Recent investigations by KTVU and the Marshall Project show that police dogs are often deployed on people who are suspected of minor crimes. They can seriously injure people and leave lasting physical and emotional trauma. However, California state laws don’t clearly say when it’s ok to use police dogs, and they’re not always under police officers’ control. Use of police dogs is largely unregulated in California – dangerously so, say some advocates. We have this story from reporter Katherine Monahan, who spoke to two victims of police dog attacks. Please note that this story has descriptions and audio of violent police dog attacks.
Ali Badr is a rideshare driver in the Bay Area. Like many people, he fell on hard times during the pandemic. He lost his car because he couldn’t afford to pay the insurance, so he rented a car. He started delivering for Doordash and Instacart, and got a job at a Chevron gas station.
But then he lost his debit card, and had to wait for a new one to arrive in the mail. He called the rental car company, CarMommy, to explain that his payment would be late. “They told me they can wait for me,” he said.
Instead the company reported the car as stolen. And on the night of December 20, 2020, when Badr drove to his shift at Chevron, an automatic license plate reader alerted the San Ramon Police Department. Badr says half a dozen police cars surrounded him.
Body cam footage shows lights flashing and officers drawing guns as Badr steps slowly from the car, barefoot, with his hands up. A police dog leaps at Badr, clamps down on his arm, and starts shaking its head vigorously. Badr lies face down in the street, asking what he did, while the dog bites him for almost a full minute.
A year and a half later, Badr says he still can’t move his arm fully. The scars from his 36 stitches make his arm look like the top of a football. He’s had three surgeries so far. “And the doctor tells me maybe we need another surgery too,” he says. “Because it was big hurt.” Badr is suing the city of San Ramon, the police chief and involved officers, CarMommy and others for his injuries.
The San Ramon City Attorney sent a statement blaming the events on the rental car company, saying “it is clear that the misleading report of a stolen vehicle set the unfortunate chain of events in motion.” Neither the San Ramon Police Department nor CarMommy responded to requests for comment.
Nationwide, police dog bites sent almost 33,000 people to emergency rooms between 2005 and 2013, according to a study in the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine. Almost all of them were men, and over 40% of them were Black.
Challen Stephens, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist with the Marshall Project, spent over a year reporting on 150 of the worst police dog bite cases in the country.
“In San Diego a woman lost her scalp,” Stephens says. “People lose limbs. We had somebody die in Montgomery, Alabama, bitten to death.” Sometimes the dogs bit the wrong person, like their officers or bystanders. A pregnant woman in Indianapolis was bitten on her front porch.
Stephens says the people often became traumatized – scared of dogs, scared of police, reclusive. “While police might be stopping somebody for shoplifting or disorderly conduct,” he says, “the use of a dog can elevate what is a passing moment, a small crime, into a permanent life injury.”
“I think there’s a misunderstanding of how this work is done,” says Rob Peladeau.
Peladeau used to be a canine officer with the Dos Palos Police Department, and now runs the Next Gen K-9 training facility in Vallejo. He trains police dogs for several California departments (though not for either of the police departments cited in this story).
He explains that a dog’s main purpose is to find missing persons, or narcotics, or explosives. But if someone is resisting arrest, he says, “a dog is a pain compliance tool. Because we’re not getting compliance through verbal communication.”
Peladeau has heard about Ali Badr’s case. He says that using a dog was actually the more humane option. “At that distance, a taser wouldn’t work,” he says. “ If the dog wasn’t there, the only thing that would reach that point would be a bullet.”
Dogs can be unpredictable, and law enforcement officers cannot always control them. Sometimes the dogs don’t listen, like in the case of Jamar Lindsey.
Lindsey, a Black grandfather, is sitting in a public park on a sunny day. “I got half a calf now if you can see it,” he says. He presses on his scars. “It’s still mushy.”
He says he was waiting at a bus stop at night in the city of San Pablo in February 2021, when police officers pulled up and asked him if he was Jamar Lindsey. Body cam footage shows him standing quietly with his phone, ignoring their questions.
One of the officers goes to his car and gets a dog. By the time he returns, Lindsey is facedown on the pavement, under two more officers, one of whom has a knee in Lindsey’s back.
And then, the canine officer releases the dog. It tears into Lindsey’s leg. After about 20 seconds, the officer commands it to let go. But it doesn’t.
And this goes on for three more minutes. The officer tries pulling on the dog’s collar with both hands, pulling on its hips . . . another officer comes over and stands on Lindsey’s ankle to try to pry it in the opposite direction. Finally they have to cut Lindsey’s jeans, because even after they pull the dog off his flesh, it won’t release its bite.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been treated like that,” says Lindsey, “to lay on the ground in a defenseless position and for you guys to allow the dog to mutilate my leg.” Lindsey is suing the City of San Pablo and the officers involved.
California doesn’t have any laws that explicitly address when it’s ok to deploy police dogs against people. It allows individual departments to make their own canine policies.
Police department policies in both San Pablo and San Ramon state that dogs should only be used if a person is threatening violence, is physically resisting arrest, or is concealed somewhere that’s unsafe for an officer to enter – and that officers should give a warning before releasing the dog. The policies also say that once the person no longer poses a threat, the police should command the dog to release the bite.
The bodycam footage from Ali Badr’s and Jamar Lindsey’s arrests shows that neither Badr nor Lindsey was hiding, or running away, or threatening violence. Neither was warned before a police dog was released. And in both cases, the dog continued to bite after the person was physically restrained.
John Burris’ law firm is representing Jamar Lindsey. Burris says the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, POST, should establish canine standards to tell officers when to call the dogs off.
The commission sets voluntary minimum standards for California law enforcement. POST declined an interview, but confirmed that its K-9 guidelines – which are almost a decade old – are optional. The guidelines recommend that officers train their dogs to bite and release on verbal command. But they say nothing about when it’s appropriate to bite, or when to release.
Burris says, “There shouldn’t be a policy of finding and biting. It should be finding and barking.” He says biting should be avoided at all costs because of the physical and emotional harm it creates.
Back in the park, Jamar Lindsey is sitting on a bench. People are strolling in the sunshine. Some are walking dogs. A chihuahua on a leash passes by, and Lindsey tenses visibly. He says he gave his dogs away after he was bitten .
“I’ve had dogs since I was a puppy,” he says. “And now I don’t really want to deal with my own dogs, let alone nobody else’s.”
This story first aired on UpFront on June 2, 2022.
Photo credit: Franz P. Sauerteig from Pixabay