New York police busted the largest known cockfighting circuit in state history, the attorney general announced on Sunday.
NBC News reports that more than 70 people have been arrested and as many as 3,000 birds rescued in a sting operation dubbed ‘Operation Angry Birds.’
Investigators raided a breeding farm in upstate New York, a cockfighting venue in Queens and a Brooklyn pet shop, where they found birds stuffed in cramped cages and being “bred, trained and altered for fighting.”
“Cockfighting is a cruel, abusive and barbaric practice that tortures animals, endangers the health and safety of the public and is known to facilitate other crimes,” said Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
[NBC News]
More Must-Read Stories From TIME
- How to Help Victims of the Texas School Shooting
- TIME's 100 Most Influential People of 2022
- What the Buffalo Tragedy Has to Do With the Effort to Overturn Roe
- Column: The U.S. Failed Miserably on COVID-19. Canada Shows It Didn't Have to Be That Way
- N.Y. Will Soon Require Businesses to Post Salaries in Job Listings. Here's What Happened When Colorado Did It
- The 46 Most Anticipated Movies of Summer 2022
- ‘We Are in a Moment of Reckoning.’ Amanda Nguyen on Taking the Fight for Sexual Violence Survivors to the U.N.
Read More From TIME