The Real Michael Vick Story

Give him a puppy and let him raise it. Then let him kill it

The routine exposure of the children to unfettered animal abuse and neglect is a major contributing factor in their later manifestation of social deviance.

"In many neighborhoods where gangs are strong, you now have 8-, 9-, 10-year-olds conducting their own dogfights. Or being spectators at the fights people are holding. You want to find the perfect way to desensitize a kid so he'll kill that anonymous gangbanger from three blocks over? Give him a puppy and let him raise it. Then let him kill it. I guarantee that will desensitize that kid."

That's one way you create a vicious gang banger. The supporters of Michael Vick’s dog fighting activities would have you believe that it is an ancient sport for Kings and Emperors. It's true that Queen Elizabeth loved dog fights back in the 17th century; Henry VIII thought they were grand and built a venue for them at Whitehall; Roman Emperors used to stage them in the Coliseum before cheering crowds. Dog fighting was popular in olde England, it was enjoyed by all economic classes, and there was big money to be made betting on them. Vick’s enablers will say that Michael Vick has lined up with some of the giants of ages past but has been hammered by a bunch of white women feminists and their slavish PETA camp followers who just by chance are the same ones who tried to lynch those three white rapists at Duke.Vick is being persecuted because he is black and the “sport,” which is no more vicious than boxing, is dominated by Blacks. It's part of Black culture hated by whites so it's no surprise that a successful Black like Vick is a victim. Before dog fighting in the U.S. was completely outlawed in 1940 it is true that almost everybody in the upper classes participated in it. The AKC even published the rules for dog fighting. Bets as large as $100,000 were wagered and another fortune was bet by the spectators. Breeders of fighting dogs were well respected, well known, and even had magazines that boasted of conquests.

But that was then and this is now. The usual lefty feminists and animal lovers are upset (boo fucking hoo), but for all the wrong reasons. Dogfighting is a law enforcement problem that includes drugs, prostitution, robbery, murder, and Black gangs. Especially black gangs and the hip hop culture originally attracted by the large sums of monies being wagered. Click here for a list of attendees at a dog fight that was busted.

First let’s look at the actual dogs. They are not even close to the original Staffordshire Bull Terrier, a vicious animal with long endurance for fighting, that was exported from England to the English settlers starting in 1817. They have been bred and rebred and mixed with a breed from the Canary Islands called Presa Canarios, so that now the “American Pit Bull” is anything but and the stupid assholes on TV news are clueless (as usual).

No type of dog fighters are more violent than the gang bangers, AKA the street fighters. Dog fighting is an extremely common blood sport in all urban areas. Dog fighters are violent criminals, mostly gang members, who conduct and attend organized fights as a forum for gambling and drug trafficking. “Drugs, gangs, dope, dogs…they all go together.” Within the gang community, fighting dogs compete with firearms as the weapon of choice; indeed, their versatile utility arguably surpasses that of a loaded firearm in the criminal underground. To the gang members, the dogs are an extension of each member’s status; the fights are championship matches that aggrandize the gang leader’s supremacy and intimidate younger members. It is extremely easy for urban criminals to acquire fighting dogs. They buy fighting dogs for a few hundred dollars or, more commonly, they breed their own or steal them. Owners become street legends and Rappers sing songs about them. Rapper DMX (*Busted today, 8/24, on various cruelty to animals charges) recently released a video for his song, "What's My Name," with two dogs lunging at each other to fight. He also alludes to dog fighting in his song, "Dog Match":

"First time I had a match and didn't scratch…Place your bets/You can imagine what the bloodline is like…All my pups is crazy, 'cause off the leash/They can eat, stand a match for three hours at least."

Dogfighting is an underground organized crime, get that. And all dog fighters, regardless of their level, embrace many peripheral crimes and gang activities including drug dealing and consumption, gambling, theft, and violence against humans. Now this next will come as a surprise to you, dogfighting is an incredible source of income for gangs and drug traffickers. In fact, the average dog fight could easily net more money than an armed robbery, or a series of isolated drug transactions. Organized dog fights are staged by leaders of the drug trade as forums to distribute narcotics. Many recent dog fighting raids, include those in Flint, MI (2003), Buffalo, NY (2004), Port St. Lucie, FL (2004), Jones County, GA (2004), and Oklahoma City, OK (2004), have resulted in the infiltration of major drug distribution networks, and the arrest of the drug kingpins who regularly organized and attended the dog fights. Fighting dogs are clandestine security devices for drug traffickers. Drugs are often stashed in containers to which the dogs are chained in yards or vacant fields. The dogs also provide excellent security inside drug houses and warehouses. Where once the presence of dogs was utilized as an overt warning to potential invaders, it is now increasingly common for criminals to have the dogs debarked (vocal cords severed), to act as silent alarm and attack systems against unsuspecting invaders. The presence of the silent killers poses a significant threat to law enforcement personnel entering these premises as well as to the innocent kids who might just be wandering by. With the increasing popularity hybrid human-aggressive fighting dogs, such as Presa Canarios, the law enforcement community has had to confront the urgency of cracking down on criminals who harbor fighting dogs. These dogs truly are loaded weapons, when placed in the wrong hands. Criminals also use dogfighting to yield large profits through illegal gambling. Participants and spectators wager excessive sums on the fights. "It's so much money. You would not believe the money floating around left and right." Purses for a single fight range anywhere from several hundred dollars to tens of thousand of dollars, and up. (A recent raid in Georgia in 2004, which resulted in 123 arrests, was an event with a $50,000 pot.) Bets also include cars, property titles, weapons, drugs, jewelry, and other valuables. I don't think that Vick was betting the paltry few thousand dollars that has been published. For many, dogfighting is a lucrative money making enterprise, but the price that the losing dogs pay is death by various means including torture. Inevitably, the mutilated carcasses of the losers of the evening's match will be left behind. In the world of urban dogfighting, where an individual's fighting dog is an extension of his or her own identity, defeat in a fight is unacceptable. A dog that loses a fight also loses a lot of money and compromises the reputation of his owner. The end result, if the losing dog survives the fight, is immediate death if he is lucky, or torture and mutilation if the owner is embarrassed or irate. For many, this ritual is a way to regain the respect of their peers. There is no reverence for life or concern for the animals. The abuses that the dogs endure - both in and out of the ring - is so gruesome that even seasoned investigators are consistently shocked by the barbarities they discover at raids. The children living around the dog rings become brutish criminals almost by osmosis. The systematic desensitization of each new generation in high crime inner cities starts early on. In the dog fighting inner cities most children are routinely exposed to dogfighting and are forced to accept the inherent violence as normal. So said Sgt. Steve Brownstein of Chicago's Animal Abuse Control Team. Indeed, for gangs, dog-fighting is a valuable tool to initiate young members into a culture of violence: This early exposure to and participation in dog-fighting is of concern to law enforcement, not only as a child endangerment issue, but also because children that become desensitized to violence become criminalized and perpetuate that cycle of violence.

Michael Vick was involved in a hell of a lot more than dogfighting.

Some bibliography:
*Per comment that I lost somewhere. Thanx

Dog Fighting History

Animal Legal Center
Wikipedia with links
Example pit bull magazine
See, R. Evans, D.K. Gauthier, and C.J. Forsyth, Dogfighting: Symbolic expression and validation of masculinity, Sex Roles, 39 (11/12) 825-838 (1998). “I don’t care how long my dog fights, if he’s still able to keep going and choose to quit, he’s not coming home with me. He’s a dead dog.” Id.
“[One officer] remembers when he received a call in June, 2002, from a terrified elderly couple who said a pit bull was on their front porch. When [he] arrived to take the dog, he found an animal with bite marks and dried scabs on her head. The dog had been doused with a flammable liquid, set on fire and flames had ravaged one-third of her body. Shriveled and burnt like a hamburger fallen through a grill, the pit bull's skin was weak, but it clung to her bones. When she sat down, the bones in her leg pierced through her charbroiled skin…The dog was no doubt a loser in a dogfight… and the owner expressed his anger by setting her on fire.” Adam Gibbs, Illegal Dog Fighting Rings Difficult to Catch, Daily Kent Stater, February 18, 2003. “[Another officer] remembers a call from an older couple who found an injured pit bull in their back yard. [He] arrived to find an animal, still alive, with ‘a huge gaping hole in its skull.’ It was breathing through its head with an audible hiss. ‘It was pretty clear that it had been hit in the skull with a bat, which we heard that a lot of times they do after they lose a fight,’ Olivier says. ‘And its eyes were swollen, and it looked like a human fighter but much worse. Cuts and bleeding wounds all over its body and its legs, all the typical signs.’"