"I think it goes all the way back to the gladiators," Henry County Police Major Lee Sweat tells WSB. "It's no different than watching the ultimate fighting championship; it's just done with dogs."

WSB's Veronica Waters reports some say the American pit bull terrier was born to fight--selectively bred for aggression and tenacity for over 200 years.

"If a pit bull grabs you, he's not likely to turn you loose," says Sweat. Sweat was the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's lead investigator on dog fighting in his 28 years with the agency. Having led about 10 raids on organized fights, he calls it one of the most heinous and egregious activities humans engage in—pitting animals he believes were meant to be loved against each other to battle to the death.

"The animals usually stick out in your mind...the blood on the walls of the pit," he remembers.

The world of game dogs is a highly secretive fraternity. Given the opportunity to speak to a reporter--even anonymously--two fighters declined.

Dog Fights Have Strict Rules

How are champions made?

Word circulates on the circuit that an owner wants to match, say, his 32-pound female...and another responds. Within a couple of months, the match goes down. Each side agrees to a "forfeit" amount of money which will be paid out if one dog doesn't make the agreed-to weight.

Dogs were trained to be human-friendly; historically, the dogs were washed by handlers on the opponent's side, to make sure there was no poison or other substance put on the dogs to deter its opponent from biting it.

In the pit--often a 16 by 16 box with 3-foot-high walls--the dogs' handlers turn them toward the corners; at the referee's instruction, the animals are faced off by their owners behind "scratch lines" and "let go."

"Your dog has to then run across the entire length of the box and take hold--or mouth--his opponent," Tucson, a professional dog man who appears in the documentary "Off The Chain." "If he does not take hold or mouth, he has a 10-second count. If he does not do it within 10 seconds, the match is over. You win."

The dogs charge toward each other, often leaping up in the air, writhing as they scramble for a hold on each other.

When one of the dogs turns his head and shoulders away from his opponent without trying to grab a new hold, a "turn" is called. Like boxers, the canines are then taken to their respective corners, sponged with sponges handed to the handlers by the ref, and faced off again. Their handlers themselves may take only a fan into the pit to cool their dogs.

Fights can last for seconds...or hours. "Off The Chain" documentary director Bobby J. Brown spent years putting together an in-depth look at the deadly sport, going undercover to find out how it all works.

"The match that I saw that was two hours and 45 minutes--the dogs actually were so exhausted that they fell asleep engaged with one another," says Brown. "They finally woke up. When one woke up, the other one woke up, and they started fighting again."

Professional dog men Gip and Tucson tell Brown the fight-to-the-death sport hurts no one.

"You have to have a genuine interest and love for the animal to actually appreciate it," says Gip.

"These dogs are in it by choice, not by force," Tucson contends. "These dogs want to be in that box. If these dogs don't want to be in that box, why would people bet on it?"

Purses for a match vary widely. The prize can be a few hundreds of dollars; some claim they've seen a match where $500,000 was at stake. The federal complaint against Michael Vick detailed purses in the Bad Newz Kennels' dogs fights ranging from $1,000 to $26,000.

Blood, Mud, Drugs And Barbeque

Newton County Sheriff Joe Nichols was on a 2004 dog fighting raid at a church-turned-old-house in which 123 people were arrested.

"You couldn't hold an animal any more responsible for his actions than you can a weapon that's used in an armed robbery or a murder," Nichols insists. "It's the individual that uses it.

"I think dog fighting is a terrible thing," Nichols continues. "Those dogs, I'm sure--given a choice, even being bred and trained for it--I don't see a dog enjoying it."

At the 2004 fight, which drew dozens of spectators from all over Georgia as well as from outside the state, there were preschoolers serving barbecued chicken to the spectators who'd bought it from a carport grill, Nichols says. There was also lots of dope, nearly $150,000 cash, and guns to protect it all.

When the officers raided the building, a fight was in progress. Even as the people threw down whatever they had on them--cash, pot, weapons--and scrambled to run away or to squirrel themselves in closets, the dogs kept fighting at first, then cowered down inside the bloody pit, police say.

Newton County Sgt. Randy Downs describes the scene. It had been raining, but the rain stopped as law enforcement started to quietly surround the house.

"Mounds of money--this high," Downs motioned, bringing his hands a couple feet up. "Piles of it, all over the house, and piles of dope, and people jumping out of windows."

"The pit bull that was left in the ring had blood all over her, one ear just about torn off. Looked horrible," Nichols remembers. "The dog came over and was dragging one leg, wagging its tail. And the deputies, including myself, were petting the dog. The dog was just sitting there, wagging its tail."

Becoming A Champion

There's no indication she ever fought in Georgia, but "Jane," a game dog with Michael Vick's Bad Newz Kennels, was a consistent winner, helping her handlers bring home the purses. Vick bankrolled his buddies' bets and paid for them when they lost, but he and the other men say he never personally bet on matches or took any winnings.

Five victories equals a Grand Champion; a dog's value then escalates to the tens of thousands of dollars and they command royal fees for their stud services or offspring.

But even champions are sometimes badly wounded.

"The most vivid thing for me is to go into this house and see these two huge rings with blood all over the plywood," Downs recalls. Hardened lawmen, Downs and Newton Co. Lt. Mark Mitchell were still shaken by what they saw. "Myself and another officer cleared a bathroom area where we found two pit bulls on the floor of the shower, cut up, bleeding profusely," says Lt. Mitchell. "Investigators discovered one or two pit bulls in the vehicles that had been killed already."

"There was blood all over that bathroom, where that poor animal was suffering," says Downs.

Owners try hard to save their investments with IVs and antibiotics. Dog man Tucson says he could be hired as a head vet tech at any clinic, though he has never received any formal veterinarian training. He will try to stitch up his dogs' wounds as best he can, giving it drugs to fight off infection.

A winner is not just any run-of-the-mill dog anymore, he explains. It's a champion.

"We love these dogs...we're not hurting anybody else," Tucson tells Brown. "I don't know if I would die for the dogs, but I damned sure know my dogs would die for me in that box."

Sometimes veterinarians come to the fights to provide much-needed medical attention. There are only a handful of states in which vets are required to report animal cruelty, particularly signs of organized matches like dog or cock fighting.

Diverse Fans, Diverse Sentences

The dark world of dog fighting attracts a diverse, passionate clientele, some 40,000 fighters professionally. There are underground magazines detailing the sport, the dogs' bloodlines, and top breeders.

"There are about 100,000 people involved in street fighting--your rank amateur," says John Goodwin, animal fighting expert with the Humane Society of the United States. "Then, at the organized level--people that study the pedigrees of the dogs, put the dogs through conditioning periods before fighting, and they kind of follow the dog fighting circuit--we'd say there's about 40,000 of those people."

Black and white skin becomes invisible as the only colors fans of the deadly sport see are red and green--the blood and the cash.

Newton County Sheriff's Investigator Bill Watterson led the SWAT team on their big 2004 raid. He says as authorities surrounded the house, there was an incredible range of vehicles parked outside across the muddy yard—from Hummers to hoopties.

"You saw anybody from slacks and dress shirts down to blue jeans and tennis shoes. It was black and white—there wasn't a specific race there," Watterson says.

"At a dog fight, you see a real good relationship between black and white people," Sweat laughs wryly. "They're all buddies. Everybody comes together for this common goal."

Arguing for the legality of the blood sport, game dog fans point out that in the wild, deer or wolves sometimes have deadly fights for status. Some ask why it's wrong to let two dogs fight to the death, but it's okay to hunt a deer.

Henry County Police Major Lee Sweat points out dogs are our pets, our best friends. Deer, he points out are killed for food, or population control.

"I don't think I'm going to hell because I hunt, but I'm confident people that fight dogs are going to hell," he says somberly.

Dog fighters' sentences run the gamut across the country.

• In 2005, NBA player Qyntel Woods—a first-round pick by the Portland Trailblazers in 2002—pleaded guilty to animal abuse and was sentenced to 80 hours community service. The plea deal was struck after Oregon authorities said that there was evidence of animal fighting at Woods' residence, and allegations that he abandoned his pit bull because it would not fight for him. The dog, Hollywood, appeared to have bite wounds and a televisions station quoted a police source as saying a half-dozen other canines were taken from the home.

• The same year, an ex-NFL running back got a five-year suspended sentence for pleading guilty to three charges related to dog fighting. In Oklahoma, LeShon Johnson was convicted of one count each of possessing dogs for the purpose of fighting; encouraging dogs to fight; and facilitating a dog fight.

• In South Carolina, David Ray Tant—who had served as a referee in dog fights and owned a Grand Champion—is serving a 40-year sentence after pleading guilty to over 40 counts involving breeding and training dogs for fighting, and setting a booby trap which injured a land surveyor—which was how his operation was uncovered. Authorities seized nearly 50 dogs from Tant's property after his arrest in 2004.

  

• This July, also in South Carolina, Phillip Michael Maffei (right) received a sentence of five years, reduced to three years suspended, for staging dog fights on his property between June 2004 and January 2006. Ten pit bulls were seized.

• In November of this year, Alabama's Johnny Ray Lewis was sentenced to 102 years in prison—six years on each of 17 felony counts. A jury convicted him of possessing dogs with the intent to train them for fighting; Lewis' sentences are running concurrently, meaning he will serve six years.

• Michael Vick, a registered dog breeder, received 23 months in federal prison for quarterbacking the Bad Newz Kennels. Judge Henry Hudson said Vick had done more than bankroll the operation, and Vick had admitted being involved in the killings of animals by means including hanging, drowning, and slamming one dog's body to the ground. On a previous occasion, a federal complaint said, when co-defendant Purnell Peace consulted Vick about a losing dog, Peace then killed the animal by wetting it down and electrocuting it.

• Bad Newz Kennels' Purnell Peace and Quanis Phillips were sentenced to 18 and 21 months, respectively, by Judge Hudson in late November. A fourth co-defendant, Tony Taylor, will be sentenced December 14. He was the first of the group to enter a guilty plea.

ASPCA President Ed Sayres says truly "professional" dog fighters view it as a business: they don't take it personally when an animal loses.

"They're usually given a gun shot and buried in the yard," Sayres tells WSB. "This combination of the way in which the dogs were disposed of, it's actually an amateurish behavior, a personal revenge for dogs that don't perform well—which is to say, they're representing your machismo in how they fight. And so it's just a sad combination of big money and horrific attitude toward animals."

Vick vowed in August, and again before Judge Hudson, to take full responsibility for his actions.

"Dog fighting is a terrible thing and I did reject it," he said in Virginia in August. "I offer my deepest apologies to everyone. I will redeem myself. I have to."

Tuesday, 11 December 2007