Oklahoma House Bill 2530 would have reduced the charge for cockfighting from a felony to a misdemeanor. Senate Bill 1006 would have allowed individual counties in Oklahoma to vote on reducing the cockfighting penalty to a misdemeanor.
Those two bills have since died in their respective chambers, but another sweeping penalty reduction bill could have a similar effect.
House Bill 1792, filed by Rep. Mike Osburn, would reduce penalties for several crimes in Oklahoma, including dogfighting and cockfighting. Animal fighting would still be a felony if HB 1792 is enacted, but the associated fines would be reduced. Under the bill, the maximum fine for dogfighting goes from $25,000 to $500. Current Oklahoma law punishes cockfighting with a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $25,000 fine. HB 1792 would make the maximum fine for cockfighting $2,000. It doesn’t say how it would change prison time.
The authors of the legislation didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Proponents for the penalty reduction argue that it is a means of criminal justice reform. “For me, this isn’t about cockfighting but is about criminal justice reform,” Rep. Justin Humphrey, HB 2530’s author, told The Oklahoman. "We've been talking about the need for sentencing reform for drug use ... but how is it fair that someone could go to jail for 10 years (for cockfighting)?"
Osburn told ABC affiliate KTUL that the ultimate goal of his bill is to “bring Oklahoma into the 21st century.” In response to criticism over the penalty reductions for animal fighting, Osburn told the news station, “We have no intention of reducing any penalties on animal cruelty or anything like that."
He said language in the bill is subject to change, but it has already advanced through the House in its current form.
Reducing penalties for animal fighting under the guise of criminal justice reform doesn't make any sense to Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy. He has been working to tighten restrictions around animal fighting in the U.S. for the last 25 years.
Back then, there were five states with legal cockfighting. There was also a federal law against cockfighting, but Pacelle said it hadn’t been invoked to rein the practice in at the state level. Back then, the cockfighting industry was operational across the country, Pacelle said. That’s when there were three above-ground monthly subscription magazines dedicated to following the industry.
Pacelle thought to himself at the time: “This is ridiculous. How can we have a serious animal welfare movement and not address illegal cockfighting in the United States?”
In 1976, Congress added dogfighting and cockfighting provisions to the Animal Welfare Act to try to address staged animal fights on the federal level. The law banned the interstate transport of dogs or live birds for fighting. However, the federal government wouldn’t go after cockfighting in any state where it was legal. Then, over 20 years later, Pacelle started advocating against cockfighting."How can we have a serious animal welfare movement and not address illegal cockfighting in the United States?" – Wayne Pacelle, Animal Wellness Action
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In 1998, he and others got ballot initiatives approved by voters in both Missouri and Arizona to ban cockfighting.
Then, he started working on doing the same in Oklahoma. In 2002, Oklahoma voters made cockfighting a felony through a ballot initiative. The same year, Congress banned all interstate or foreign commerce in fighting animals and increased penalties for violations as an amendment to the Farm Bill.
In 2007, Congress made animal fighting a felony. Seven years later, it became a federal crime to be a spectator at an animal fight. In 2018, all of the federal animal fighting bans were extended to U.S. territories.
Now, Pacelle and others are advocating for an amendment to the federal Farm Bill that would allow private citizens to bring civil suits against cockfighters and dogfighters if there’s no federal law enforcement action against them.
At the same time, some are trying to roll back these penalties for cockfighting at the state level in Oklahoma.
“It’s clear that Southeast Oklahoma and Northeast Texas … is a real hotspot for illegal cockfighting in the United States,” Pacelle said.
Some people make money by winning the fights, but most of the money to be made in cockfighting comes from selling good fighting birds, Pacelle said. “A good fighting bird can go for $2,500,” he said. “So, these guys want to sell their birds, and they’re pissed off about the ban on possession because the possession is what they’re all violating every single day. There’s no reason for these people to have birds of this type, housed in this way and there’s no commerce that these guys are engaged in other than cockfighting. They’re not farmers. They’re cockfighting.”
Pacelle and his organization do their best to track cockfights in the U.S. and the people who make them possible. “We know exactly what’s going on,” he said. “There’s an enormous illegal cockfighting industry that’s barely underground in the United States.”
He said Texas is surrounded by some of the last states to ban cockfighting. Cockfighting is also popular in Mexico, he said. “So, Texas has been surrounded by all of this,” he said.
This is the reason Texas is still a hotbed for cockfighting, he said. There have been several busts of alleged cockfighting operations in North Texas over the last few years.
In August 2019, about 200 birds were seized in Balch Springs after the city found evidence of cockfighting, according to The Dallas Morning News. In April 2021, Grand Prairie police seized nearly 300 birds from a cockfighting operation worth about half a million dollars.
In February 2022, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals of Texas seized more than 100 chickens from a cockfight in Dallas. Then, just last month the Dallas Police Department stumbled upon what appeared to be another cockfighting operation in the city.
Dallas Police were called to the 10100 block of Rylie Road around 6:20 p.m. on March 31 to respond to a report about a shooting. When they arrived, officers found a man who had been shot and took him to a local hospital in stable condition.
On the scene, officers found a large number of roosters, and through their investigation determined the birds were being raised for fighting.
DPD’s animal cruelty unit searched property and found at least 2,000 birds along with cockfighting paraphernalia. The birds were seized and are now being cared for by Dallas Animal Services. DPD charged 47-year-old Bernardo Betancourt in the shooting, but the investigation into the cockfighting continues. The Texas Animal Commission is helping with the investigation.
Pacelle hears these kinds of stories all the time and says stronger laws around animal fighting are needed to make them a rarer occurrence.
If animal fighting penalties are reduced in Oklahoma, Pacelle said he expects the idea to spread. “If it somehow moves [in Oklahoma], we can expect to see similar efforts in other states,” he said.
