Law enforcement officers accused of excessive force at Ridglan Farms

Witnesses say the response was disproportionate, inappropriate and borderline ‘sadistic’

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Among the tools used April 18 by Dane County sheriff’s deputies to repel hundreds of activists seeking to free some 2,000 beagles from the Ridglan Farms dog breeding and research facility near Mount Horeb — in addition to tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets — was the OC Stinger Ball Grenade, a multifunction crowd-control device whose use has been linked to cancer and condemned by Amnesty International.

Dane County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Elise Schaffer conveyed in an email exchange that deputies at the site deployed two of the devices, which she described as “a ball-shaped, rubber coated, non-lethal grenade designed for law enforcement and riot control applications,” adding that they deliver “small rubber pellets that act as impact munition.” They discharge rubbery pellets that are “very tiny, like the size of a BB.”

According to a posting on the site Defense Technology, “the Stinger® CS Rubber Ball Grenade is a maximum effect device that delivers four stimuli for psychological and physiological effects: rubber pellets, light, sound, and CS,” with CS being the defining component of modern tear gas. The device has the ability to “project the rubber balls and chemical agent in a 50-foot radius.”

The posting leads to two portals. One is titled “Find a Dealer.” The other contains a warning: “​​This product can expose you to chemicals including Lead Salts, Methylene Chloride and Hexavalent Chromium, which are known to the State of California to cause cancer, and Lead Salts, which are known to the State of California to cause birth defects or other reproductive harm.”

Many of the estimated 1,000 activists who took part in the April 18 action have reported respiratory issues and skin irritation, which may be caused by exposure to chemical irritants. 

Amnesty International, in a March 2023 report, examined how the use of “less lethal weapons,” such as rubber bullets and Stinger Ball Grenades, have led to “thousands of protesters and bystanders [being] maimed and dozens killed.” The report is titled, “Take the Torture Out of the Protest.” The human rights group has decried the Stinger Ball Grenades, which it says “contain pepper spray and explode in a concussive ‘flash-bang’ effect, throwing rubber pellets indiscriminately in all directions.” The human rights group also opposes the use of tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets as instruments of crowd control.

Dane County Sheriff Kalvin Barrett has defended the use of force deployed at the scene, saying law enforcement officers were “outnumbered” when between 300 and 400 activists attempted to break into the facility. He’s called the actions of his officers “appropriate and decisive” to the risk posed.

Activists filed a federal class-action lawsuit April 24 against Ridglan Farms, Sheriff Barrett and Dane County Executive Melissa Agard alleging excessive force in the response to the April 18 protest. It alleges that the response, including the use of tear gas, rubber bullets and other less-lethal munitions, violated the activists’ Fourth Amendment rights against unnecessary search and seizure, and their 14th Amendment right to equal protection under the law. 

The activists who converged on Ridglan Farms April 18, led by activist and attorney Wayne Hsiung, had openly announced their intention to “rescue” the dogs, by breaking in and taking them, if necessary. But they arrived a day earlier than the date that was publicly announced, just as they had in a similar action last month, on March 15, due to an impending storm. On that occasion, the activists were able to remove 30 dogs, eight of which were later recovered by authorities and returned to Ridglan. About two dozen activists were arrested.

But the activists who showed up on April 18 hoping to remove a larger number of dogs were met with overwhelming force. A total of 17 law enforcement agencies were on hand, according to the sheriff’s office, as well as private security hired by Ridglan.

At an April 20 press conference focused on allegations of excessive force, Amy Van Aartsen of the Marty Project, a local group that seeks to end the use of dogs in research, said officers “deployed weapons against the crowd from behind a chain link fence. At no point were they in physical danger from rescuers. Law enforcement chose to escalate the situation unnecessarily.”

Others at the press conference had similar takes.

“We saw dozens of black clad, armed law enforcement, many of them wearing gas masks in riot gear, standing inside the fence chatting and laughing as they hurled tear gas canisters and sprayed pepper spray at us,” said activist Daniel Zellman. Later he was standing with a group of others — “We weren’t attempting to enter the facility. We weren’t attempting to breach the fence” — when “somebody came up behind me and sprayed me in the eye, point blank.”

Zellman also said he witnessed “the guards, the police, I’m not sure who it was” remove the goggles on a woman who was lying on the ground “in order to be able to spray her eyes with pepper spray.” He accused Sheriff Barrett of “flat-out lying” in claiming that the use of force against the protesters was proportionate and appropriate. “The response was totally disproportionate, completely inappropriate, and in some cases, seemed to border on sadistic.”

According to the New York Times, “Officers kicked and beat a man as he tried to enter through a hole in the fence, and then they pulled him through. The man, whom organizers identified as Nicholas Dickman, was arrested. A photograph shows him lying on the ground, face bloodied, with missing teeth.” The nation’s newspaper of record did not feel the need to include the word “allegedly.”

Here’s how Rebekah Robinson, the president of Dane4Dogs, a main force in a decade-long struggle to shut down Ridglan, describes what she experienced on Saturday:

“I was barely out of the car before I saw officers sprinting towards me. I took off because I was scared, and they…tackled me. A 200-pound man in tactical gear tackled me to the ground, threw my arms behind me, and zip-tied me, and I was left zip-tied for six hours. It was absolutely inhumane. [They] took us behind the barn, where I could hear the dogs screaming for help. As soon as I walked back there, I started crying because I could hear them, and I felt so helpless that I couldn’t do anything to help those dogs.”

Robinson gave this account on April 20 while standing in the Wisconsin state Capitol rotunda, surrounded by about 200 fellow animal rights activists. Other speakers also decried the police response. One, “Max,” a former firefighter and a paramedic, said the violence he witnessed Saturday was worse than he saw while going along on Chicago Police Department drug busts. “I personally was triple-tear-gassed. They threw three canisters right next to me. These are chemical burns on my face right now.” Another speaker referred to “grandmothers being brutalized.”

As captured in a video of this Capitol event, the activists then made their way to just outside the offices of Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul, urging them to use the power of their offices to force Ridglan Farms to relinquish its dogs. Chanting “Free the dogs!” they demanded a meeting with someone from Evers’ office but left without getting one. The governor’s press office did not respond to an inquiry seeking comment.

Dane County Supervisors Michele Ritt and Rick Rose have called for an independent investigation into the conduct of Dane County sheriff’s deputies at Saturday’s event. “I’m not here to pass judgment on everything or every bit of decisions that were made along the way in the field,” Rose said at the April 20 press conference. “What I am here…to say is that when questions this serious are raised by the use of tear gas and less-lethal munitions deployed in response to people motivated by what they believed to be a moral and civic duty, the public deserves answers, not reassurances.”

Ridglan Farms has been in business since 1966, breeding, selling and experimenting on “purpose-bred” beagles. Its roughly 2,000 dogs are housed in windowless structures in tiny cages often stacked two high, never brought outside for exercise or play. For years, state regulators have flagged the faculty for repeated violations of state laws governing the use of animals in research.

After an all-day hearing in October 2024 that included testimony from former Ridglan employees about how beagles at the facility were subjected to surgical procedures by non-veterinary staff with no anesthesia or after-surgery pain relief, Dane County Circuit Court Judge Rhonda Lanford found probable cause to believe Ridglan “has committed multiple criminal violations” of state animal cruelty laws and appointed a special prosecutor to look into the possible charges of criminal animal cruelty.

The prosecutor, La Crosse County District Attorney Tim Gruenke, agreed not to bring charges in exchange for Ridglan surrendering its dog breeding license by July 1. But the facility will be allowed to keep around 150 dogs used in its own research and the fate of the remaining dogs remains uncertain. They could still be sold for use in sometimes painful and often fatal research. 

The activists want the dogs to be made available for adoption. They say they will have no problem finding the requisite number of owners willing to deal with the severe physical and psychological problems the released beagles will likely have.

Ridglan Farms, which declares on its website that “no credible evidence of animal abuse, cruelty, mistreatment or neglect at Ridglan Farms has ever been presented or substantiated,” issued a statement April 20 that said in part:

“If any of Saturday’s attack participants, their supporters or police were injured, the fault lies squarely on the shoulders of Wayne Hsiung, who organized, egged on and then led hundreds of individuals in a coordinated, violent assault on our facility. Instead of respecting the rule of law and the results of a thorough investigation which led to a binding legal agreement between the state of Wisconsin and Ridglan Farms, Mr. Hsiung decided to encourage lawlessness and vigilantism because he did not personally agree with the results of the legal process.”

Hsiung, an attorney, was arrested soon after he arrived and held in jail for three days. Twenty-eight others were arrested and soon released. On April 21, Hsiung and three others were charged with felony burglary — for their roles in the March 15 action that led to 22 beagles being removed from the facility and placed in loving homes.

[Editor's note: This story was updated to include the news that activists filed a federal class-action lawsuit April 24 against Ridglan Farms and Dane County officials alleging excessive force in the April 18 protest.]

See this link for previous coverage of Ridglan Farms.