Sheriff missed the point on dogfighter’s prior convictions

The South County Spotlight, Feb 18, 2010, Updated Feb 18, 2010 (2 Reader comments)

Courtesy of Columbia County Animal Control / The South County Spotlight

DANDER DOG - This male pit bull was one of two dogs that attacked a calf last summer in Scappoose.

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Last week, the Spotlight ran a guest opinion from Columbia County Sheriff Jeff Dickerson in response to an earlier Spotlight editorial citing a lack of resources as a core reason why the Sheriff’s Office didn’t pursue a dogfighting investigation against Eduardo Ribaya.

Ribaya, for those unaware, has two prior convictions for dogfighting, including one in California and a more recent conviction in Washington. In California, he was coined “The Pineapple Kid” and was linked to one of the largest dogfighting busts in the state.

In Dickerson’s response, he wrote “It was reported that the suspect in this case had a history of dogfighting convictions. Criminal histories generally can be used in sentencing convicted defendants, but it is difficult to use someone’s past when developing probable cause to arrest for crimes occurring now.” Dickerson continues in this rationale by citing the inability of law enforcement to arrest a convicted DUII offender based solely on those prior convictions.

“The police can’t arrest for DUII someone they have stopped for driving over the lines by checking to see if he’s been arrested before. They need proof the person is intoxicated now, not that he has driven that way in the past,” he wrote.

In a nutshell, new evidence of a crime is needed.

What Dickerson failed to mention, however, is that the presence of equipment consistent with the practice of training dogs to fight found at Ribaya’s residence, coupled with his prior convictions, would have been sufficient to secure a search warrant to probe deeper into any potential dogfighting operation taking root there.

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