucking feathers of deceased gamecocks for consumption for her family
circa 1915 in Harlan County, Kentucky.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Captain Ryan Catron is put on the spot

On December 22,  2020,  Hindi personally confronted Kentucky State Police Post 10 captain Ryan Catron outside the police station in Harlan.

Catron repeatedly told Hindi,  during the videotaped discussion,  that his officers would move against the alleged illegal cockfights at the Pinemountain Game Club when they had sufficient evidence to mount a successful criminal prosecution against all of the people involved.

Hindi emphasized that mounting a successful prosecution of the suspects is of secondary concern to SHARK.  As an animal protection organization,  Hindi explained to Catron,  what SHARK and allied organizations including the Humane Farming Association want is for cockfighting to be prevented;  for cockfights to not be held.

“From the very beginning of our Crush Cockfighting campaign,”  Hindi told Steve Rogers of WTVQ in Harlan,  “we knew the real challenge was simply to get the police to enforce already existing laws.  Cockfighting only flourishes in places where there is rampant police corruption,  which is why cockfighting flourishes in Kentucky like no other place in the country.”

Gamecock chicks.  (Facebook photo)

Harlan County Public Health Department also sidesteps

Harlan County Health Department director Bobbie Crider showed no more active interest in preventing mass gatherings at cockfights than did police captain Ryan Catron.

Emailed complainant Katherine Peters to Crider,  “The fact that this many people are being allowed to gather on a weekly basis is a threat to public health.  It’s highly likely some of these people are coming from other counties or even across state lines,”  especially from Virginia and Tennessee,  each less than an hour’s drive away,  “and therefore risking the spread of Covid-19 into Harlan County and elsewhere.  Attendees are literally risking the lives of people just so they can gamble and fight animals.”

Responded Crider,  “I have reviewed and discussed the event mentioned in your email.  At the current time we are recommending that non-compliance issues in violation of Governor Beshear’s Covid-19 orders that are outside of our jurisdiction be reported the safer hotline at 1-833-kysafer.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Most law-abiding community to be found anywhere”

Thus the scene seems to be set for an impending “Showdown at the Pinemountain Game Club,”  built within recent years from weathered barn boards,  to blend inconspicuously into a “holler” at the end of a dead-end road descending from Kentucky Highway 221,  a quarter mile south of Big Laurel.

An unincorporated crossroads hamlet,  settled in 1820,  Big Laurel has ironically boasted in tourist literature of being “the most law-abiding community to be found anywhere,”  in which “there has never been a murder,  an attempt at murder,  or even a serious quarrel or fight between its citizens.”

Founders Rafe Kilgore and Milly Wheatley married,  journeyed to the vicinity,  and built their homestead of beech logs soon after Milly killed a bear with a skillet in an unexpected confrontation at her father’s home in Rye Cove,  Scott County,  Virginia.

James Taylor Adams & wife, the former Dicy Roberts.

James Taylor Adams

Two of her brothers and a man named Joseph Addington arrived soon afterward.  Several generations of their intermarried families established and built the community for 92 years before it gained a name from 20-year-old local journalist James Taylor Adams (1892-1954),  who managed to eke out a living by writing despite having only a second grade education.

Adams,  at 16 in 1908,  had married local girl Dicy Roberts.

Four years into his marriage,  Adams realized that having a local post office would be a convenience in helping him to sell articles to out-of-town newspapers.

Adams and 12 other residents who joined Adams in petitioning for a post office were authorized to start one,  on condition that the community have a name.

They picked Big Laurel,  apparently unaware that another Big Laurel was already established just 50 miles east,  in Virginia.  The two communities have often been confused with each other ever since.

James Taylor Adams.  (Beth Clifton collage)

Never wrote about cockfighting

After literally putting Big Laurel on the map,  Adams went on to become a pioneering folklorist and genealogist.

Also a teacher and librarian,  Adams is best remembered for collecting local stories and family histories throughout the Appalachian region for the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression.

But electronic searches of Adams’ writings,  including 539 of his syndicated “Appalachian Tales” newspaper columns,  show just a dozen mentions of roosters in any context,  and no mention at all of the terms “cockfight,”  “gamecock,”  or “gamefowl.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Cockfighters lost their pants & $50,000

During the same years Adams’ column appeared,  however,  Kentucky cockfights were frequently busted,  and machine gun-toting bandits driving a stolen car absconded with $50,000 and the pants of 25 participants at a May 1950 cockfight in Henderson,  Kentucky.  Owned by one A.J. “Hootch” Crawford,  a former bootlegger,  that cockpit was located five and a half hours’ drive west of Big Laurel.

Cockfighting appears to have become established in tiny and then-sober Big Laurel long after Adams’ death.

Be that as it may,  cockfighting was deeply entrenched in Harlan County and within local law enforcement by the time SHARK and In Defense of Animals on August 26,  2019 jointly announced the debut of the “Crush Cockfighting” campaign.

(SHARK image)

Cockfighting jailers

The first two cockfighting suspects identified by SHARK were Harlan County Detention Center employees Ronnie Bennett and Kyle Simpson,  who are also father and son.

Bennett and Simpson,  Hindi charged,  “run a fighting rooster operation called the Cuttin Up Game Farm.  The evidence in this case is quite strong,”  Hindi wrote, “supplied by the suspects themselves via Facebook posts. The pictures and posts are extensive and irrefutable.  The suspects obviously feel they have nothing to fear from Harlan County officials.”

Eighteen months later,  this appears to be still true.  ANIMALS 24-7 has discovered no indication that either Bennett or Simpson has been disciplined or prosecuted for cockfighting-related activity.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Court settlement in Monterey County, California

SHARK and the Humane Farming Association,  as co-plaintiffs,  have had a comparably frustrating time in exposing cockfighting in Monterey County,  California.

However,  Vanessa Shakib,  co-director of the Redondo Beach-based organization Advancing Law for Animals,  on December 18,  2020 claimed “a victory in our cockfighting case against Monterey County,”  she told ANIMALS 24-7,  after Monterey County settled a lawsuit that Shakib filed on behalf of SHARK and the Humane Farming by pledging “to crack down on cockfighting.  Monterey County has agreed to a list of enforcement benchmarks,”  Shakib said.  “We will be working with the county collaboratively to make sure these benchmarks are met.”

Grand jury found that John Ramirez (foreground) impeded enforcement of Monterey ordinance governing cock-breeding.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Obstructionist John Ramirez is still there

A 2019 Monterey County Civil Grand Jury Report found that a Monterey County ordinance governing rooster-keeping,  adopted in 2014,  had gone unenforced for five years while country public health director all but dismantled it by introducing bureaucratic procedures that circumvented the intent of the ordinance.

Simultaneously,  Ramirez used budget cuts to dismantle the Monterey County animal control department.

Ramirez is still there,  but Shakib is optimistic that his antipathy toward enforcing the rooster-keeping ordinance can be circumvented.

“As you know,”  Shakib emailed to ANIMALS 24-7,  “the 2019 Monterey County Civil Grand Jury Report found the ordinance failed for three main reasons:  lack of leadership and oversight from the Bureau of Sanitation and the Health Department, hindrance to implementation and enforcement created by a process developed by Environmental Health Bureau, and the unwillingness of multiple agencies to enforce it.

Tethered gamecock.
(Facebook photo)

The one sure bet on cockfighting appears to be that there will be more litigation

“Our agreement with Monterey County bypasses these impediments,”  Shakib said,  “by creating a path forward with structure,  procedure,  and oversight.  We note,  as but one example,  the formation of a task force including Monterey County Counsel,  Animal Services,  the District Attorney’s office,  the [Monterey County] SPCA,  the Sheriff’s office, the Resource Management Agency,  and a Board of Supervisors representative.

“Key to this agreement is the collaboration and oversight built into it,”  Shakib finished.  We will be working with the county and receiving updates as to the progress of the benchmarks agreed upon.  In the event these benchmarks are not met,  we will resume litigation.”

Beth & Merritt Clifton

In light of the verifiable 250-year history of cockfighting in Monterey County,  and the lack of anti-cockfighting law enforcement there throughout the century-plus that cockfighting has been illegal in California,  that further litigation will eventually follow seems a sure bet.

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Hatfield clan in 1897.  (Beth Clifton collage)

Showing Animals Respect & Kindness founder Steve Hindi is bloodied & drone lost in Wayne National Forest––a federal jurisdiction

            WATERLOO, Ohio––Ambushed by at least four alleged assailants while sending a Showing Animals Respect & Kindness (SHARK) drone aloft to videotape the crowd at what he told ANIMALS 24-7 was by far the biggest cockfight he had ever investigated,  SHARK founder Steve Hindi on the morning of January 3,  2021 suffered a broken rib and head injuries requiring six surgical staples.

Hindi was treated at the St. Mary’s Medical Center in nearby Ironton,  Ohio,  and released in early afternoon.

Among the first casualties of the attack was the destruction of the drone controller,  leaving the drone in mid-air to continue videotaping and relaying a GPS location signal until the batteries powering it ran out of electricity perhaps hours later.

The crashed drone appears to have been recovered by the suspected cockfighters.

Incident location, a mile east of Waterloo, Ohio.
(SHARK photo)

Alleged cockfight was on in-holding

The indicated location was Wayne National Forest property,  a federal jurisdiction,  near 366 Wiseman Cemetery Hill Road,  an in-holding agricultural property where a large concentration of vehicles of suspected cockfighters had already been videotaped.

The site is about a mile west of Waterloo,  Ohio,  in Lawrence County near the Jackson and Gallia County lines.

Voter registration records identify five residents of 366 Wiseman Cemetery Road:

Jimmie Harris,  age 23,  and four individuals named Newcomb:  Hannah,  Rebecca,  and two individuals named James,  ages 22,  42,  20,  and 53,  respectively.

Unclear is whether any of these five people were actually present or involved in the alleged cockfight.

Steve Hindi’s head injuries.  (SHARK photo)

Truck driver blocked escape

The four-or-more men who jumped Hindi also tore a body camera off of him and smashed a Sony camera he was carrying,  apparently not realizing they were generating more potential evidence against themselves while committing further criminal offenses,  Hindi told ANIMALS 24-7.

Escaping a blizzard of boots coming from all directions,  Hindi said,  he fled to the nearest road and asked for help from the driver of a tractor-trailer rig who had just backed across the road in front of him.

The driver instead positioned the rig to keep the road blocked,  while the attackers caught up and resumed beating and kicking Hindi.

SHARK investigator was run off the road.
(SHARK photo)

Second SHARK investigator was run off the road

Again shaking himself loose,  Hindi tumbled down a steep slope to nearby Johns Creek,  where he found cover and hid until his cell phone rang,  informing him that a second SHARK investigator in the vicinity had been run off the road by suspected cockfighters.

The suspected cockfighters looted the wrecked vehicle and smashed a variety of camera and drone equipment that the vehicle was carrying.

The third SHARK investigator,  in a different vehicle,  was already en route to get help in person,  since there seemed to be no local cell telephone reception.

The Ohio State Police responded to an accident report,  but turned the criminal investigation over to the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Department.

The Lawrence County Sheriff’s Department had been tipped that the cockfight was expected to occur,  but was not on the scene.

(Beth Clifton collage)

FBI and USDA-APHIS have authority, if they use it

As in the attack on Hindi himself,  the attackers who ran the second SHARK investigator off the road left more clues to their identities than they realized––if,  that is,  the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Department and other law enforcement agencies are inclined to do their jobs.

Since Wayne National Forest is mostly federal property,  administrated by the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture,  the primary law enforcement jurisdictions would appear to be those of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the USDA Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service.

The FBI and USDA-APHIS share responsibility for enforcing the Animal Fighting Prohibition Enforcement Act of 2007.  This law made cockfighting and cockfighting-related activities occurring on property under federal jurisdiction a federal felony offense,  as is cockfighting-related activity that crosses state lines.

Clay County, Kentucky sheriffs deputies were videotaped by SHARK at a cockfight.

Collusion with cockfighters

Recent Showing Animals Respect & Kindness investigations in the region,  chiefly just to the south in Kentucky,  have turned up repeated instances of law enforcement personnel apparently colluding with cockfighters,  instead of preventing or breaking up cockfights and making arrests.

Having obtained a schedule of cockfights purportedly to be held at the Pinemountain Game Club in Big Laurel,  Harlan County,  Kentucky,  from November 28,  2020 through June 2021,  SHARK shared the information with Kentucky State Police Post 10,  the nearest to Big Laurel,  along with extensive further information,  and understood that Post 10 would act to stop the December 19,  2020 cockfighting card.

“Our investigators were told that this cockfight would be shut down,”  recounted a SHARK media release.

Instead the cockfights occurred as scheduled,  uninterrupted,  while three police cars in convoy were seen cruising slowly past the Pinemountain Game Club without stopping.

Two cockfights apparently not held

The number of people at the Pinemountain Game Club,  indicated by the number of parked cars at the remote location,  was clearly more than 10 times as large as the maximum size for social gatherings and more than four times the maximum size for gatherings at indoor recreation facilities,  venues,  event spaces,  and theaters announced in response to COVID-19 concerns on November 18, 2020 by Kentucky governor Andy Beshear.

The next Pinemountain Game Club cockfighting card was scheduled for Saturday,  January 2,  2021,  but as SHARK personnel observed,  the building remained closed and dark.

            (See Cockfighting in Kentucky: showdown on January 2, 2021.)

            Hindi told ANIMALS 24-7 that SHARK personnel apparently succeeded in persuading law enforcement to stop another cockfighting event from taking place on New Year’s Day,  January 1,  2021 in nearby McCreary County.

Alleged cockfighters were seen arriving and setting up,  only to leave soon afterward after a visit from a police cruiser.

(Beth Clifton collage)

What did the Wayne National Forest ranger corps know?

ANIMALS 24-7 has inquired as to whether the Wayne National Forest ranger corps had previously become aware of illegal cockfighting going on there.

ANIMALS 24-7 also asked the Wayne National Forest ranger corps if there have been previous incidents within the forest in which birders,  hikers,  and others using drones or camera equipment were violently accosted.

The Wayne National Forest ranger corps responses,  if any,  will be reported when received.

Jailers in Harlan County, Kentucky,  with their gamecocks.  (SHARK image)

Longtime criminal pursuit, not cultural tradition

Despite the frequent pretense of cockfighters that cockfighting is a regional tradition,  the weight of historical evidence indicates that it has never been more than a deeply entrenched criminal pursuit.

University of Kentucky historian Joseph R. Jones in “Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Recovering the History of Cockfighting in Kentucky,” published in the Winter 1997 editor of the Kentucky Review, https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/232574292.pdf,  noted that “The excellent new Kentucky Encyclopedia (1992) does not even contain the word cockfighting in its survey of the sports of Kentuckians ancient and modern.”

This confirmed the complete absence of cockfighting from any mention in the works of Kentucky’s most eminent folklorist, James Taylor Adams (1892-1954),  who actually spent most of his life in Big Laurel,  almost within sight of the Pinemountain Game club,  built so recently that the building does not appear on all current satellite-generated topographical maps.

The Waterloo Wonders starters were Curtis McMahon, Beryl Drummond, Orlyn Roberts, Wyman Roberts, and Steward Wiseman.

Waterloo Wonders were basketball legend

Waterloo,  Ohio,  meanwhile,  a 200-year-old unincorporated community in southeastern Symmes Township,  is near the very center of the Wayne National Forest,  federally designated in 1934,  and is today chiefly associated with hiking, camping,  birding,  off-highway vehicle use,  mountain biking,  and horseback riding.

Earlier,  Waterloo was legendary among sports buffs as home of the Waterloo Wonders,  who won Ohio state basketball championships in both 1934 and 1935,  despite the Waterloo high school,  closed in 1960,  having had only 26 students.

Wrote Thomas Kunkel of the Wonders in the February 6,  1995 edition of Sports Illustrated,  “Imagine the Harlem Globetrotters.  Now imagine them as five short,  white,  teenage farm boys.

Ran up a 94-3 record

“In two remarkable seasons,”  Kunkel continued,  “Waterloo played nearly 100 games,  winning all but three,  most of them on the road against much bigger schools.  In one stretch the team won seven games in nine days;  it boasted a 56-game winning streak.

“At a time when basketball was still in its formative,  stand-around stage,  with a center jump after each basket, the Wonders were like five Depression-era Bob Cousys, mesmerizing opponents and audiences alike with their ball handling,  complex offensive schemes,  trick-shot artistry and good-natured pranks.”

One team member accepted a basketball scholarship,  attending Rio Grande College and Ohio University.

The others turned pro,  barnstorming against the Globetrotters,  the Harlem Rens (formally called the New York Renaissance Five),  the Philadelphia Sphas,  and the New York Celtics,  whom they beat in their third meeting before a Cleveland crowd of 7,000.

Drone video of cars at alleged cockfight in Pine Knot, Kentucky.
(From SHARK video.)

“Inadequate punishment could make Ohio a haven for cockfighting”

The Waterloo Wonders won extensive news coverage,  but while the players told many a colorful story of their backgrounds,  none ever so much as mentioned cockfighting or roosters in any context.

Neither does the major newspaper serving Lawrence County appear to have ever had any sympathy for cockfighters.

Beth & Merritt Clifton

Editorialized the Ironton Tribune on April 16,  2008,  when it last addressed the subject,  “Inadequate punishment for cockfighting and an absurd federal lawsuit [later thrown out of court] that aims to legalize the repugnant enterprise of animal fighting could make Ohio a haven for cockfighting and, consequently,  a national laughingstock.”

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(Beth Clifton collage)

Suspects were videotaped in the act of committing an array of apparent state,  local,  and federal offenses

Now,  will local cops charge them?

            WATERLOO, Ohio––Showing Animals Respect & Kindness [SHARK] at 9:35 a.m. west coast time on January 5,  2021 posted video of alleged cockfighters violently assaulting SHARK founder Steve Hindi,  destroying SHARK equipment,  and running a second SHARK investigator’s vehicle off a road just west of Waterloo,  Ohio,  near the center of Wayne National Forest.

(See Investigators survive ambush attack at alleged cockfight in Ohio.)

James V. “Bub” Newcomb II,  Richard B. “Bubba” Newcomb,  and Scott Aldridge at the crime scene.

Matched suspects’ photos

By 11:35 a.m. ANIMALS 24-7 investigator Beth Clifton,  a former police officer,  had achieved photo identification of all three of the primary suspects:  James V. “Bub” Newcomb II,  53,  of Waterloo;  Richard B. “Bubba” Newcomb,  46,  of Ironton,  the Lawrence County seat;  and Scott Aldridge,  38,  of Pedro,  an unincorporated community seven miles east of Waterloo.

SHARK had already delivered the images from which ANIMALS 24-7 developed the identifications to the sheriff’s department in Lawrence County,  Ohio,  more than 24 hours earlier.

All three men should have been well-known to the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Department,  in connection with multiple alleged offenses going back at least to 1999.

James V. “Bub” Newcomb II at upper left,  with wife Rebecca “Becki” at upper right.

Newcomb Game Farm

The SHARK video,  made public at https://youtu.be/M8hIIczNeOA,  shows the three men committing a variety of actions which could potentially bring state,  local,  and––because the alleged offenses were committed on federal property and involved federal air space––federal criminal charges.

The video shows that first the man identified as James V. Newcomb II approached Hindi,  who appeared to be on the Lawrence County public road right-of-way,  near the entrance to the property at 366 Wiseman Cemetery Hill Road.

Newcomb and his wife Rebecca “Becki” Newcomb operate the Newcomb Game Farm at this address.  Becki Newcomb is secretary of the Ohio Game Bird Association,  headquartered at the same address.

The gate demarcating the end of public access and the beginning of private property is visible in the background,  some distance away.

Richard Newcomb.  (Facebook photo)

Lawrence County Sheriff was tipped, but did not respond

The Newcomb Game Farm is an in-holding agricultural property within the Wayne National Forest.

Tipped off,  along with the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Department,  that a cockfight would be underway there,  the SHARK team had already videotaped a large concentration of vehicles of suspected cockfighters on the scene.

The SHARK team understood that Lawrence County Sheriff’s deputies would soon arrive––which they did not.

Hindi,  who had just launched a drone that was broadcasting video images and GPS location data,  asked the man identified as James V. Newcomb II if he could help him.

Incident location, a mile east of Waterloo, Ohio. (SHARK photo)

Assault began with FAA violation

The man identified as James V. Newcomb II cursed Hindi,  forcibly taking the drone controller from Hindi,  and smashed the drone controller against a mailbox labeled “Newcomb.”

Hindi advised the man identified as James V. Newcomb II that interfering with a drone in flight is a violation of Federal Aviation Agency regulations,  since it can cause a dangerous crash.

This  was only the first of the several potential federal offenses that Newcomb II and the other men allegedly committed.

Steve Hindi’s head injuries.
(SHARK photo)

Beat, kicked, & threatened to kill Hindi

The man identified as James V. Newcomb II and the man identified as Richard B. Newcomb then repeatedly beat,  kicked, and threatened to kill Hindi,  in clearly audible statements.  Hindi suffered head injuries,  a broken rib,  and internal injuries.

The video shows other suspected cockfighters in the background,  urging the attackers on.

Scott Aldridge.  (Facebook photo)

The man identified as Scott Aldridge appears to be physically blocking Hindi from retreating further down the road.

Both of the Newcomb men and Aldridge are all significantly bigger than Hindi.

Chased car with pickup truck

The SHARK video resumes with footage from another SHARK investigator’s internally mounted vehicle camera.  Two suspects appearing to be the Newcomb men chased the investigator’s car,  ramming it repeatedly with a pickup truck bearing the Ohio license plate number HIL 1286.

Eventually the investigator’s vehicle was run off the road,  suffering extensive damage.  An initial insurance report declared the vehicle “totaled,”  SHARK said.

James & Becki Newcomb.  (Facebook photos.)

James Newcomb

Public records indicate that a James Newcomb was charged with domestic violence in Cincinnati on September 1,  1999,  but the charge was dropped three weeks later.

A James Newcomb was charged with littering on October 27,  2001,  also in the Cincinnati area.

A James Newcomb was charged with drug abuse and possession of drug paraphernalia on March 11,  2005 in Portsmouth,  Ohio.  The paraphernalia charge was dropped after this James Newcomb pleaded guilty to the drug abuse charge.

Damage to SHARK vehicle.  (SHARK photo)

People of convictions

Arrested on July 19,  2010,  James and Rebecca Newcomb,  both of 366 Township Road 267,  Waterloo, Ohio,  on February 17,  2011 pleaded not guilty to trafficking in marijuana,  a fourth degree felony.  James Newcomb was released from custody on $50,000 bond.

Rebecca Newcomb reversed her plea to guilty on March 24,  2011,  and was sentenced to a six-month suspended jail term plus three years on probation.

James Newcomb was convicted on April 6,  2011.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Richard Blake Newcomb

A Charles Newcomb,  who may be the same Charles Newcomb who was charged on March 17,  2009 with trafficking in marijuana,  on April 4,  2014 sued “James Newcomb et al” for personal injury,  seeking damages in excess of $25,000.  This case may have been settled out of court.

Richard Blake Newcomb,  apparently divorced in 1993,  2006,  and 2017,  was subject of a domestic violence petition in 1996.

The Ironton Tribune reported on June 29,  2016 that Richard Newcomb had been arrested after a woman “alleged her husband grabbed her by the arm,  broke her cell phone,  and tried to ram her with his vehicle and threw a soda bottle at her,  hit her car and tried to strike her and threatened to beat her up during child exchange.”

Scott Aldridge

Scott Aldridge

Scott Aldridge and his father Otis Aldridge are known to police in a somewhat different context:  as victims of “burglary with a firearm specification and two counts of felonious assault stemming from an incident on November 23,  2009 during which” one Clifton West,  then 21,  “burst into a neighbor’s home and shot two men there.”

West’s attorney,  Mike Gliechauf,  told Lawrence County Common Pleas Court judge Charles Cooper that the incident was “a situation where a 20-year-old man was drinking large quantities of whiskey,  maybe using pills,  there was an altercation and a tragic accident happened.”

Cooper sentenced West to serve 12 years in state prison,  including three years for felonious use of a firearm.

Suspects James V. “Bub” Newcomb II and Richard B. “Bubba” Newcomb captured on SHARK video. Note the name “Newcomb” on the mailbox.

Damages could exceed value of Newcomb Game Farm

The SHARK video appears to show James V. “Bubba” Newcomb II either in possession of a handgun or feigning possession of a handgun in initially approaching Hindi.

Regardless of the disposition of the many criminal charges that the January 3,  2020 SHARK video appears to document,  Hindi told ANIMALS 24-7 that the day in court he is most anticipating will come in response to a civil suit to be brought against the Newcombs and Aldridge for extensive personal injuries and property damage.

The total,  including hospital bills,  loss of a $20,000 drone,  a vehicle worth as much as $35,000,  and various other high-end drone and camera equipment,  could exceed the estimated $140,000 value of the 366 Wiseman Cemetery Hill Road property.

Beth & Merritt Clifton

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(Beth Clifton collage)

Recurring pattern continues to elude the animal care-and-control community,  much of law enforcement,  mass media,  and the public

            NEW YORK CITY,  N.Y.––Social distancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic kept people and dogs home in 2020,  cutting reported dog attacks on other animals by more than half in 2020 from the annual average since ANIMALS 24-7 began tracking the numbers in 2013––but the recurring pattern of pit bulls accounting for approximately 90% of dog attack fatalities and injuries to other animals was practically unchanged.

Exactly 90% of reported fatal dog attacks on other dogs in 2020 were inflicted by pit bulls,  as were 87% of reported fatal dog attacks on cats and 87% of reported fatal dog attacks on other animals overall.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Ignoring the body count

The recurring pattern of denial of the realities of pit bull attacks on other animals was also unchanged in 2020.  Again the animal care-and-control community,  much of law enforcement,  mass media,  and the public continued to deny the magnitude of the pit bull contribution to fatal and disfiguring dog attacks on other animals,  echoing denial of the realities of pit bull attacks on humans.

Altogether,  since ANIMALS 24-7 began logging fatal and disfiguring dog attacks on humans in 1982,  pit bulls,  accounting for barely 5% of the U.S. and Canadian dog population,  have accounted for 58% of human deaths from dog attacks and 76% of disfiguring injuries.

The pit bull toll on humans through 2020 included 518 deaths and 5,048 disfigurements,  continuing a pattern retrospectively evident at least as far back as 1833.

(See Dog attack deaths & maimings, U.S. & Canada, 1982-2020 log.)

Susanne Craig and Chloe.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Even New York Times writer overlooks the obvious

Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times investigative financial reporter Susanne Craig,  who should be good with numbers but cited none,  published a typical example of denial of the truth of pit bull attacks on other animals on January 26,  2021.

Craig lamented at length that a pit bull named Jasper badly injured her 12-year-old Labrador/basset hound mix Chloe,  adopted,  she said,  “from a shelter in New Jersey more than a decade ago.”

Jasper was running at large despite a multi-year history of repeated previous attacks on dogs and other humans,  including Chloe on a previous occasion and Craig’s brother David.

Jasper––again––left his owners’ property to attack Chloe without provocation.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Queen Elizabeth I preferred pit bulls to Shakespeare

Jasper’s behavior should not have surprised anyone,  even the first time he jumped someone or lunged at another dog.  Attacking other dogs and humans is precisely what pit bulls have been bred to do at least since Elizabethan times,  nearly 500 years ago.

Nothing about dog breeding or behavior is better documented.  Indeed,  canine pedigrees appear to have originated with the line-breeding practices of “dog men” in their quest to produce ever more aggressive and efficient killers.

In Elizabethan England,  dogfighting and bear-baiting at the Paris Gardens drew far bigger audiences,  including Queen Elizabeth I herself and her court,  than the plays of William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson,  offered nightly at the Globe Theater right next door.

In the New World,  pit bull ancestors unleashed by Spanish conquistadors terrorized Native Americans and enslaved Africans who survived capture and the journey to plantations.

(Beth Clifton photo)

Faults only lack of leash

Wrote Craig,  “In the days after the attack I heard from friends who felt that Jasper’s being a pit bull was to blame.  I fault only the owners,  who failed to leash Jasper.”   Jasper when the attack began was on the owners’ porch,  across a “sprawling front yard” from Chloe,  Craig,  and her friend.

A normal dog,  of any other lineage,  might have risen to investigate passers-by.  A normal dog might have run toward the passers-by––but not to attack them.  A normal dog would not have lunged immediately for Chloe’s throat,  as year after year the ANIMALS 24-7 data on dogs attacking other dogs demonstrates.

Mastiff/pit bull mix.  (Beth Clifton photo)

Eight dog breeds other than pits

Only eight dog breeds other than pit bulls figured in reported fatal dog attacks on other dogs in 2020,  all of them in statistically insignificant numbers:  border collie,  bullmastiff,  Dogo Argentino,  German shepherd,  husky,  Labrador retriever,  Malamute,  and just one atypical Vizla.

Of these,  bullmastiffs and Dogo Argentinos share recent ancestry with pit bulls.

Of the dogs exhibiting German shepherd,  husky,  and Labrador ancestry,  75% were indeterminately mixed with something else,  with pit bull a strong likelihood.

Michael Vick

“If your mother says she loves you,  get a second source”

Craig,  despite her credentials as an investigative financial reporter,  ignored the mountains of data indicting pit bulls,  much of it readily accessible at the ANIMALS 24-7 Pit bull data link,  and instead reinforced her own ignorance by referencing one of the more notorious items of pit bull advocacy propaganda in widespread circulation since 2015:

“After Chloe was attacked,”  Craig wrote,  “I watched The Champions,  a documentary about the fate of the pit bulls abused by Michael Vick,  the professional football player who served time in federal prison for operating an illegal dogfighting operation.  Dozens of pit bulls were seized and rehomed.  The movie is a testament to the idea that many dogs, regardless of breed or the conditions they were raised in,  can be rehabilitated with proper attention,  training and love.”

Craig evidently missed the once frequent newsroom admonition that “If your mother says she loves you,  get a second source.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Liz Marsden

One second source Craig should have consulted,  dog trainer Liz Marsden,  “worked for the Washington Animal Rescue League in 2007 when eleven of the Michael Vick pit bulls were kept there for several months, pending permanent resolution,”  Marsden recounted for ANIMALS 24-7 in her guest column Pit bull wisdom & dog pound foolishness,  posted in 2015,  concurrent with the first release of The Champions.

“Of the 48 seized Vick dogs, who were dispersed to eight rescue organizations for adoption,  ‘rehabilitation,’  or lifetime care in ‘sanctuaries,’”  Marsden detailed,  “one was euthanized due to ‘severe aggression.’

“Twenty-two,”  featured in The Champions,  went to the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Utah.  Twelve of those were deemed ineligible for placement in homes,  and were essentially sentenced to lifetime solitary confinement at Best Friends,”  Marsden wrote.

“In 2010, two of those dogs broke out of their enclosure and were injured in a dog fight in which a third pit bull (not a Vick dog) was killed.”

Liz Marsden. (Facebook photo)

“Scattered to the winds”

Continued Marsden,  “Ten of the Vick pit bulls who were sent to Best Friends were later adopted out to homes, some with children and other pets.  If any of them have injured or killed anyone,  I haven’t heard of it.  But I worked with some of these dogs,”  Marsden mentioned,  “and I would not have been comfortable recommending any of them for adoption.

“The remaining 25 Vick dogs, those who did not go to Best Friends,”  Marsden recounted, “were scattered to the winds among rescue groups in several states.”

What became of them is completely undocumented.  In North Carolina in October 2011 a pit bull claimed by the owner to have been one of the Michael Vick pit bulls bit a child’s face,  inflicting disfiguring injuries.  Then-Best Friends president Gregory Castle told ANIMALS 24-7 that the pit bull and owner were unknown to Best Friends,  but the pit bull in question may well have been among those who were “scattered to the winds.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Under-reporting

Social distancing in 2020 contributed to the paradox that disfiguring dog attacks,  including by pit bulls,  dropped by 62%,  even as dog attack fatalities soared to the second highest annual total on record,  including the second highest total of pit bull attack fatalities.

This appears to have been an artifact of under-reporting of nonfatal dog attacks and especially nonfatal pit bull attacks occurring within homes and families.

Human fatalities due to dog attack are usually extensively reported,  but insurance industry data consistently shows that about 25 times more payouts are made in claims for injuries inflicted by dogs than there are cases of disfigurement due to dog attack reported by news media.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Compensating for under-reporting

Under-reporting,  even in “normal” years,  is more frequent in cases of dogs killing or injuring other animals.

ANIMALS 24-7 accordingly derives our estimates of the numbers of animals killed by dogs each year,  and the numbers killed by pit bulls,  through a multi-step process meant to compensate for under-reporting.

First,  ANIMALS 24-7 logs dog attacks on other animals reported by electronic media each and every day throughout the year,  in the same manner as we log fatal and disfiguring dog attacks on humans.

As dog attacks on other animals are much less likely to be considered newsworthy than attacks in which humans are killed or disfigured,  ANIMALS 24-7 estimates that reported dog-against-animal attacks are not more than 4% (one in 25) of the total number of cases in which an insurance payout would be made if a human had been the victim.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Considerations

Experience has demonstrated,  as more fully explained in previous years’ data summaries,  that dog attacks on animals receiving electronic media notice are almost exclusively incidents in which a human was also killed or injured;  law enforcement or other intervenors killed the attacking dog;  and/or the dog attack caused the death(s) of animals valued at more than $1,000.

Further,  dog attacks on other animals belonging to the same household are usually not reported at all.

            ANIMALS 24-7 presumes that for every dog attack that is reported,  meeting the criteria for making an insurance claim if a human had been the victim,  at least one dog attack on another animal occurs within the same household as the dog,  and at least one other dog attack occurs in which a person is not killed or injured,  no one kills the attacking dog,  and/or the dead or injured animal is not valued at more than $1,000.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Geometry

Therefore our final figure is reported attacks multiplied by 25,  to compensate for the gap between reported attacks and hypothetically possible insurance payouts if the victims were human,  and then again by three to compensate for under-reporting of dog attacks that do not meet the criteria for hypothetically possible insurance payouts.

This amounts to reported attacks multiplied by 75,  a ratio which so far appears to be consistent with local data,  where available,  on the frequency of dog attacks on other animals vs. local media reporting.

The process parallels a familiar geometry problem,  in which one tries to calculate the mass of an iceberg from knowing the altitude of the tip of the iceberg above sea level.

Sea captains in Arctic and Antarctic waters resolve this problem through a similar process hundreds of times a day.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Avoiding the fate of the Titanic

The tip is the number of reported dog attacks on other animals.  Sea level is the ratio of reported dog attacks on humans to insurance payouts.

Comparing these two known values to each other produces an estimate of the slope of the iceberg.

Knowing that about two-thirds of an iceberg is below sea level permits making an estimate accurate enough that it keeps ships whose captains look out for icebergs afloat,  whereas for the Titanic it was full speed ahead and damn the consequences.

Fluctuations in the estimated numbers of dog attacks on other animals in comparing data from year to year are inevitable in extrapolating from the relatively low number of reported dog attacks on other animals to estimate national totals.

Beth,  Merritt,  & Teddy Clifton.

Thus the numbers from any one year are likely to be less representative than the average from multiple years.

With that much said,  because the abnormally low number of reported dog attacks on other animals in 2020 has depressed the annual averages since 2013,  the averages offered in the two tables below may be on the low side.

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(Beth Clifton collage)

Who enforces “victories” won by the Humane Society of the United States? 

Stop Animal Exploitation Now, Showing Animals Respect & Kindness, & the Humane Farming Association are trying.

            SALT LAKE CITY,  LEXINGTON,  BOSTON––Some animal advocacy organizations with multi-million-dollar-a-year-plus incomes attract donors by the hundreds of thousands through winning passage of laws that they then appear to do little or nothing to enforce.

The Humane Society of the U.S. comes immediately to mind.

Other animal advocacy organizations with multi-million-dollar-a-year-plus incomes––the American SPCA and Massachusetts SPCA come immediately to mind––have in recent years surrendered the law enforcement authority they once had to cut expenses.

            (See ASPCA cedes lead role in New York City humane law enforcement to police and Massachusetts SPCA is also transferring law enforcement duties to local police.)

(Beth Clifton collage)

Asking law enforcement agencies to do their jobs

That leaves pushing for effective enforcement of laws already on the books largely to small,  underfunded,  relatively obscure organizations such as Stop Animal Exploitation Now,  Showing Animals Respect & Kindness,  and the Humane Farming Association,  whose current campaigns consist largely of just asking law enforcement agencies to do their jobs.

This tends to be much more difficult and at times downright dangerous than lobbying.

Simultaneously on February 8,  2021,  both Stop Animal Exploitation Now and Showing Animals Respect & Kindness released documents to media reinforcing their contention that animal use-and-abuse industries are inadequately held to obeying the letter of the law,  albeit in far different contexts.

Michael & Karen Budkie.

Pursuing Animal Welfare Act violations

Stop Animal Exploitation Now,  founded in Cincinnati in 1996 and led ever since by husband-and-wife Michael and Karen Budkie,  monitors animal use in biomedical research.  The Budkies do this chiefly by perusing documents filed by laboratories in compliance with the federal Animal Welfare Act.

Time and again they have discovered incidents which––despite having been documented though either self-reporting or visits by USDA Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service personnel––have not resulted in penalties and/or prompt corrective action.

On February 8,  2021,  charged a Stop Animal Exploitation Now media release,  “A whistleblower complaint to a federal agency led to the suspension of a primate experiment,  the University of Utah head veterinarian was ‘relieved of his duties,’  and multiple ‘critical’ citations [were issued] against the University of Utah research laboratories.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Marmosets & rabbits

Stop Animal Exploitation Now detailed the alleged Animal Welfare Act violations in a complaint to USDA Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service director of animal welfare operations Robert Gibbens,  posted online with supporting documents at https://saenonline.org/University-of-Utah-Federal-complaint-2-8-21.html.

Explained the Budkies,  “The controversy centers on neurological experiments on monkeys currently funded by the National Institutes of Health at roughly $1.2 million annually through three federal grants.

“An October 2020 USDA-APHIS inspection slapped the University of Utah with two rare ‘critical’ citations for inadequate veterinary care and improper enclosures in connection to the deaths of four marmosets,  an injury to a fifth monkey,  and a non-critical citation for unapproved procedures performed on eight rabbits.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Repeated offenses

“Whistleblower allegations for abuse of monkeys,”  the Budkies continued,  “reveal earlier occurrences of the same type of medical issues listed in the USDA inspection,  as well as monkey burn injuries and deaths from pneumonia.

“Apparently,  the University of Utah head veterinarian was aware of the incidents which led to the whistleblower complaint,”  the Budkies said,  “but failed to report them to the University of Utah research administration as required.

“The whistleblower also alleged that a monkey disappeared from the University of Utah facilities,  procedures were not performed aseptically,  and [there were] excessive experimental deaths,”  the SAEN media release summarized.

The SAEN media release also mentioned that a USDA-APHIS inspection report “also discusses the unapproved and therefore illegal performance of surgeries on multiple rabbits.”

Judge Judy. (Beth Clifton)

Seeking the max

Recalling that the University of Utah “was issued citations [for alleged Animal Welfare Act violations] annually from 2016 through 2018,  as well as an official warning in 2016 for a monkey death,”  Michael Budkie asked Robert Gibbons to “take the most severe action allowable under the Animal Welfare Act and immediately launch a full investigation and at the conclusion of the investigation issue the maximum fine allowable against University of Utah,”  specifically an administrative penalty of $10,000 per infraction, per animal.

SAEN has often sought maximum penalties against other biomedical research institutions for Animal Welfare Act violations,  and has sometimes won those penalties.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Kentucky State Police lied to us”

Showing Animals Respect & Kindness founder Steve Hindi,  meanwhile,  on February 8,  2021 alleged to Kentucky State Police commander Darren Stapleton that,  “The Kentucky State Police have lied to us about their supposed efforts to shut down cockfighting pits in Pike County. I don’t know exactly where the corruption begins or ends,”  Hindi said,  “but there is no question that there is corruption.”

Hindi charged that “State police from Troop 9 have observed” an alleged cockfighting location called Blackberry,  “but have not shut down the fights. They are well aware of the illegal cockfights,  and all the attendant illegal activity, and they have chosen to do nothing.

“We have known about this for some time,”  Hindi told Stapleton,  “but wanted to see how deep the corruption runs.  We hoped it was just one or two officers.  Now we know it is more.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

“State police from Troop 9 failed to stop the event”

Hindi further objected that after Showing Animals Respect & Kindness representative Stu Chaifetz sent Stapleton information about an alleged cockfighting venue called Hawk’s Nest,  Stapleton “forwarded that information to Troop 9,  the same troop that oversees Blackberry.

“In spite of Stu including a schedule,”  Hindi narrated,  “and that schedule including phone numbers for the pit’s management,  the state police from Troop 9 failed to stop the event. Instead, they stood by while the fights continued, almost like a security force.”

Hindi called this “Very reminiscent of Honest Abe’s cockfights not being shut down in McCreary County last June,”  and the Pinemountain cockfights not being shut down in Harlan County last December.”

(See Cockfighting in Kentucky: showdown on January 2, 2021.)

Clay County, Kentucky sheriffs deputies were videotaped by SHARK at a cockfight.

“Invitation for other pits to re-open”

“The continuation of cockfights at Blackberry and Hawk’s Nest is an invitation for other pits to re-open for cockfights and to continue their ongoing illegal activities,”  Hindi told Stapleton,  requesting a comprehensive investigation into Troop 9.  If the investigation needs to dig deeper than Troop 9, so be it.”

Along with his letter of complaint to Stapleton,  Hindi distributed a recording of a telephone conversation between Chaifetz and Troop 9 operations lieutenant Chris Hicks,  one day before the most recent alleged cockfights at Hawk’s Nest.

Hicks assured Chaifetz that he would “make sure we’ll have a group of troopers go out there tomorrow and see what they can find out,  see if they can hopefully catch them in the act.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Evidentiary issue

After the alleged cockfights,  a Sergeant Kenneth Saylor told Chaifetz that a patrol detachment was sent to the Hawk’s Nest vicinity,  but––without a search warrant––was unable to gain access to the property beyond a metal gate two miles from the purported location.

The troopers,  did,  however,  write an undisclosed number of traffic citations,  Saylor said.

ANIMALS 24-7 pointed out that the cockfighting schedule Showing Animals Respect & Kindness sent to Stapleton would not have been sufficient for Troop 9 to have obtained a search warrant,  since anyone could have produced it with basic digital composition software,  and no one at Troop 9 could truthfully vouch for where it originated,  since there was no documentation of the chain of custody of the claimed evidence.

Writing traffic citations to identify possible cockfighting participants might accordingly have been all that Troop 9 could do,  unless the traffic stops produced evidence sufficient to get a warrant.

Jailers in Harlan County, Kentucky,
with their gamecocks.
(SHARK image)

“They have known about this place forever”

Responded Hindi,  “First,  they have known about this place forever.  Second,  there are phone numbers on the schedule that could be run,  which would indicate prior cockfighting activity,”  but only if those numbers traced to people with prior cockfighting arrests.

Moreover,  a prior history of a person having committed a crime is seldom sufficient evidence to persuade a judge to issue a search warrant in absence of other strong evidence that the person is committing the crime here and now.

“I have little doubt that there are powerful higher ups involved in this specific location, because it is a big operation,”  Hindi said,  “but someone has to take a stand.  If not the state police, then who?  We’d love to have the feds involved,  but we cannot compel them.  In any case, our approach is the same, which is to shine a hot,  bright light on the whole rotten bunch.  That’s just what they’re going to get.”

Woman plucking feathers of deceased gamecocks for consumption for her family
circa 1915 in Harlan County, Kentucky
(Beth Clifton collage)

Feds not yet involved

The alleged Kentucky cockfighting venues,  and a location in Waterloo,  Ohio,  at which Hindi was badly beaten on January 3,  2021 while trying to do drone surveillance of a suspected cockfight,  are believed to attract participants and gamblers from multiple surrounding states and perhaps even some Caribbean nations and Mexico.

(See Investigators survive ambush attack at alleged cockfight in Ohio and Alleged cockfighters who attacked Steve Hindi identified by ANIMALS 24-7 and tipster.)

The involvement of out-of-state individuals should bring these alleged cockfighting locations under USDA Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service and FBI jurisdiction under the Animal Fighting Prohibition Enforcement Act of 2007.

The passage of the Animal Fighting Prohibition Enforcement Act of 2007 appears to have been the “victory” most often claimed by the Humane Society of the U.S. during the tenure of former HSUS president Wayne Pacelle,  2014-2018.

Pacelle,  who resigned after publication of allegations of sexual harassment,  now heads Animal Wellness Action.

Proposition 2 & Question 3

The Showing Animals Respect & Kindness anti-cockfighting campaign is partially funded the by Humane Farming Association.

The legislative “victory” claimed second most often by the Humane Society of the U.S. was California Proposition 2,  in 2008,  which promised to introduce “free range” confinement of egg-laying hens in place of battery cages.

Though this promise went largely unfulfilled,  the Humane Society of the U.S. claimed “victory” at least eleven times in the next 53 days after Massachusetts voters approved a similar measure in 2016,  Question 3,  by a margin of 78% to 22%.

(Humane Farming Association photo)

“Victory” would “free” egg-laying hens

Pacelle,  then-Humane Society Legislative Fund president Mike Markarian,  and then-HSUS farmed animal campaigns manager Paul Shapiro each repeatedly blogged that the 2016 “victory” would “free” egg-laying hens in Massachusetts by 2020,  after a four-year phase-in interval to allow farmers to adapt their facilities.

Shapiro left the Humane Society of the U.S. shortly before Pacelle did;  Markarian left several months afterward.

The U.S. Supreme Court in January 2019 declined to hear a lawsuit brought by 13 states whose attorney generals objected that Massachusetts should not be allowed to enforce the Question 3 prohibition on the import of eggs that were not produced in compliance with Question 3.

(Beth Clifton collage)

HSUS claimed “victory” again

Current Humane Society of the U.S. president Kitty Block on January 7,  2019 claimed “victory” for the U.S. Supreme Court position.

But if the Humane Society of the U.S. had ever effectively followed up to ensure that Question 3 took effect on schedule,  the Humane Farming Association [HFA] would not have had to sue Massachusetts attorney general Maura Healey on January 12,  2021 for,  as HFA explained in a media release,  “her failure to promulgate regulations to improve conditions for egg-laying hens as required by the farm animal protection ballot measure that was approved by Massachusetts voters in 2016.”

Massachusetts attorney general Maura Healey.

“Flagrant violation of her legal duties”

Charged the Humane Farming Association,  “The law required the Attorney General to adopt implementing regulations by January 1, 2020.  However,  Healey has neither issued nor even proposed to issue the legally-mandated regulations,  which is in flagrant violation of her legal duties. Instead,  Healey’s office is working with lobbyists,  including those from the egg industry,  to pass legislation that would reduce the allotted space requirement provided to hens to a mere one square foot per bird,  which would allow the egg industry to crowd 50% more hens into a given space.

“The attorney general’s office is also seeking to shift [her]regulatory responsibilities to the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources.”

Explained the Humane Farming Association,  “On October 14,  2020,  HFA through Boston counsel Brown Rudnick LLP sent a letter to attorney general Healey demanding that the required regulations be promulgated in short order.  The letter stated that if no action was taken on this matter by November 14,  2020,  HFA would initiate enforcement litigation in state court.

“To date,  no action has been taken;  hence, the organization is filing suit.”

Humpty Dumpty, Ronald McDonald, & United Poultry Concerns battery cage display.  (Merritt Clifton collage)

United Egg Producers

Massachusetts Food Association senior vice president for governmental affairs and communications Brian Houghton,  representing grocers and supermarkets,  warned three days after the Humane Farming Association lawsuit was filed that,  “There will be shortages and higher prices for consumers who depend on eggs and other sources of protein,”  if Question 3 is implemented.

However,  the one-square-foot-per-hen space standard prescribed by Question 3 was recommended nationally by the United Egg Producers in 2006,  the leading egg industry trade association.  This was another “victory” claimed for the Humane Society of the U.S. by Pacelle and Shapiro,  but never actually brought into effect.

Beth & Merritt Clifton

(The Humane Farming Association complaint is posted at https://www.hfa.org/pdf/HFA-ag-complaint.pdf.)

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Nahrendra Modi & Rahul Gandhi head the two leading Indian political parties.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Bullfighting foes receive national honors even as Tamil Nadu state government drops charges against 26,450 bullfighting defenders & heads of both major national parties support  bullfights

            CHENNAI, Tamil Nadu, India––Jallikattu,  the Tamil Nadu form of bullfighting in which mobs abuse the bulls as they run through the streets during harvest festivals,  on February 20,  2021 won yet another of many endorsements from the Tamil Nadu state government––but not before Dipak Misra,  former Chief Justice of India,  issued a subtle yet emphatic rebuke to the pro-jallikattu parties in power,  both in Tamil Nadu and at the Indian federal level.

Polls indicate that the All India Anna Dravidian Progressive Federation,  the Hindu nationalist party that won majorities in the most recent seven Tamil Nadu state elections,  is facing probable defeat in April 2021 by the opposition Dravidian Progressive Federation,  a liberal party whose platform centers on defending democracy and seeking social justice.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Jallikattu-ists given “get out of jail free” card

Currying favor with a political base often compared to that of former U.S. President Donald Trump,  the All India Anna Dravidian Progressive Federation on February 20,  2021 dropped the prosecutions of 308 criminal cases registered against 26,460 individual jallikattu defenders.

The jallikattu defenders were charged after a series of January 2017 riots that followed a November 2016 Indian Supreme Court ruling upholding the authority of the Animal Welfare Board of India to ban jallikattu.

The All India Anna Dravidian Progressive Federation at the national level is aligned with the Bharatiya Janata Party government led by Nahrendra Modi,  prime minister of India since 2014.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Burned police cars

Modi,  heading a far-right populist coalition emphasizing fear of Islam and opposition to business regulation,  was among the first leaders of other nations to confer with Trump after Trump’s inauguration in 2016.

Acting in defiance of the Supreme Court of India,  Modi on January 20,  2017 personally ordered that jallikattu should proceed,  but Chennai police commissioner S. George tried to uphold the judicial ruling.

Emboldened by the support of both Modi and the Tamil Nadu state government,  jallikattu supporters on January 23,  2017 injured at least ninety-four police officers and damaged 51 police vehicles,  many of them burned,  S. George told Ashok Sharma of Associated Press.

Former Indian chief justice Dipak Misra.

Here comes the judge

Dipak Misra,  appointed to the Indian Supreme Court  in October 2011,  served from August 2017 until October 2018,  when he reached mandatory retirement at age 65.

Best known for his many rulings upholding human rights,  Misra presided as well over a series of rulings against jallikattu,  the last of which,  in February 2018,  questioned whether jallikattu and bullock cart racing could legitimately claim constitutional protection as cultural traditions.

The Animal Welfare Board of India had already prohibited jallikattu in 2007,  as an unconstitutional form of cruelty to animals,  but the ban was not enforced during a nine-year series of appeals by jallikattu promoters.

Dipak Misra,  two years after his retirement from the judiciary,  was appointed to chair the jury considering nominations for the Prani Mitra [Animal Friend] awards periodically presented by the Ministry of Environment,  Forests and Climate Change for lifetime service to animal welfare.

Maneka Gandhi releases a barrel of monkeys.  (Merritt Clifton collage)

Who wins the Prani Mitra?

The most recent previous Prani Mitra recipient,  honored in October 2020 by minister of environment and forests Prakash Javadekar,  was Nandankanan Zoological Park biologist Rajesh Kumar Mohapatra,  honored chiefly for his efforts to restore wild populations of the endangered gharial crocodile.

Among the best known previous winners were:

• Rukmini Devi Arundale (1904-1986),  a classical dancer turned legislator,  who in 1953 authored the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960,  the Indian equivalent of the U.S. Animal Welfare Act,  and in 1962 became first chairperson of the Animal Welfare Board of India,  honored in 1968;
• Maneka Gandhi,  the longtime legislator who founded the national organization People for Animals in 1988,  and served from 1998 to 2003 as minister for animal welfare,  honored in 1994;  and
• Captain V. Sundaram (1916-1997).  With his wife Usha Sundaram,  V. Sundaram pioneered commercial aviation in India and in 1959 cofounded the Blue Cross of India.  V. Sundaram was honored in 1997.

Chinny Krishna

The Sundaram’s son the rocket scientist

The Sundaram’s son Chinny Krishna,  an engineer who has long had a leading role in developing the Indian space program,  has chaired the Blue Cross of India since 1964.

As well as developing the prototype for the national Animal Birth Control program to control the street dog population,  in effect since 2003,  Krishna is a three-time former vice chair of the Animal Welfare Board of India,  and an outspoken and influential opponent of jallikattu.

Also long outspokenly opposing jallikattu is R.M. Kharb,  a retired veterinarian and cavalry general in the Indian Army,  who chaired the Animal Welfare Board of India from mid-2006 until his resignation during the last days of 2017.

As well as conflicting with the Modi government over jallikattu,  both Krishna and Kharb have also repeatedly conflicted with the Indian pharmaceutical industry,  the second largest in the world and hugely influential within the Modi regime,  over animal use in biomedical research.

Former Animal Welfare Board of India chair R.M. Kharb and vice chair Chinny Krishna stuck to their guns in defense of jallikattu bulls.
(Merritt Clifton collage)

Awards to Krishna & Kharb thumb nose at Modi

Indian minister of environment and forests Prakash Javadekar in February 2017 removed Kharb from his position as the sole animal welfare representative on the 13-member Committee for the Purpose of Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animals,  but did not get around to informing Kharb until May 2017.

Unknown to either Krishna or Kharb,  Krishna told ANIMALS 24-7,  Dipak Misra arranged for both Krishna and Kharb to receive the Prani Mitra award on February 16,  2021.

Having to present it might have been particularly embarrassing for Prakash Javadekar,  but the animal welfare portfolio and duty of presenting the Prani Mitra award had recently been transferred to minister for fisheries,  animal husbandry and dairying Giriraj Singh.

“Dogfishing” during 2015 Chennai floods.
(Blue Cross of India photo)

“Work of the Blue Cross is recognized”

Said the award certificate presented to Krishna,  “This Prani Mitra for lifetime animal service is in recognition of outstanding service rendered in the cause of animal welfare for more than fifty years,”  including that Krishna “has extensively worked for preventing experimentation on animals.”

Responded Krishna,  “I am really happy to get this award for three reasons.  One is the early work and struggles regarding animal abuse in school labs, in colleges and in research institutes.   I wish they had mentioned the computer programs we developed in the eighties to replace dissection,  and the international conference we hosted in March 1965,  but we cannot have everything!

“Second,”  Krishna added,  “My father was given the Prani Mitra in 1997,  so it has special meaning for me.

“Thirdly,”  Krishna finished,   “the work of the Blue Cross of India,  which gave me a platform to do all this,  is recognized.”

Former AWBI vice chair Chinny Krishna (left) and former chair R.M. Kharb (right.)

“Votes at any cost”

Krishna said he did not read Kharb’s Prani Mitra citation,  “and am not sure what it said,  but his work as the head of the [Army] Remount & Veterinary Corps in getting veterinary services made available to areas surrounding their areas of operation,  for dogs, cattle,  etc.––would certainly be part of it.  He was a great person to work with.”

The Prani Mitra awards for Krishna and Kharb were a further jab to the Nahrendra Modi regime,   and to jallikattu defenders generally,  because as Vijaita Singh of The Hindu reported on February 16,  2017,  the Modi government had considered giving Krishna an award approximately equivalent to the U.S. Medal of Freedom,  but “An official said Mr. Krishna’s name did not make it to the final list as he went against the government in the apex court” [Supreme Court] in opposing jallikattu.

Asked by ANIMALS 24-7 what he made of being honored by the pro- jallikattu national government only days before the equally pro- jallikattu Tamil Nadu state government dropped the charges against the 26,460 jallikattu defenders,  Krishna responded,  “We are never surprised when a doctor practices medicine or when a lawyer practices law or an engineer practices engineering.  Why am I not surprised when politicians practice politics? Their mantra is votes at any cost.’”

Chinny Krishna accepts the Prani Mitra award.

What mischief will sneak into law revision?

Indian animal welfare politics are likely to take further twists and turns in the near future,  as on February 8,  2021 the Nahendra Modi government introduced a draft bill that would update the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960.

“In 2010,”  Krishna told NDTV 24×7 legal affairs columnist Sanjay Pinto, “we [the Animal Welfare Board of India then headed by Kharb] sent a draft new bill revising the statute to the government.  Finally,  last week,  the authorities have finally announced that this bill is being introduced.  The new version increases the measly 50 rupees maximum fine,”  barely worth a U.S. dollar,  to 75,000 rupees,”  worth $1,033 U.S. dollars,   with a jail term of up to five years.”

Reportage about the proposed update of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960 has so far focused on the increased penalties.

Opening the law for revision,  however,  also offers the Modi government to slip in additional changes through last-minute amendments which could further protect jallikattu,  undo the Animal Birth Control Program,  additionally weaken protections for animals used in experimentation,  and/or otherwise undo any other part of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960 that has become either economically or politically inconvenient.

Jallikattu often includes tossing fireworks at bulls to make them run. (YouTube image)

Opposition Congress Party backs jallikattu too?

The likelihood that attempts will be made to gut the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960,  especially in regard to jallikattu and other animal-using entertainments,  appears to have increased since Rahul Gandhi,  leader of the national opposition Congress partry,  attended and praised the first jallikattu of the season at Avaniapuram,  Madurai district,  Tamil Nadu,  on January 15,  2021.

At least 80 participants were injured,  The Hindu reported,  while “the COVID-19 safety protocols issued by the government were flouted,”  in a nation which has so far had more than 11 million COVID-19 cases,  leading to more than 155,000 human deaths.  Only Brazil,  with 246,000 deaths,  and the U.S.,  with 511,000,  have had more.

Mohandas Gandhi was not closely related to any of the other well-known Gandhis.

How to tell the Gandhis apart without a scorecard

Rahul Gandhi,  50,  is the great grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India,  who served from 1947 until his death in 1964;  grandson of Indira Gandhi,  prime minister of India from 1966 to 1977 and again from 1980 until her assassination in 1984;  and son of Rajiv Gandhi,  prime minister of India from 1984 until he was assassinated in 1989.

Rahul Gandhi’s mother Sonia Gandhi headed the Congress Party from 1998 to 2017.  She is the estranged sister-in-law of Maneka Gandhi,  whose husband,  Indira Gandhi’s son Sanjay Gandhi,  was killed in the 1980 crash of a single-passenger airplane he was flying.

Maneka Gandhi,  certain to resist any attempts to weaken the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960,  but from a politically isolated position,  is affiliated with the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

A jallikattu bull and the bulls used in rodeo are essentially the same animal.  (Beth Clifton collage)

Jallikattu & rodeo

Jallikattu,  in India,  holds approximately the same cultural significance as rodeo in the U.S.,  with the historical stronghold of jallikattu being in Tamil Nadu,  much as the historical stronghold of rodeo is in the 10 westernmost of the “Lower 48” U.S. states,  exclusive of Alaska and Hawaii.

The incentive to participate in jallikattu,  historically,  was the opportunity to grab a bag of coins tied between the horns of a bull who was released to run in a village street or square.  Affluent people and civic organizations would donate the bags of coins and the use of surplus bulls,  much as U.S. counterparts might sponsor a rodeo,  awarding a meaningful prize to the most successful bull or bronco rider.

As the value of a bag of coins declined in India,  even to the poorest of the poor,  relative to the risk of injury from jallikattu participation,  jallikattu degenerated into an orgy of public bull torture,  with much being done to bulls that has nothing to do with improving the odds of someone grabbing the coin bag.

Beth & Merritt Clifton

Tossing pepper into the bulls’ eyes,  twisting their tails,  and pouring alcohol down their throats are among the most frequently videotaped offenses against bulls in recent years.

New regulations governing jallikattu,  introduced since 2017,  are said to have reduced the frequency of injury to both the bulls and the human participants,  but more than 100 people were reportedly injured in just the first two jallikattus of 2021.

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James V. “Bub” Newcomb II and co-defendant Shannon Clark.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Hindi beaten, drone destroyed, while trying to videotape site of suspected cockfight

            IRONTON, Ohio––A Lawrence County,  Ohio grand jury on February 23,  2021 indicted suspects James V. “Bub” Newcomb II,  53,  of Waterloo,  Ohio,  and distant Newcomb neighbor Shannon Lee Clark,  35,  on multiple felony counts originating in a January 3,  2021 alleged assault on Showing Animals Respect & Kindness founder Steve Hindi.

The alleged assault,  the beginning of which was entirely caught on video,  began moments after Hindi launched a drone to videotape the premises where Showing Animals Respect & Kindness had been tipped that a cockfight was either soon to occur or was already underway.

The Showing Animals Respect & Kindness investigation was part of a nationwide campaign against cockfighting funded by the Humane Farming Association.

Steve Hindi’s head injuries.
(SHARK photo)

Six staples,  a separated back, broken rib,  & lost drone

Hindi suffered multiple injuries from being tackled,  thrown to the ground,  and allegedly repeatedly kicked by both men,  including a head wound that required six surgical staples to close a separated back,  and a broken rib.

The alleged assailants also destroyed the drone controller and,  thereby,  the drone itself,  since it could not be safely landed without the controller.

The Lawrence County grand jury,  after hearing testimony from Hindi and other witnesses,  indicted Newcomb on two counts of second degree felonious assault,  two counts of fifth degree felony theft,  and one count of felonious evidence tampering.

Clark was indicted on one count of second degree felonious assault,  one count of fifth degree felony theft,  and one count of felonious evidence tampering.

James & wife Beckie Newcomb.
(Facebook photos.)

Prison time

Second degree felonious assault in Ohio,  defined as “knowingly causing serious physical harm,”  carries a potential penalty of up to eight years in prison,  a fine of $15,000,  and five years on probation.

Fifth degree felony theft involves a case in which the value of stolen property is at least $1,000 but less than $7,500.

A fifth-degree felony theft conviction carries a prison sentence ranging from six to 12 months in prison,  and/or a fine of up to $2,500.

Tampering with evidence in Ohio,  according to the web site of the Columbus, Ohio criminal defense law firm Koenig & Owen LLC,  means “to alter,  conceal,  or destroy anything with the purpose to hinder its value in an official proceeding or investigation.

James “Bub” Newcomb at a rooster event
(Facebook photo)

Plea bargain?

“Prosecutors often charge tampering with evidence in connection with another charge in order to gain leverage in resolving the case by plea bargain,”  the Koenig & Owen web site continues.

Adds the web site of Cleveland criminal defense attorney Jeff Hastings,  “Being charged with any crime is serious,  but an added charge of ‘Tampering with Evidence’ in Ohio can make matters much worse.  A person convicted of tampering with evidence can face up to three years in prison,  and a fine of up to $10,000,  and this is in addition to any other charges.”

Defendants Newcomb and Clark are,  in short,  in a heap of trouble.

Newcomb could potentially be sentenced to serve up to 21 years in prison,  if convicted on all charges and ordered to serve the maximum time on each count,  consecutively.

Clark could potentially be sentenced to serve 12 years.

James V. “Bubba” Newcomb II at upper left; with wife Rebecca “Beckie” at upper right.

Priors

In all likelihood,  however,  neither defendant would get the maximum,  and any prison time would be served concurrently.

Both Newcomb and Clark,  however,  have prior felony convictions.  While Ohio is not technically a “three strikes” state,  in which a third felony conviction carries a mandatory life sentence,  sentencing can be significantly more severe for defendants convicted as “repeat violent offenders,”  and/or in cases involving drug trafficking and evidence tampering.

Public records indicate that a James Newcomb was charged with domestic violence in Cincinnati on September 1,  1999,  but the charge was dropped three weeks later.

A James Newcomb was charged with littering on October 27,  2001,  also in the Cincinnati area.

Cincinnati is 132 miles north of Ironton and Waterloo,  so the accused in those cases may not have been the same James Newcomb.

Beckie Newcomb
(Beth Clifton collage)

Closer to home

A James Newcomb was charged with drug abuse and possession of drug paraphernalia on March 11,  2005,  however,  in Portsmouth,  Ohio,  just 27 miles north.  The paraphernalia charge was dropped after this James Newcomb pleaded guilty to the drug abuse charge.

Arrested on July 19,  2010,  James and Rebecca Newcomb,  both of 366 Township Road 267,  Waterloo,  Ohio,  the same location as the alleged assault on Steve Hindi,  on February 17,  2011 pleaded not guilty to trafficking in marijuana,  a fourth degree felony.

James Newcomb and his wife Rebecca “Beckie” Newcomb operate the Newcomb Game Farm at this address.  Beckie Newcomb is also secretary of the Ohio Game Bird Association,  headquartered at the same address.

James Newcomb was released from custody pending trial on the 2011 charges on $50,000 bond.

Rebecca Newcomb reversed her plea to guilty on March 24,  2011,  and was sentenced to a six-month suspended jail term plus three years on probation.

James Newcomb was convicted on April 6,  2011.

Shannon Clark.  (Beth Clifton collage)

Shannon Lee Clark

Shannon Lee Clark,  the Ironton Tribune reported on April 8,  2008,  “pleaded guilty last month to assaulting a former Ironton police officer,”  bringing “a four-year prison sentence,”  with a possibility of judicial release after one year.

The victim,  Shawn Rawlins,  left the Ironton Police Department in 2005.  “Authorities contend Clark and Rawlins ran into each other at a bar earlier this year,”  the Ironton Tribune said,  “and Clark assaulted Rawlins.  Rawlins,  who is no longer in law enforcement,  once took Clark to jail after Clark was arrested by another Ironton officer.”

Added the Ironton Tribune,  “Assistant Lawrence County Prosecutor Mack Anderson said Clark, who was out of jail on bond until sentencing, was alleged to have told someone he planned to get even with Rawlins once he is released from prison and that the next time Rawlins would not be around to file charges against him.  Technically,”  Anderson said,  “this is retaliation, a third-degree felony.”

James V. “Bub” Newcomb, Shannon L. Clark, and Scott Aldridge,  who was at the scene when Hindi was first assaulted,  but has not been charged.

The incident that brought the charges

Public records show that Shannon Lee Clark was previously arrested for “operating on suspended/revoked operators license” in Greenup,  Kentucky,  on September 1,  2007.

Shannon Lee Clark was also booked in Ironton for alleged theft on September 6,  2012.

Showing Animals Respect & Kindness video,  made public at https://youtu.be/M8hIIczNeOA5 on January 5,  2021,  shows that the incident leading to the alleged January 3,  2021 felony offenses began when Newcomb,  with Clark behind him,  approached Hindi.  Hindi appeared to be on the Lawrence County public road right-of-way,  near the entrance to 366 Wiseman Cemetery Hill Road.

The gate demarcating the end of public access and the beginning of private property is visible in the background,  some distance away.

Newcomb cursed Hindi,  forcibly taking the drone controller from Hindi,  and smashed the drone controller against a mailbox labeled “Newcomb.”

Steve Hindi & friends.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Threatened to kill Hindi

Hindi advised Newcomb that interfering with a drone in flight is a violation of Federal Aviation Agency regulations,  since it can cause a dangerous crash.

In view of the grand jury indictments,  it also appears to have allegedly constituted evidence tampering.

Newcomb and the man now identified as Shannon Lee Clark allegedly then beat,  kicked, and threatened to kill Hindi,  in clearly audible statements.

Hindi did not,  as of January 5,  2021,  have the identification of Newcomb that eventually brought the criminal charges against him,  but ANIMALS 24-7 investigator Beth Clifton made the identification within an hour of seeing the video.

SHARK investigator was run off the road.
(SHARK photo)

Chased & rammed car

The Showing Animals Respect & Kindness video,  interrupted soon after the first alleged assault on Hindi,  resumed with footage from another Showing Animals Respect & Kindness investigator’s internally mounted vehicle camera.

Two suspects chased the investigator’s car,  ramming it repeatedly with a pickup truck bearing the Ohio license plate number HIL 1286.

Eventually the investigator’s vehicle was run off the road,  suffering extensive damage.  An initial insurance report declared the vehicle “totaled,”  Hindi told ANIMALS 24-7.

Beckie & James V. Newcomb
Beth Clifton collage)

“Had to close our junkyard”

The cases against Newcomb and Clark are tentatively set to be tried before Lawrence County Court of Common Pleas judge Andrew P. Ballard,  serving since 2017,  on an as yet unspecified date.

Lawrence County prosecutor Brigham M. Anderson is to handle the case against both defendants,  according to the charge sheet.

Beckie Newcomb in a February 20,  2021 web posting trying to raise funds for her husband’s defense said James Newcomb would be represented by “local lawyer Chris Delawder,”  formally known as Robert C. Delawder,  who is a former Lawrence County prosecutor.

“We have had to close our junkyard and start selling our cars,”  Beckie Newcomb said.  “My husband and I have worked very hard for several years for the gamefowl community and now we need help.”

By “gamefowl community,”  Beckie Newcomb self-evidently did not mean the gamefowl themselves.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Fundraising auction of guns & gamecock paraphernalia

The Newcomb address,  366 Township Road 267,  Waterloo,  Ohio,  is on February 26,  2021 to host a fundraising auction of items including alleged cockfighting paraphernalia and a variety of firearms,  knives,  and power tools.

“We are asking for donations of items to be auctioned off.  Anything from gamefowl to antiques,”  an online announcement from Kentucky Gamefowl Breeders Association president Darcy Blevens said.

The announcement also advertised “Live music:  Marty Bentley and family.”

Searching for background on who Marty Bentley might be turned up multiple postings on various web sites that “Marty Bentley was the owner-operator of 145 Music Group and was an original partner in the Branson Gospel Music Convention until June 2009.  Marty Bentley worked in Southern Gospel in Murfreesboro,  Hendersonville,  and Nashville, Tennessee.  Marty Bentley did not fulfill obligations to partners and clients and is being investigated for fraud,  misappropriation of funds,  and breech of contract.  He has also gone by names including Paul Martin,  Martin Bentley,  and Paul Morgan.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

World Slasher Cup

Much more recently,  in fact on February 26,  2021,  the Manila Standard reported the participation in the World Slasher Cup cockfighting tournament of “Marty Bentley and Brett McCormick from Ohio, who had travelled to the Philippines twice before to check out the World Slasher Cup.”

Bentley and McCormick were said to have competed in January 2021 “with their Roundhead Albany Crosses and Kelsos.”

“We loved it.  That’s why we’re back,”  the Manila Standard quoted Bentley.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Civil suit to follow

Regardless of the disposition of the criminal charges that Newcomb and Clark are now facing,  they will have further legal trouble.

Hindi told ANIMALS 24-7 earlier that the day in court he is most anticipating will come in response to a civil suit to be brought against the Newcombs and Clark.

That lawsuit,  now in preparation,   seeks compensation for extensive personal injuries and property damage.

Including medical bills,  the total damages could exceed the estimated $140,000 value of the 366 Wiseman Cemetery Hill Road property.

Beth & Merritt Clifton

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(Beth Clifton collage)

A perspective on chickens in honor of International Respect for Chickens Day, May 4/month of May

by Karen Davis, Ph.D., president, United Poultry Concerns

A fellow activist once asked me if I believed chickens don’t mind watching and hearing other chickens being killed in their presence.  He asked because a farmer had told him they don’t.  He questioned the credibility of this claim from a person who would do such a thing.  Was it true?

Lest anyone think chickens don’t mind seeing and hearing other chickens die violently in front of them,  or be grabbed by a predator or otherwise traumatized,  nothing could be further from the truth.  As a chicken sanctuary director for more than three decades,  I have witnessed the effect on chickens of a hawk or a fox and the terror these predators inspire in the birds,  including the aftermath of trauma.

Cornish hen and rooster.
(Province of Ontario Picture Bureau, image of hen and rooster, circa 1920.)

Ethel Murmur

I learned the hard way back in the early days of keeping a few rescued chickens in an unfenced yard.  (Those naïve days are long gone, and our 12,000 square-foot sanctuary is now fully predator-proof.)  One of our chickens,  Ethel Murmur,  a Cornish-cross hen we rescued from a slaughter-bound truck spill in northern Virginia,  was in the yard one Saturday afternoon,  next to the porch with her friend Bertha,  when a fox stole Bertha and left her dead in the woods.

Before this, Ethel Murmur was so vigorous and full-throated that we named her after the famous Broadway singer Ethel Merman on account of her imposing character,  ample physique,  and big voice.  Afterward,  Ethel Murmur was never the same.  She stopped making a joyful noise,  stopped yelling for attention,  and could hardly walk.  Her whole body shriveled.  She died a week later.  Although she herself had not been attacked,  she had watched the attack on her friend,  and could not recover.

Another situation arose one morning when I put our brown house hen,  Alexandra,  outside with her bantam rooster companion,  Josie.  It was spring and the kitchen door was open wide. Suddenly,  Alexandra ran shrieking through the door into the house,  jumped up on a table, and could not calm down.  I cried, “Alexandra, what happened?”  Panic stricken,  I raced outside.  Josie was nowhere.  Once again – a fox.

(Beth Clifton collage)

May day!

As for chickens not minding watching members of their flock being killed by a farmer,  a man once told me how a small flock of chickens he and some others were keeping on a commune he belonged to at the time were slaughtered in front of each other by a member of their group.  Three hens and a rooster who were previously friendly fled the scene.  They disappeared for more than two weeks,  before reappearing,  timidly,  and never again trustingly.  Their behavior following the slaughter was totally altered,  the man sadly said.

In nature,  chicken parents will confront a predator by first pushing their chicks into foliage for safety behind themselves.  Puffing out their feathers and spreading their wings wide,  they will charge the predator while sounding alarm calls.

One May day,  when a pair of our hens and roosters produced an unexpected family,  the tiny chicks squeezed through the wire fence to the other side,  then peeped piteously at being stuck there.  Shrieking and dashing about,  unable to reach her chicks,  the frantic mother hen instinctively flew straight up into my face when I approached her.  (I rescued all five chicks and sealed the openings.)

(Beth Clifton photo)

A natural animal in captivity

When questioning the emotional complexity of farmed animals,  we need to remember that a farmed animal is essentially a natural animal in captivity.

A chicken is a being whose physical environment and bodily deformations imposed by exploiters have not eliminated the fundamental instincts,  sensitivities,  emotions and intelligence in this bird,  whose evolutionary home is the tropical forest.

Like their wild cousins of the tropics,  domesticated chickens sensing a predatory threat in a yard during the day will typically react with choral uproar,  fight,  flight,  and hide behavior.

Chickens in a state of abnormal, chronic fear and severe, inescapable captivity tend by contrast to become very still and quiet, evincing what psychologists call learned helplessness –– behavior exhibited by individuals enduring repeated aversive stimuli beyond their control, even if their senses are on high alert.  They may develop tonic immobility,  a condition researchers call “a fear-potentiated response” to being restrained in a chicken who knows she or he is going to die.

Karen Davis, Ph.D
President United Poultry Concerns
(AR National Conference photo)

“Chickens are empathic creatures”

I am confident that chickens are empathic creatures who are capable of experiencing not only the imminence of their own death,  but the emotional tones of dread and dying in others trapped in a violent setting such as an industrial slaughterhouse,  a live poultry market,  or a cockfighting ring.

I do not doubt that they sense when they themselves and their conspecifics are in mortal danger, as shown by their ready response to danger in diverse environments.

My view is reflected in some preliminary scientific studies cited,  for example,  by evolutionary biologist Dr. Marc Bekoff in “Empathic chickens and cooperative elephants: Emotional intelligence expands its range again” in Psychology Today.

The day after Josie,  our little rooster,  was grabbed by a fox in front of Alexandra,  I was filled with grief and guilt.  “Why oh why did I let them outside yesterday morning unprotected?”  I sat on the floor and could not stop crying.

Here then came big white billowy Sonia, whom we’d rescued with Josie and other chickens from a filthy shed in back of a shiny farmers market in Leesburg, Virginia, across the living room floor.

She rested her head against me and began purring softly over and over.  My sorrow deepened with love for this being,  who maybe knew or did not know why I was weeping,  but who sensed my sadness and rose from where she was sitting to plod across the floor to comfort me in this moment of empathy that we shared in the tragic world.

(Beth Clifton photo)

Respect for Chickens Day & Month

Tuesday, May 4th is International Respect for Chickens Day,  and the entire month of May is International Respect for Chickens Month.

During this month,  we urge people to do a kind action for chickens that lets others know who these birds truly are and how we can help them by expanding our own empathy to include them.

For ideas about what you can do, please see Do a Kind Action for Chickens in May – and Every Day.

Karen Davis & friends

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KAREN DAVIS, PhD is the President and Founder of United Poultry Concerns,  a nonprofit organization that promotes the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl,  including a sanctuary for chickens in Virginia.  Her latest of many books is For the Birds:  From Exploitation to Liberation:  Essays on Chickens, Turkeys, and Other Domesticated Fowl (Lantern Books, 2019).

The post Do chickens mind seeing other chickens traumatized in their presence? appeared first on Animals 24-7.