“If you outlaw pit bulls, then only outlaws will own pit bulls,” read the first slide during a class to help Delaware County police officers to recognize organized animal fighting.
The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals hosted classes aimed to train more than 80 local law enforcement agents in effective ways to investigate and handle organized animal fighting today.
This class comes in response to last year’s trial of Rahsaan Johnson, a Muncie man found guilty of 14 felony accounts of possession of an animal for fighting, according to the L.A. Times.
Terry Mills, director of Blood Sports Field Investigations and Response for ASPCA, offered the class free to Delaware County and surrounding area law enforcement officers.
Mills said the classes were in no way connected to a higher-than-average incidence of dog fighting in Muncie.
The class featured various techniques for officers to identify and handle cases of dogfighting.
One way to identify potential dog fighting is if a person uses shock and weight collars on dogs, which are commonly know to be dog fighting paraphernalia, Mills said.
He said most people arrested for dog fighting aren’t arrested during the act but rather for possession of dog fighting paraphernalia.
During Joe Orick’s 10 years as a Muncie prosecutor, he said he has handled two cases of dog fighting in Muncie.
“One case was built on the possession of paraphernalia, such as supplements, shock collars and sprays,” Orick said. “We didn’t actually catch him in the act of fighting dogs because that is nearly impossible to do.”
Mills points to the case with Michael Vick, in which the NFL player went to federal prison for his involvement in dog fighting as an example of how it is becoming more prevalent.
“I don’t think it is so much on the rise as much as it is there is more awareness of it,” he said. “It kind of goes back to the Vick case and that got law enforcement legislators looking at different laws.”
However, in Muncie Orick said he thinks dog fighting is becoming more prevalent.
“It’s hard to tell if it is a big thing here in Muncie and if we can stop it,” Orick said. “But I think it’s increasing because if you look at some of the websites out there, you can see an increase in activities in where we have found animals, in my opinion, that have been used in animal fighting contests.”
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