A “mid- to low-level drug dealer” and low-level sex offender was arrested in Centralia on Thursday after detectives with the Joint Narcotics Enforcement Team (JNET) assisted the Washington state Department of Corrections (DOC) in compliance checks at a “known drug house” in Centralia, JNET announced in a news release Friday.
DOC, supported by members of the Centralia Police Department, the Lewis County Sheriff's Office and JNET, conducted compliance checks on multiple supervised individuals residing at a residence in the 1000 block of Grand Avenue in Centralia on Thursday, Feb. 27, according to the JNET news release.
During the compliance check, Albert L. Brown, an active DOC-supervised person and level 1 sex offender, was located residing at the residence.
“Albert is known to JNET as a mid- to low-level drug dealer,” JNET said in a news release. Drugs, scales and packaging indicative of drug dealing were allegedly located in Brown’s room at the Grand Avenue residence, according to JNET.
JNET detectives took custody of the evidence and initiated a criminal case against Brown for unlawful possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver, according to JNET.
“A followup investigation revealed that Albert was in violation of his sex offender registration requirements and he was arrested by the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office for the sex offender registration violation,” JNET said in the news release.
Brown, 50, is registered as a transient in Lewis County, according to information released by the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office.
His requirement to register as a sex offender stems from a 1992 conviction out of Oregon for first-degree sodomy. He was convicted of failure to register in Washington state in 1998 and 2004.
Lewis County Jail records indicate that Brown was booked into the jail at 1:20 p.m. on Feb. 27.
He had a preliminary hearing scheduled for 4 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 28, in Lewis County Superior Court on possible failure to register charges and for alleged violation of his DOC release conditions.
At the time of his arrest on Thursday, Brown was on a 12-month probation stemming from a 2019 conviction in Lewis County for one count of possession of amphetamine or meth with intent to deliver, where he was sentenced to 60 months and one day in prison for selling meth to an undercover JNET detective, according to court documents.
JNET is made up of detectives and agents from the Centralia and Chehalis police departments, the Washington state DOC and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
