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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: September 2007

National dogfighting crackdown vindicates Laura Maloney

 

NEW ORLEANS--Pronouncing herself "Extremely disheartened" by alleged judicial and mainstream law enforcement indifference toward dogfighting on April 17, 2007, former Louisiana SPCA executive director Laura Maloney saw attitudes change abruptly before her August 31, 2007 departure to join her husband Dan in Australia.

Previously curator at the Audubon Park Zoo in New Orleans, Dan Maloney now heads Zoos Victoria in Melbourne.

Laura Maloney left the Louisiana SPCA two days after the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Katrina destroyed the Louisiana SPCA shelter, and drove much of the organization's donor base out of New Orleans. Yet, while rebuilding the Louisiana SPCA was Maloney's biggest challenge, combating dogfighting was her passion and greatest frustration.

Even when dogfighting appeared to have been suppressed to the verge of extinction in most of the U.S. more than 20 years ago, high stakes gambling on dogfights persisted in New Orleans. Maloney and Humane Society of Louisiana founder Jeff Dorson targeted dogfighting more aggressively than anyone in New Orleans ever had before, including the 2005 arrest of reputed longtime dogfighting breeder Floyd Boudreau, 70, awaiting trial on 64 related charges.

But on April 16, 2007 they were bitterly disappointed when Judge Benedict Willard found alleged dogfighter Cleveland Harris not guilty of separate dogfighting felony counts filed in 2003 and 2005.

"Evidence in the 2003 and 2005 cases," Maloney recited, "included two championship awards presented to Mr. Harris by the Sporting Dog Journal, an underground dogfighting magazine which has not been published since owner James Jay Fricchione was convicted of dogfighting and animal cruelty in 2004," an extensive array of drugs and paraphernalia often associated with dogfighting, and "multiple scarred dogs, one with a seriously damaged face and missing lip."

The dogfighting case was lost when Hurricane Katrina destroyed the Louisiana SPCA evidence room.

Maloney and Louisiana SPCA humane law enforcement director Kathryn Destreza testified that video tapes which could no longer be viewed had showed Harris and his dogs in a fighting pit, but without the actual tapes, Judge Willard convicted Harris only on 16 counts of misdemeanor animal cruelty in the 2003 case and eight counts of cruelty in the 2005 case. Eight days after the Harris acquittal, police began impounding pit bull terriers and dogfighting paraphernalia from the Surrey, Virginia property of Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick. On the same day, Maloney was called to assist after a federal cocaine trafficking investigation in Mississippi turned up more than 40 alleged fighting dogs.

From then until almost the moment of her flight to Melbourne, Maloney was in constant demand as a dogfighting law enforcement expert and quotable source.

Contrary to popular perception, ANIMAL PEOPLE files indicate, the Michael Vick bust was not followed by increasing numbers of arrests and dog seizures in alleged dogfighting cases. The 33 arrests and 244 dogs seized during the next five months were consistent with the numbers recorded over similar intervals in every year since 1998. Between 1997 and 2001, the U.S. dogfighting arrests soared from 11 to 75, and the numbers of dogs impounded increased from 95 to just under 900.

Never before the Vick case, however, did dogfighting receive such intensive media coverage. Major alleged dogfighting arrests, involving 10 to 40 dogs each, came in 12 states.

Several of the biggest busts of 2007 came before the Vick case broke, however, including the seizures of 136 pit bull terriers in a series of related raids in the Dayton and Cincinnati areas that started in July 2006. At least 38 alleged participants were indicted.