Dog fighting suspect must stay in jail

[bigdoglover]

The Capital Times

By Mike Miller

Robert Lowery, charged Wednesday with being part of a conspiracy to deal 100 kilograms of marijuana, will be held without bond in Milwaukee for now, a magistrate judge ruled today.


Judge Aaron Goodstein, of the Eastern District federal court, denied Lowery's request that he be allowed to put up his town of Dunn property as a bond in the case after Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle Jacobs pointed out that federal authorities in the Western District court in Madison filed a lien against the property Wednesday.

That property, on Lake Farm Road in the town of Dunn, is where state and local law enforcement authorities armed with a search warrant seized guns, drugs and 52 pit bull dogs apparently being trained to fight, some of which had serious wounds.

Authorities armed with a search warrant went to the home on Lake Farm Road in search of drugs and found a large supply, but also found the dogs and apparatus around the farm to train them for dog fighting. No charges related to that part of Lowery's operation have yet been filed.

Seized in the raid, carried out by detectives from the State Justice Department's Division of Criminal Investigation and the Dane County Sheriff's Office, were 15 pounds of marijuana and 25 ounces of cocaine, along with five guns and $47,000 in cash, according to the state Justice Department.

The pit bulls and two other dogs taken during the raid have been put in the Dane County Humane Society shelter and will remain there until possible legal action is taken on that aspect of the raid. Lowery, 57, who was once a Dane County Sheriff's deputy, has previously been charged and convicted here of training pit bulls for fighting. He has also previously been convicted in federal court in Florida on drug charges.

And that is what he now faces in Federal Court Eastern District of Wisconsin, where he was charged with Jason Carr, 25, and Heather Lane, 26, both of the town of Genesee, with conspiring to distribute 100 kilograms of marijuana.

According to a report in the Wisconsin State Journal, an affidavit by Special Agent Neil McGrath of the Justice Department's CID, says Lowery hired Carr and Lane to travel to Arizona to bring back large shipments of marijuana. Carr told one unnamed confidential informant that he went to an Arizona house, which had a tunnel that went beneath the border into Mexico, the report said.

Lowery would pay Carr and Lane $5,000 for their trips to Arizona, in which they usually used a rental car and brought along their young son as well as their pit bull. The affidavit says Carr and Lane were stopped in Oklahoma for speeding and when police asked if they could search the car, they refused. Police brought in drug-sniffing dogs, the affidavit says, but they found nothing. Carr and Lane had 170 pounds of marijuana in the car at the time, the affidavit says.

The 14-page document also says Lowery shows up in many DCI reports of drug investigations, even during the two-year period in 1979 to 1981 when he was a sheriff's deputy. Lowery tried to get information on drug dealers from detectives in the department and provided license plate numbers of undercover police cars to dealers he knew, the affidavit says.

Lowery also is mentioned in DCI reports in the 1980s as being involved in trying to obtain the names of confidential informants in drug cases and with threatening to kill witnesses, although he was never charged with any crimes.

[Roobear]

I was listening to the radio the other day and heard that they were arresting a firemen in the area where I live for dog fighting. I think they found ten dogs or so on his property, I just couldn't believe it-