AR-News: More on NM Cockfight Bust

[Political Animal]

                       Copyright 2004 Albuquerque
Journal
                        Albuquerque Journal (New
Mexico)

                             April 20, 2004 Tuesday

SECTION: FINAL; Pg. D2

LENGTH: 248 words

HEADLINE: Deputies Called to S. Valley Cockfight

BYLINE: Chris Vogel Journal Staff Writer

BODY:

   Eleven illegal immigrants, 10 Albuquerque
residents, 30 live roosters, one dead bird and a box
of bloody hooks.

   That's what Bernalillo County sheriff's deputies
found Saturday at a cockfight in the backyard of a
South Valley home, according to a sheriff's report.

   Deputies cited local residents with animal cruelty,
while immigration officials took the 11 illegal
immigrants into custody, records said.

   Rosendo Martinez, 42, who was cited, told deputies
it was not a "real cockfight," but a test to see
whether the roosters were "trained enough to fight in
Los Lunas," records said.

   "Occasionally we'll get reports of cock fighting,
but generally people who do it know a lot of people
oppose it, so they do it in secret," sheriff's
spokeswoman Michele Arviso Devlin said. "Sometimes
we'll find evidence such as pens used to keep the
animals, but to actually have someone admit they were
seeing if the birds were capable of fighting is
unusual."

   She said all but a few counties in New Mexico have
outlawed cockfighting.

   According to the report:

   Deputies received a call Saturday evening that
cock-fighting was under way in the 2400 block of Perry
SW. When deputies arrived, they could hear "men
yelling" and "the sound of cockfighting."

   A group of 21 men were standing around a dead
rooster, beside a box containing a number of hooks
with blood on them. Razors and hooks are often tied to
the feet of roosters during a fight.

   Animal Control officers took about 30 roosters into
custody, records said.

LOAD-DATE: April 20, 2004
      


	
		
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