Petition updateLengthy Mandatory Minimum Sentence for DogfightersHSUS disconnects dogfighting tipline as dogfighters are busted, investigated & sentenced across U.S.
pets_in_ dangerUnited States
Sep 15, 2023

Three years ago, I began replying to Craigslist ads to warn people about the likes of Luka Magnotta, Kaine Louzader and Ronald Golden, who admitted to scrolling through the site in search of cats and kittens they could kill. In November 2020, just before Thanksgiving, I caught Cleveland dogfighter Angelo McCoy using the site to communicate with people breeding kittens and collecting cats for his pitbulls to tear apart. Since then, I've learned a lot about dogfighting, pitbulls and so-called animal advocates.

Dogfighting

The earliest dogfighting bust I've come across so far occurred in Marinwood, California, in 1961. Joseph Sequeira, his son George and his nephew Clem were arrested on a ranch (because, until recently, dogfighting was primarily rural, making Nathan Winograd one of the worst things to ever happen to cats, kittens and dogs. If that doesn't convince you, read this thread and this post). That being said, however, The Charlotte Observer had reported seven months earlier that "[d]og-fight conventions have been held in Louisiana for more than a century. They provide owners and trainers with a proving ground for [a] unique project: to develop the finest fighting dogs in the world." At the time, the SPCA estimated there were 20,000 dogfighters across the country. "Louisiana is the hot-bed for dog-fighting," the Charlotte Observer continued. "Each year more than a dozen conventions -- two-day events including some 36 fights -- are held in the state." Unsurprisingly, Louisiana Reps. John John and Raymond LaLonde tried to keep dogfighters from going to prison 20 years later.

"When you go meddling with people, with a way of life, and talking about putting them in jail, you're fooling with things that are important, meaningful for certain people," John said. "Some things have been handed down from our forefathers. ... It's wrong to change a custom close and dear to us."

That "custom" has been an epidemic in this country for decades:

Pitbulls and So-Called Animal Advocates

Dogfighting has been a multi-billion-dollar-per-year industry since at least 2007. In 2009, HSUS estimated that 250,000 pitbulls were fought each year. That was in the early days of social media. Today, if you search YouTube, Facebook, Instagram or OnlyFans for any of these names, you'll see thousands of individuals and kennels showing off their yard. In just four months, Ladyfreethinker found "[m]ore than 150 pages, groups, and profiles ... involved in the sale of fighting dogs," the Daily Dot reported in 2019. "The five largest pages and groups have a combined total of 160,563 followers."

In 2014, Judge Keith Watkins estimated the dogfighters in his courtroom had killed 420 to 640 pitbulls. 

What have the ASPCA, HSUS and Best Friends done about cat-, kitten- and rabbit-killing dogfighters? They've helped them.

The greed began when Best Friends got $389,000 from Michael Vick to care for 22 of his dogs. Although HSUS had long argued that owning fighting dogs prevented police officers from busting dogfighters and that dogfighters' pitbulls should be euthanized because they would kill neighbors' dogs, cats and farm animals, people who didn't realize this crashed HSUS' website in an attempt to donate. So you can imagine how much money Best Friends raked in.

HSUS' disconnection of the dogfighting tip line it started in 2009 is just another indicator of the corruption running rampant in animal advocacy. I've been advertising that tip line -- and the $5,000 reward -- for years with posts like this and tweets like this. This is the part where HSUS will come out with an HSUS-funded study stating people are more likely to report criminals via email than by phone, but anyone with half a brain knows that isn't true. The problem is, more likely, that so many people were reporting dogfighters that HSUS couldn't keep up now that its main dogfighting investigator, Eric Sakach, is retired and John Goodwin has been moved to HSUS' puppy mill campaign, which is a joke. In the last few weeks alone:

  • 90 pitbulls were seized from Indianapolis dogfighters who've not only been killing animals since 2001 but were transporting pitbulls "as far as New York, Florida, Texas, North Carolina and West Virginia";
  • 30 dogs, rabbits and chickens were taken from Alabama dogfighter Clifford Sheppard;
  • a tiger was seized from a Dallas, Texas, dogfighter;
  • a Georgia dogfighter was just sentenced to 15 years in prison; and
  • a Louisiana dogfighter was just sentenced to a year and one day in prison. 

If HSUS, the ASPCA and Best Friends had any desire to end dogfighting, they would, at the very least, demand flyovers and pressure politicians to:

  • ban the breeding of pitbulls (with every shelter in this country full of unwanted pitbulls, it is animal cruelty to continue to allow the breeding of them);
  • ban tethering, knowing dogfighters aren't going to keep dozens of pitbulls in their home;
  • ban hogdogging, knowing dogfighters use hog hunting as a defense in court;
  • impose a mandatory minimum prison sentence for dogfighters, knowing dogfighters do not stop killing animals unless they're in prison.

Instead, these "nonprofits" use suffering animals to make millions and millions and millions of dollars, and they refuse to warn the millions of people getting rid of pets that dogfighting has increased across the country and those dogfighters are killing their pets. 

Enough is enough. 

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