Posted on 07/24/2007 10:10:54 AM PDT by HockeyPop
Police: Cheering Men Lead To 'Professional' Cockfighting Operation
Massive Grave Of Dead Birds, $25,000 In Cash Found
A large group of cheering men in a rural part of Polk County led to the arrests of 17 men on suspicion they were taking part in a cockfighting operation described as "very professional" by the county sheriff.
Officers raided a rural area of Polk County Monday and found a massive grave of freshly killed roosters, drawers full of sharp fighting spurs for birds and $25,000 in cash.
A bloody fighting box where the roosters apparently fought to the death was also found at the scene, police said.
"It was really, a very professional operation," Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said. "They had a box, a fighting box, and they had benches set up on each side of the box and the benches were numbered. You sat on the bench in order to place your bets."
(Excerpt) Read more at local6.com ...
www.darryl.com/badges/mov.php?mov=sierramadre.mov
Seinfeld reference in 3... 2... 1...
A link with a pic of some of the alleged perps.
I was thinking Sam Peckinpah
secreted?..........
I’m showing may age. I was considering a Chicken George reference ...
Ben Vereen
Ironically, cockfighting still legal in Louisiana where Gen. Leonidas Polk (the namesake county in Fla. where these hispanics arrested?) was from...
They just banned cockfighting in Lousiana.
Seems like the neo-puritans want to ban everything these days - cigarettes, guns, cockfights - it used to be just alcohol and gambling. Next on the nannystate agenda - steaks and hamburgers (PETA people), cars (Al Gore) and soda pop and sweets.
In the smaller rural areas it becomes a matter of whether the local sheriff wishes to enforce the law. But since the states and feds together with the frothing media have targeted it for extinction, this part of Americana will soon be another thing of the past, for better or ill.
Has ICE been notified?
I've observed a few in Mexico and the Phillipines in my younger days with the U.S. Navy...however, I am an unabashed animal lover and, though it only involves birds, they are still God's creatures deserving humane treatment. Roosters fight anyway and their battles can be long a blood, but they are conducted without the razor sharp steel gafts attached to their spurs. I would hope that Americans will one day conger up the same revulsion for cockfighting they have for dog fighting. If not we might as well go back to bullfighting and bear baiting.
One man’s pet is another man’s meat.
My dogs catch crippled birds but are never allowed to toy with them or kill them. I euthanize the animals. I've passed up plenty of shots because the bird was at too far a range to ensure a clean kill. I only kill for meat or trophies, never for the sport of killing. A slow death in the fighting ring for either a bird or a dog is cruel and inhumane.
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