Anti-dogfighting bill stopped again

State Sen. Ron Calderon has lost his second attempt in two years to provide for the forfeiture of property and proceeds acquired through dogfighting of those convicted of the crime.
The Senate Public Safety Committee Tuesday defeated Calderon's SB 318 on a 2-2 vote. Four votes were needed for passage. Calderon also was unsuccessful last year when a similar bill was stopped in the same committee.

Sen. Mark Leno, committee chairman, offered a compromise that would prevent the forfeiture of property, such as homes. But Leon, D-San Francisco would allow money found on the site of the crime, such as was used in gambling to be forfeited.

Calderon, D-Montebello, turned down the offer. "I'm willing to work with the committee on facilitating the definition and fine tuning it and making sure that we don't have any cases where there are spouses unaware of the situation and losing their homes," he said.
"But there's there's got to be a bigger deterrent. It's just not there and the crime is going to grow."  The bill was given reconsideration and could come back for a later vote.