A Blood Sport Exposed

"We get them left in abandoned buildings, thrown in Dumpsters, severely injured," said Chris Schindler, a Humane Society officer in the District. "We had an incident where somebody threw a trash bag out of a car, and it was one dog that was alive and one that was dead -- all fought up, really bad injuries. Just threw them out the window."

In a field near the Rhode Island Avenue Metro station in Northeast Washington, Schindler said, "there are some old train tracks, and for about a year straight, we were constantly finding dogs tied to the tracks out there and left to die."

Researchers say organized pit bull fighting is less prevalent in the Washington region than in states farther south, although a dog man in Richmond was sentenced to four yeas in February. The FBI keeps no records on dogfighting arrests nationwide. The Humane Society has counted about 150 in the past two years, including eight in Virginia, two in Maryland and one in the District.

Because urban pit bull fights usually are spontaneous, police said, making arrests is difficult unless owners are caught in the act. Based on the dozens of battered and scarred pit bulls abandoned or seized in the Washington area every year, however, animal-protection advocates say street fighting is common.

Dog men, with their kennels of pit bulls and equipment, are easier to prosecute because authorities find more evidence, as in the Vick case. Since starting an anti-dogfighting task force in 2003, the South Carolina attorney general's office has prosecuted at least 20 cases, with more awaiting trials, said Jennifer Evans, the unit's chief prosecutor.

The granddaddy of all dogfighting cases, in terms of punishment, was prosecuted in South Carolina three years ago. There, as in other states, the maximum prison term for one count is five years. A breeder named David Ray Tant, then 57, pleaded guilty to 41 counts -- and was sentenced to 30 years.

"There's never been a sentence like it anywhere in the country, as far as I know," Evans said last week.

Tant also had laid a half-dozen booby traps around his property -- pipes with tripwires, rigged to fire birdshot -- and a land surveyor was severely injured after stepping on one. Tant got 10 years for assault, on top of the 30.

In another major case, 70-year-old Floyd Boudreaux, dubbed "the don of dogfighting" by the Humane Society, is awaiting trial in Louisiana, charged with 64 counts. He has pleaded not guilty. His attorney did not return messages seeking comment. Known as "Boudreaux dogs," the pit bulls bred in his kennel are among the strongest, most coveted animals in the field of canine combat, police said.

Based on details in the indictment, the Bad Newz operation was typical of many others in the "professional" realm, said Eric Sakach, a California-based official of the Humane Society of the United States.

Generally, the process of turning a well-bred pit bull pup into a fighter begins when the dog is 16 months old, said Sakach, who witnessed a dozen organized dogfights as an undercover investigator in the 1980s and 1990s. He now trains enforcement agencies on how to root out dog men.

The "prospect" is pitted in bouts against an over-the-hill fighter in the kennel, sometimes with filed-down teeth, a dog unable to do much damage.