The legacy left in Georgia by Michael Vick may not be confined merely to his accomplishments on the football field.
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Authorities say the former Atlanta Falcons quarterback’s dogfighting conviction in 2007 drew an inordinate amount of attention to the crime, leading to numerous dogfighting arrests and convictions that are still continuing today.
Since 2007, 47 dogfighting cases have been reported in Georgia and 534 have been reported nationwide, according to Pet-abuse.com. The state averaged 10 or 11 reports of dogfighting a year between 2007 and 2010, although they dwindled to five last year. Pet-abuse.com is a national website that tracks reports of dogfighting and other animal cruelty cases based on media reports, court records, and reports from animal control departments and humane law enforcement.
Alison L. Gianotto, the president of Pet-abuse.com, believes Vick’s case helped expose the existence of such mistreatment of animals and helped the public learn how to report it.
After the Vick controversy, Atlanta corporate security firm Norred & Associates set up an anonymous dogfighting tip line. The firm follows up on leads and works with local law enforcement agencies to bring charges when they are warranted.
Since the tip line started four years ago, the company has received over 100 tips and executed about 24 search warrants with the help of local police. Those investigations led to the arrests of 42 people and the seizure of about 800 dogs.
While tips are still coming in, it appears all the attention has driven the notoriously secretive sport further underground, according to Chuck Simmons, a private investigator for Norred & Associates.
“We were very successful for a while and it got very difficult to find the dogs,” Simmons said. “They started moving them around and people began moving out of state.”
The convictions were helped in part by a tougher state law. State Sen. Chip Rogers, R-Woodstock, said the bill he first introduced in 2007 gained momentum after Vick’s arrest, and finally passed in 2008. The new law made it a felony to own, possess, train, transport or sell a dog for the purpose of dogfighting, with a penalty of one to five years in prison and a minimum fine of $5,000, or both.
If it hadn’t been for the law change, Appalachian Judicial District Attorney Joe Hendricks said he would not have been able to pursue charges against dogfighters in his North Georgia jurisdiction. One of them was Glen Albert White, who authorities say was a nationally known breeder of fighting dogs.
White ran Mountain Swamp Kennels in Fannin County, where he developed a special breed of pitbulls called “Jeeps” that were known to win, according to Hendricks. Gamblers from around the country would fly in to watch his fights.
“Under the old law, you almost had to catch them fighting,” Hendricks said.
Hendricks said it was nearly impossible to penetrate the ring with undercover officers, but authorities found enough circumstantial evidence around White’s property to justify filing charges.
White pleaded guilty in 2009 and was sentenced to 10 years in prison followed by 10 years of probation.
Other successful prosecutions in the metro Atlanta area included those of Michael Sweeney and Erik Vann. The two were arrested in Cobb County in March 2008 after 11 adult dogs and five puppies were seized from their South Gordon Road property in Austell.
Both men later pleaded guilty to 16 counts of cruelty to animals as well as charges related to possession and sales of cocaine. Sweeney received a four-year prison term while Vann drew a five-year prison sentence.
In Fulton County, Ossia M. Phillips was also sentenced to 10 years in prison in December 2007 after pleading guilty to dogfighting charges. Police found 15 pit bulls at his Blanton Avenue home in Atlanta as well as the buried remains of several other dogs.
However, some dogfighting arrests that initially grabbed headlines had to be dismissed because of problems with evidence.
Such was the case with four men arrested in Gwinnett County in 2007 for allegedly operating a dogfighting ring out of a house near Snellville. Three dog carcasses were unearthed in the backyard of the home, and Gwinnett County Sheriff’s deputies who made the arrests said a shed on the property there was used as a venue for the battles.
However, Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter said there wasn’t enough evidence to link three of the men arrested at the home to dogfighting merely because they lived there. Charges against a fourth resident were later dropped when a confidential informant key to getting the search warrant changed his story.
“The evidence that was represented in the press never materialized and there was an insufficient investigation done,” Porter said.
An August 2009 dogfighting case against a Talbot County man also turned out differently than what it initially seemed to investigators. A man was jailed after deputies found 35 scarred and malnourished pit bulls on his property.
But he pleaded guilty in April 2011 to five misdemeanor counts of cruelty to animals — not felony dogfighting — and was sentenced to 48 months in prison. Assistant District Attorney Wayne Jernigan of the Chattahoochee Judicial District near Columbus said the property was probably a storage area for the animals.
“It is a hard world to crack, the dogfighting world,” Jernigan said. “They are very hard to prosecute because they are very hard to catch.”
Active dogfighting rings are still under investigation in Georgia and more arrests are likely in the near future, said Jessica DuBois, senior state director for the Humane Society of the United States.
Atlanta-based forensic veterinarian Melinda Merck has helped investigate numerous dogfighting cases nationwide, including the Vick case. She said tips from the public are key in jump-starting investigations.
“It really requires some kind of information from the public,” Merck said. “It is very hard for law enforcement to go undercover. They say it is harder to break into than drug operations.”
