HOUSTON - As the pit bulls savaged each other in 12-foot-square pits, spectators screamed obscenities, smoked marijuana, popped pills, made side deals about things like selling cocaine and fencing stolen property, and, always, talked about dogs, investigators said.
"It's like the Saturday-night poker game for hardened criminals," said one of the undercover agents, Sgt. C.T. Manning, describing the tense atmosphere at the fights.
Over 17 months, the undercover Department of Public Safety agents penetrated a murky and dangerous subculture in East Texas, a world where petty criminals, drug dealers and a few people with ordinary jobs shared a passion for watching pit bulls tear each other apart.
Investigators found that dogfighting is on the rise in Texas and is much more widespread than they had expected. The ring broken near Houston had links to dogfighting organizations in other states and in Mexico, suggesting an extensive underground network of people devoted to the activity, investigators said.
Besides a cadre of older, well-established dogfighters, officials said, the sport has begun to attract a growing following among young people from neighborhoods, where gangs, drug dealing and hip-hop culture are the backdrop.
Investigations led to the indictments of 55 people and 187 pit bulls were seized, breaking up what officials described as one of the largest dogfighting rings in the country.
Dogfighting drew national attention in 2007 when Michael Vick, the quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons, was convicted of felony conspiracy after holding dogfights on his property in Smithfield, Va.
It was the outcry among animal-welfare groups after Mr. Vick's arrest that prompted the Texas Legislature to make dogfighting a felony in September 2007. Before that, the police in Texas had largely ignored the fights because the offense was a misdemeanor.
In the Texas case, officials described a secretive society of men who set up prize fights between their pit bulls and bet large sums - often $10,000 - on the outcome. Many of those indicted had criminal records, but they also include a high school English teacher, an oil company land purchaser and a restaurant manager.
The participants generally arranged the fight over the phone, matching dogs by weight and sex, and agreeing to a training period of six or eight weeks.
The fights were held in out-of-the-way places - an abandoned motel in Texas City, a horse corral on the Houston outskirts, behind a barn on a farm near Jasper and at a farmhouse in Matagorda County, south of Houston.
Undercover agents documented at least 50 fights. "The undercover cops were sometimes invited to three different dogfights in a night," said Belinda Smith, the Harris County assistant district attorney prosecuting the cases.
Ms. Smith said dozens who attended fights had yet to be identified.
"We could have gone on and on and on with this investigation," she said.
James C. McKinley Jr.
The New York Times
