CHAPARRAL, N.M. – After two weeks of preparation, 150 officers slipped into this sleepy desert town. Their focus wasn't illegal immigration or drug smuggling, but a less pressing crime: cockfighting.
But when they raided what was billed as the Christmas Cockfighting Derby in December expecting to find 300 cockfighters, they found fewer than a dozen people. The cockfighters had been tipped off, police said, and the officers issued tickets for four misdemeanors before seizing 12 shrieking roosters.
Last year, New Mexico became the 49th state to make cockfighting illegal. (Louisiana will become the last state when a ban there takes effect in August.) New Mexico has devoted vast resources to ending the sport, but with only one misdemeanor conviction thus far, it continues unabated in hidden venues, cockfighters and law enforcement officials say.
Ed Lowry, 51, a director of the New Mexico Gamefowl Association, a nonprofit cockfighting advocacy group, has taken up fighting in the courts, where appeals claiming tribal, religious and cultural sovereignty have failed to win exemptions from the ban.
“A gamecock shows me what an American should be like,” Lowry said. “You defend to the death.”
To avoid the police, law enforcement officers said, promoters have relocated the fights from large arenas to clandestine sites. Lookouts are stationed atop dusty mesas, and speakers carry feeds from police scanners.
In the state, profits at feed stores and hotels in cockfighting strongholds are down as much as 70 percent, owners said. Cockfighting was an $80 million industry in New Mexico.
Some police officers said the pressure from the animal rights lobby has become so intense that resources are being diverted from more serious crimes, such as drunken driving and amphetamine abuse.
Animal rights advocates said the ban has transformed public opinion on animal cruelty issues.
“New Mexico is on the verge of having a modern culture,” said Heather Ferguson, the legislative director for Animal Protection of New Mexico, an animal rights lobbying group. Ferguson said a new animal cruelty hotline was receiving about 90 calls every two weeks.
As public support rises, so do costs. The Chaparral raid cost more than $25,000, officials said.
Others defended the raids, citing ties between cockfighting and other criminal enterprises, including illegal gambling.
“You aren't going to take down a cockfighting ring with two or three people,” White said. “This is not a friendly card game. There's a lot more going on.”
