Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Editorial: Tougher penalties for cockfighters
Sen. Roscoe Reynolds' bill aims to deter an unwelcome activity that is prone to drawing other criminal acts into its talons.
From the RoundTable blog
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One need not possess the sensibilities of a member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to wince at the thought of what likely took place before law enforcement raided a cockfighting pit earlier this month in southern Virginia -- birds clawing and pecking each other to incapacitation or death.
A bill introduced by Sen. Roscoe Reynolds, D-Henry County, is born of justifiable concern about this cruel blood sport.
The bill aims to deter cockfighting -- and the gambling, drug trafficking and illegal firearms possession that tend to accompany it -- by toughening penalties. This is long overdue in a state with one of the weakest cockfighting laws in the country.
SB 1190, which won narrow approval Monday by a Senate committee and is now headed to the full Senate, would make cockfighting a Class 6 felony. The bill also would make it a Class 6 felony to possess, train, transport or sell any animal for fighting purposes -- and make attending a cockfight a Class 1 misdemeanor.
Virginia, with its lax punishment, has become a magnet for cockfighting. People have been scurrying across the border from North Carolina, where cockfighting was made a felony in 2005.
Most of the 120 people arrested in the Jan. 21 raid came from North Carolina. Twenty-two of them were detained by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for being in the country illegally; seven of those arrested were identified as members of organized Mexican gangs.
Those facts may fuel arguments in support of the bill's passage -- but for troubling reasons that, unfortunately, were probably itching to surface.
Message boards have been littered with comments drawing ill-thought-out connections between the cockfighting raid and illegal immigration. "[We never had problems] like this before they came," one person posted. "With all our problems, we have to spend tax money on chasing down freakin' cockfighters now?"
People posting such comments should be aware that cockfighting is a Virginia tradition dating back to the time of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, though there is no evidence they were great fans, according to one Web site dedicated to the state's history.
It would be wrong to turn Reynolds' bill into an opportunity to further advance the idea that we should corral all illegal immigrants and send them back across the borders.
That would unfairly detract from the larger issue: Cockfighting is animal cruelty poorly disguised as entertainment. State legislators must give law enforcement the tough penalties needed to deter such savagery.
