Barely a stone’s throw from the Kuney Homes housing project and just a few miles from the heart of downtown Houston, thick brush gives way to a clearing, which until now, has harbored something you’ve probably heard about but have never seen. 

Something which in all likelihood you will hope to never see again.

“It just is so disturbed to me that young people think that this kind of activity is entertaining,” Assistant District Attorney Belinda Smith said. “They have no regard for life.”

It is a glimpse into the darker side of the human spirit — man’s least admirable qualities captured on a video tape seized by the Harris County Sheriff’s Department, investigated by Precinct 6 and now being prosecuted by the district attorney’s office.

“The first time I tried to look at it, I left after about a minute,” Smith said. “It was so disturbing.”

Television may be a visual medium, but it’s the sounds of animals screaming in agony to the crowd’s delight that most would find difficult to stomach. The only animals on display here, it could be argued, are the humans themselves.  

As evidenced by the fact that some of the dogs had no desire to fight.

“There are instances in the video tape when the dogs are licking each other,” Smith said. “They release them, and they’re licking each other. They don’t want to fight, yet the handlers bring them back and get them pumped up to fight. It’s not natural.”

Unnatural, but quite common. In the last month alone, the Harris County DA’s office has filed charges in four dogfighting cases; three years ago it wasn’t filing any.

Street-level dogfighting -- like the cases in this report -- has reached epidemic levels in some neighborhoods according to authorities.

And it has as much to do with the quality of life in those neighborhoods as animal cruelty.

“We go out and interview neighbors and stuff,” animal cruelty investigator Lt. Mark Timmers said. “They want to talk to us, but they’re scared. They’re fearful because they see the violence going on.

“They see the dog fighting, and they tell them, ‘we’ll hurt you if you tell people about this,’” he said.

Among the many looming questions: How could someone become so desensitized to another’s pain?

“It’s particularly disturbing to me that all of these individuals are so young,” Smith said. “Some are juveniles, and all of them are teenagers below 20. And that they would get such pleasure out of seeing this violence, that they have no regard for life — that is really troubling.”

Still more troubling is what else they might be capable of.