NY Times: N.M.’s ban hasn’t stopped cockfighting

Thus far, New Mexico’s ban on cockfighting hasn’t stopped the bloody sport, which “continues unabated in hidden venues,” according to a weekend article in The New York Times.

A December raid in Chaparral, The Times reported, didn’t yield the results officials expected: 150 law-enforcement officers from four counties descended upon a fight expecting to find 300 cockfighters. Instead, they found fewer than a dozen people, seized 12 roosters and issued four misdemeanor citations.

Officials say, according to The Times, that the cockfighters had been tipped off.

“It seems they’re always one step ahead of us,” Robyn Gojkovich, the state’s first full-time animal control investigator, told the newspaper.

Last week officers discovered a cockfighting ring in Doña Ana. They estimate it was last used two to three weeks before being found, according to the Las Cruces Sun-News.

Cockfighting has been illegal in Doña Ana County for some time, but the statewide ban wasn’t enacted until 2007, when Senate Majority Whip Mary Jane Garcia succeeded in pushing through legislation she had sought for most of her 20-year career. The ring discovered last week is located in the community Garcia calls home.

“What the animal-protection people are telling me is that (cockfighters) are still out there, thinking that they can hide,” Garcia told the Sun-News. “They’re being found.”

Ed Lowry, a rooster breeder from Chaparral, disagreed in The Times article.

“They ain’t shutting nothing down,” he said.

New Mexico was the 49th state to make cockfighting illegal. Louisiana will become the last later this year. The Times reported that New Mexico has “devoted vast resources” to combating cockfighting but has secured only one misdemeanor conviction thus far. Because cockfighting is a misdemeanor in New Mexico, illegal fights here are continuing to attract fighters from four neighboring states where it’s a felony.

How do cockfighters successfully carry out clandestine fights? They have relocated from arenas to secret venues on “sprawling properties,” The Times reported. “Lookouts are stationed atop dusty mesas, and speakers, which in the past blared mariachi music, now carry feeds from police scanners.”

An appropriate expenditure?

Some police officers told The Times that the focus on combating cockfighting is taking resources from fighting more serious crimes like drunken driving and amphetamine abuse. Several — none who would be named — told the newspaper “they are frustrated at how politicians are disproportionately emphasizing the crime.”

“We don’t even investigate misdemeanors on other crimes,” one officer told the newspaper. “… We wasted $10,000 on a recent misdemeanor. I’d rather use that for a D.U.I. checkpoint and take 20 people off the road in the three hours and save lives over chickens. I feel good when we save chickens, but whoop-de-do, a misdemeanor?”

On the other hand, Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White and Heather Ferguson, legislative director for Animal Protection Voters of New Mexico, told The Times that the ban has led to a shift on public opinion on animal cruelty issues.

“New Mexico is on the verge of having a modern culture,” The Times quoted Ferguson as saying.