Animal cruelty warrants issued for Chiefs' Buggs

Two misdemeanor warrants have been filed against Kansas City Chiefs defensive lineman Isaiah Buggs in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, on charges of cruelty to dogs in the second degree.

According to court documents, the Tuscaloosa Police Department received a report that two dogs were being left on the back porch of a home being rented by Buggs. Officers and animal control found a gray and white pit bull and a black rottweiler on a screened-in back porch with no access to food or water.

Both dogs appeared malnourished and neglected, and the residence appeared to be abandoned. Witnesses told police Buggs had recently moved from the house. Both dogs were seized, and the pit bull eventually was euthanized.

Buggs’ agent, Trey Robinson, denied the charges and alleged his client is a victim of an ongoing “subversive campaign” to force the closure of the hookah lounge he owns in Tuscaloosa.

“Under no circumstance does Mr. Buggs condone the mistreatment of any animal,” Robinson said in a statement. “The dogs at issue did not belong to him and he was unaware they remained at the property in question.”

Robinson said in his statement that Buggs was arrested at his hookah lounge on misdemeanor charges “on two separate occasions in the past two months, but each time no public record was made of these arrests.”

He said the city of Tuscaloosa “used the threat of pursuing and publicizing both the allegations filed today and these arrests as leverage against Mr. Buggs by offering to drop and not pursue them in exchange for his voluntary surrender of his business license.”

Robinson said Buggs “declined the City’s offer as he has serious concerns about the City’s and Police Department’s motivation for deciding to target his business, which he plans to bring to light as part of his defense of the allegations and charges filed against him and his reputation and business.”

Buggs, 27, played three seasons with the Pittsburgh Steelers and two with the Detroit Lions before joining the Chiefs in January as a practice squad player. The Chiefs re-signed Buggs to a futures contract in February.

This is the latest in a series of legal troubles involving Chiefs players this offseason. Wide receiver Rashee Rice was arrested in Dallas in March for his involvement in a six-car crash that injured at least seven people. Police say Rice was driving 119 mph on a freeway before causing the crash. Rice is facing one count of aggravated assault, one count of collision involving serious bodily injury and six counts of collision involving injury.

Rice is also a suspect in an alleged assault that injured a man in a Dallas nightclub. The man does not want police to file charges, however. That investigation remains ongoing, Dallas police said earlier this month.

Offensive linemen Wanya Morris and Chukwuebuka Godrick, meanwhile, were arrested recently in Johnson County, Kansas, on misdemeanor possession of marijuana charges.