Exclusive | Animal cruelty complaints in NYC surge to 5-year high: cops

These psychos are fur real. Animal cruelty complaints to the NYPD have surged to a five-year high, The Post has learned. Cops fielded 453 reports of sickos torturing and abusing defenseless critters in 2024, a 10% spike from 412 in 2023 — and the highest number of complaints fielded since at least 2019, when police began publicly reporting the stats, according to NYPD data. New York’s Finest arrested 158 sickos for harming animals last year, up from 133 the year before and 151 in 2019, the data showed. Among the cold-hearted creeps busted were career criminal Terrance Wallace, 29, who was hit with animal abuse charges for allegedly beating a dog with a leash and nearly choking the pup to death in the Bronx.His arrest came weeks after the nonprofit Little Wanderers NYC blasted out disturbing footage appearing to show the goon using a defenseless kitten as bait to train a pit bull for dog fighting.“People are getting fed up, and they’re putting [the abuse] more on social media,” Little Wanderers co-founder Courtney Chandel told The Post, suggesting the social media coverage of the twisted cruelty is driving more complaints to cops.Others collared for harming man’s best friends were Alberto Morris, 31, a deranged migrant who was slapped with aggravated animal cruelty and animal torture charges for allegedly killing his roommate’s pit bull by throwing her off their 14th-floor apartment balcony in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. In October, police opened an investigation after a sicko left an 8-year-old pit bull named Star tied up on the street in Glendale, Queens, with a gaping bloody wound in her chest.

A veterinarian ultimately put the poor pooch down because she was in so much pain from an “ulcerated and necrotic tumor.”“The rise in animal cruelty cases is no surprise, given the lack of serious consequences for abusers,” said Democratic City Councilman Robert Holden, who represents the Queens district where Star was found.“The State Legislature...