NEWPORT, Tenn. (AP) -- When agents swooped in last year with helicopters and machine guns in a raid on what was said to be the nation's largest illegal cockfighting pit, they shined new light on a tradition of good ol' boy vice in aptly named Cocke County. Moonshine, hookers and drug dealing had for decades been as much a part of the landscape as the foggy haze that settles over the community of 35,000 in the Great Smoky Mountains, along the North Carolina state line."You could go to Cocke County years ago and you didn't have to look very far to find trouble," District Attorney Al Schmutzer said. He recalled a $20,000 contract on his head in the late 1970s for breaking up an interstate prostitution ring that served - then robbed - customers at a truck stop brothel so brazen it had no fuel pumps.
Last June's cockfighting bust - which netted 143 arrests, the seizure of $40,000 in cash and capture of 305 fighting roosters - blew the lid on a four-year federal and state probe that suggested the bad old days were back again - or may have never left. Agents returned in the ensuing months to make a series of barroom sweeps for video-poker machines, prostitution and other graft.
Five sheriff's officers and two Newport police sergeants are now charged with a variety of offenses. The crimes include money laundering, drug dealing, witness tampering, insurance scams, stealing money from illegal immigrants during a traffic stop and receiving stolen NASCAR merchandise. The accused include the sheriff's nephew, a chief deputy. Three of the lawmen have pleaded guilty.
Last week, Sheriff D.C. Ramsey, whose own record includes an overturned conviction for extorting money from drunken driving suspects three decades ago, said he was quitting because of a heart condition and "all the negative publicity about myself and Cocke County." Court papers filed unsealed just days before the sheriff's resignation said the FBI was looking into allegations that the sheriff and his nephew took payoffs to protect gambling.
Ramsey, who unlike two of his predecessors has not been charged with a crime, said in his resignation letter, "I think it would be in the best interest of myself and Cocke County, which I dearly love, to step aside now so some good things can be said about our county." His letter was submitted to County Mayor Iliff McMahan, a Cocke County native who lived for years in Washington and has been on a mission to boost the picturesque area's tourism potential and show it has more to offer than "moonshine, marijuana and chop shops."
Nothing torpedoed those efforts more than last year's cockfighting bust, when 100 state and federal agents swept into the Del Rio Cockfight Pit in Parrottsville. As many as 700 people from several states wagered as much as $3 million there on a single Saturday night.
Some considered the $400,000 raid overkill. Republican Rep. Bill Jenkins complained the FBI was wasting resources for fighting terrorism and methamphetamine production "on a thing like cockfighting." The blood sport that pits roosters in a fight to death with razor-sharp spurs is illegal in all states except New Mexico and Louisiana. However, it is only a misdemeanor in 16 states, including Tennessee, which downgraded it from a felony in 1990.