Jack Ordman for Dane County Sheriff

The record

What Happened at Ridglan

This page is the record. Sources are linked at the bottom. Where I draw a conclusion from the facts, I say so plainly, and it's labeled as my view.

The facility

Ridglan Farms is a beagle breeding and testing facility in Blue Mounds, operating since 1966, one of the largest in the country. Roughly 3,200 dogs lived there as of late 2023, in stacked wire cages inside windowless warehouses, never outside.

The documented record, from state inspectors, courts, and sworn testimony:

The conflicts of interest

The people with public authority over the facility's town are the facility's own people. Ridglan's head veterinarian chairs the Town of Blue Mounds Board. The facility owner's son-in-law, Jerry Blizzard, serves as the town constable.

And the connections don't stop at the town line. Ridglan family members also work inside the institutions that police and regulate the facility: one serves as a deputy in the Dane County Sheriff's Office, and another works for DATCP, the state agriculture department that inspects it.

The March 15 rescue, and who got charged

In March 2026, around 50 to 60 nonviolent activists entered the facility and removed 22 beagles. The Sheriff's office referred charges against 62 people, including 33 felony burglary counts. During that action, Blizzard slashed rescue-vehicle tires and brandished a knife at people. On video, he slammed car doors into people and a beagle, drove his truck into a rescue vehicle, and drove it at and into activists. He was the only person who committed violence against people that day. For that, the office referred him in April for reckless driving and criminal damage to property. Driving a vehicle into a crowd of people is not "reckless driving." A referral that took the violence seriously would have put reckless endangerment and assault on the table.

The Sheriff pointed to those referred charges as proof of the office's "fair and impartial application of the law." In his April video statement, he described Blizzard only as "a nearby neighbor who tried to intervene with the activists." He did not disclose that the "neighbor" is the facility owner's son-in-law and the town constable, facts that go to the heart of any claim of impartiality.

In early July 2026, the charging decisions came in: prosecutors charged 47 rescuers with felony burglary, bringing the total charged to 51. Three months after his referral, Blizzard has not been charged with anything.

Felonies for the people who exposed the cruelty. No charges for the man who drove into a crowd. No charges, ever, for the facility.

In those same early-July days, Blizzard posted a comment on Sheriff Barrett's official Facebook page calling the rescuers "criminals" and "morons." The Sheriff's account liked the comment and replied: "Thank you Jerry!"

Screenshot from Sheriff Kalvin Barrett's official Facebook page. Jerry Blizzard comments that the rescuers "made up lies," calling them "morons" and "criminals"; the comment carries a "liked by Author" badge. Sheriff Kalvin Barrett's account replies: "Jerry Blizzard Thank you Jerry!"
Sheriff Barrett's official Facebook page, early July 2026.

I'll be plain about why this matters. Blizzard's words are his own. But the Sheriff's account is official, and the like and the "Thank you Jerry!" are the office speaking. Engaging with content like this, and publicly endorsing language this crass and unprofessional about people his own office referred for felonies, Dane County citizens among them, is beneath the office of sheriff, and beneath the conduct Dane County has every right to expect of it.

And read the language the Sheriff endorsed. The rescuers are "criminals" and "morons." They are outsiders who "can't vote," the same outside-agitator frame the Sheriff himself used in April. Findings documented by the state's own inspectors become "made up lies." In my view, that is right-wing rhetoric, reminiscent of MAGA politics, and this is a supposedly Democratic sheriff, in a Democratic county, publicly applauding it.

April 18

Roughly a thousand people came to Ridglan on April 18th, nonviolent and trained in de-escalation. Our own Sheriff's office met them with tear gas, pepper spray, and less-lethal rounds, much of it fired from behind fences. This was a Dane County operation, run by the Sheriff's own deputies; outside agencies arrived only later. An elderly woman was left unable to stand. A person was knocked unconscious by a police ATV. Deputies took direction from private security contractors. The gas drifted toward the facility, toward the very animals everyone was there to protect.

And not one officer was harmed. There is no evidence a single deputy was so much as scratched. The "violence" the Sheriff warned about never existed, except the violence his operation visited on peaceful people.

And there has been no accounting. The Sheriff's office has never published what the operation cost. A county supervisor has had to call for one. The County Board has been stonewalled behind the department's lawyers ever since.

What I describe above, I saw.

The story the Sheriff told afterward

On the day of the operation, the Sheriff's office issued a written statement. It called the response "appropriate and proportionate" and said the office was able "to maintain order without anyone being seriously injured." That was false the day it was written. One demonstrator, Nicholas Dickman, was beaten by officers after he crawled through a gap in the fence. He lost multiple teeth, and livestream footage shows him unconscious for roughly fourteen minutes. Others were struck by 40mm less-lethal rounds. The office has never corrected the statement. But notice what its own words do concede: on April 18th, by its own account, it had no seriously injured deputies to report.

Days later, the Sheriff went on camera, and the story changed. His words:

"We do also have preliminary reports that the individuals that were trying to break into the facility actually jumped on the backs of our deputies, took their batons, struck them with the batons, and then tried to take their weapons as well."

Deputies jumped. Deputies beaten with their own batons. Deputies nearly disarmed. If any of that had happened, there would be something to show for it: an injured deputy, a medical report, a referral naming the attacker. There is no evidence any of it exists. What does exist is security footage from the facility's own cameras, and it is public. The worst thing it shows: one demonstrator took a deputy's baton and threw it into the woods. That is the opposite of an attack.

And listen to his qualifier, "preliminary reports." Those are his own words, and they are an admission: he was broadcasting claims his office had not substantiated, on camera, while the county was deciding what to make of the force his office had just used. He has never substantiated those claims, and he has never corrected them. Handwaving unsubstantiated reports to manufacture violence and justify force is the kind of brazen dishonesty we expect from Trump, but it has no place behind a Dane County badge.

I am not inventing this standard. The Justice Department under Obama built an entire civil rights practice on one premise: a department's account of its own use of force cannot be taken on faith. It has to survive the evidence. That is all I am asking of ours.

Why the response looked the way it did (my view)

The April 18th response was wildly out of proportion: rarely-used munitions deployed by our own Sheriff's office, deputies answering to private contractors, all against people who hurt no one. A response that disproportionate doesn't happen by accident, and I'll be honest about how it looks to me. It looks like a choice. A show of force that conveniently arrived ahead of another budget fight, with the Sheriff's office firmly on the side of a private facility under legal cloud rather than the public it serves. I can't tell you what was in the Sheriff's head, and I won't pretend to. The documented facts are damning enough: the contractors giving direction, the conflicts of interest, the charging disparity, not a single injured officer, and an after-the-fact attack story the footage does not support. Draw your own conclusions. Mine are not generous.

Sources

More background, including the court findings and the regulatory record, is collected at the links above.

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