Launching a dogfighting offensive in Philly

During his five years in the drug game, Shawn Banks ran street corners, robbed dealers at gunpoint, and bet thousands of dollars a week on dogfights in his North Philadelphia neighborhood.

"It was just part of the norm," said Banks, now 40, sitting on a couch Thursday afternoon at the Hunting Park Recreation Center. "I never thought what I was doing was wrong."

Then, in 1995, someone kidnapped him and put a gun to his head.

"That was it for me," Banks said of his gangster life.

Escaping death, he sought redemption for all he had destroyed. He started a nonprofit in 2001 called Philly-Wood 7 that mentors youth. And he recently hooked up with the Humane Society of the United States as a community organizer in its campaign to end dogfighting in Philadelphia.

"Basically, I connect them to the hood," Banks said, then grinned, at the center Thursday to support a news conference that officially opened the local effort.

While campaign representatives and local officials spoke, Yukon Cornelius, one of 200 pit bulls the Humane Society rescued from a dogfighting yard in Ohio, sat next to Banks and licked his smiling face.

The End Dogfighting campaign combines positive dog training, community outreach, and violence-interruption skills for teens and young adults.

"One of the great problems that we have seen," said Wayne Pacelle, president and chief executive officer of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), "is that young people, men and boys, they're getting pit bulls for the wrong reasons. They're getting them as a kind of macho display, or as a fighting instrument, or for some other purpose that is not related to having a loving pet.

"This has become an epidemic in America."

The HSUS runs similar intervention programs in Chicago and Atlanta. The effort began in 2006. With its expansion into Philadelphia, classes taught by professional dog trainers will be held at the office of the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (PSPCA) on East Erie Avenue in Hunting Park until a permanent site is found. Community organizers such as Barnes will also visit schools to spread awareness. The campaign is funded through private donations.

"Rather than just say, 'Don't fight dogs,' " Pacelle said, "we say, 'Love your animal. Train your animal.' And we will provide a setting to give them a new experience with their pit bulls."