Cockfighting outlawed

Arpaio says he'll use 'pet posse'

By Mark Shaffer
and Cathryn Creno
The Arizona Republic
Nov. 4, 1998

Cockfighters beware:

Sheriff Joe Arpaio is itching to send his new "pet posse" out to track violators of Arizona's newest animal cruelty law.

And La Paz County Sheriff Marvin Hare has the jail doors wide open for anyone who doesn't take the ban on cockfighting seriously.

"We'll hunt them down, confiscate their chickens and throw the book at them," Hare said.

"If they don't go on their merry way out of here, we'll merrily toss them in jail. But something tells me this ballot measure has put an end to this except in the courts."

But despite a more than 2-1 majority in favor of outlawing the ancient blood sport of fighting roosters, some cockfighters say their sport is anything but dead in Arizona.

"The way this proposition was written was about as vague as it gets. We are intent on getting legal relief and we will," Belton Hodges said Tuesday.

The 46-year-old Phoenix man said he has been involved in cockfighting since he was a child.

Early Wednesday, however, a dejected Hodges said he was sorely disappointed at the large number of Arizonans who voted down cockfighting.

"This is another right that has been taken away from us from people who don't know what they are talking about," he said.

"The biggest majority of people who are here in Arizona are from big major cities in the East," he said. "The only recognition they have of animals is of those that sing and dance on television. We call it the 'Bambi syndrome.'

"These animal-rights people are going to be dragging up one animal issue after another now every two years for a vote. They are probably going to try to outlaw hunting next. We have to take a stand somewhere."

Earlier this year Sheriff Arpaio arrested a postal worked who maced two golden retrievers after receiving an animal cruelty report from his so-called pet posse.

He will give cockfighters a few days to learn about the new law making it a felony to fight the roosters in a battle to the death with razors strapped to their claws.

"We are not going to go right out there tonight," he said. "But, as time goes on, we are going to enforce the law."

Hare, meanwhile, said he's eager to start enforcing the new law. His deputies patrol an area of western Arizona on the Colorado River where cockfighting is a passion, drawing thousands of spectators at pits in the communities of Quartzsite, Ehrenberg and Cibola.

Last month, Hare really stuck his neck out, along with the state's other sheriffs in rural locales, by coming out unanimously in favor of the ban on cockfighting.

"My phone lines really burned from all the cockfighters out this way," Hare said. "They made me out to be one of those liberal do-gooders out to destroy their livelihood."

Not that Hare doesn't want to toss the fighting of fowls into the scrapheap of history.

Sure, it could well mean a lot more work for his tiny, understaffed department, Hare concedes. But it's worth it.

Asked whether he believes cockfighters will continue to carry on in secret, Hodges said, "They have everyplace else . . . but I'm not going to say anything one way or another about whether it is going to happen here."

Mark Shaffer can be reached at 444-8057 or at mark.shaffer@pni.com via e-mail.

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