Mauled: When police dogs are weapons
by The Associated Press
Officer Matthew Saltzman spotted the stolen Chevy SUV outside a Save-A-Lot in Huntsville three years ago. When he turned on his lights and sirens, the man in the white Chevy drove away.
Saltzman had been working with his police dog for about six months. Ronin, a Dutch Shepherd, was trained to sniff for drugs and to capture criminals by grabbing them with his teeth, court records show.
Police chased the SUV through the city until it came to a dead end and crashed in a backyard. The driver ran. Saltzman released Ronin, without a leash, body camera footage shows.
The dog lunged — and bit a nearby police officer, latching on to his bulletproof vest. Saltzman struggled for almost a minute to get Ronin to let go. Meanwhile, the suspect got away.
Unusual secrecy
It’s not unusual for police dogs to attack suspects, police officers, even innocent bystanders, in Alabama and across the country, according to an investigation by a team of news organizations. AL.com worked with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit newsroom that specializes in criminal justice, the Invisible Institute in Chicago, and IndyStar in Indiana. We reviewed court cases and news stories, watched scores of videos of bites, observed police dog training, rode along with a K-9 unit and gathered public records in Alabama and nationwide.
Police often use dogs on people who are unarmed, or are suspected of non-violent crimes like car theft or drug possession, our reporting shows. Handlers often struggle to control the dogs, which do not always follow spoken commands. Their bites can result in severe injuries, even death.
What is unusual, for Alabama, is that the public can actually see bodycam footage of a dog attack, obtained in this case through a lawsuit. Police here almost never release video or detailed arrest reports or even press releases about K-9 bites. The state’s public records law does not require police to release records or videos related to active investigations, which can take years.
Some police dog bites have made news in Alabama. A Decatur police dog bit a sheriff’s deputy while chasing two teenagers. A Huntsville police dog bit a 17-year-old suspected of breaking into a school. A dog with the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office bit a man suspected of stealing lawnmowers after he led police on a chase. Two years ago, there was a rare fatality: a Montgomery city police dog killed a handyman.
But most bites never become public.
Many police agencies in Alabama say dogs can be a valuable tool for catching fleeing felons and concealed criminals, and for intimidating violent suspects.
They are better than people at finding and chasing suspects, and can search where it is not safe to send officers, said Capt. George Beaudry of the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office.
“I’ll send four dogs into almost certain death before one of the officers,” he said.
A police dog named Missil.
Dogs have played a role in racial conflict in the state, dating back centuries. Photographs of police in Birmingham using dogs against Black civil rights marchers shocked the nation in 1963.
“I can state emphatically that the way dogs have been used through slavery all the way through the present absolutely has a racialized component,” said Charlton W. Yingling, historian at the University of Louisville in Kentucky.
Back in Huntsville, Ronin — now on a leash — and his handler were among a swarm of police continuing to hunt for the man who had been driving the SUV. They circled around small houses separated by chain-link fences. Another officer found the man hiding under a car.
When Saltzman sprinted over with Ronin, the dog bit Officer Weston Davis in the groin.
Again, the handler had a hard time getting Ronin to release, shouting in vain “Out! Out!” — the verbal command that was supposed to get the dog to let go. Davis eventually left the scene on a stretcher, heading to the hospital in an ambulance.
Ronin, however, was not done for the day.
K-9 bites in Alabama
There’s little oversight or regulation of police dogs in Alabama or across the United States, even though law enforcement agencies employ about 15,000 dogs nationwide for everything from finding lost children to sniffing out drugs, according to the U.S. Police Canine Association, a professional group.
Many are trained to bite people. A statistical analysis of several years of hospital admissions found that police dog bites send thousands of Americans to emergency rooms each year, causing more hospitalizations than any other police use of force.
There is no statewide record keeping or data collection on police dogs in Alabama. There also are no state standards for using or training a dog.
Huntsville says it has one of the nation’s oldest K-9 units, dating back to 1963. The police department there released some data, but it was incomplete (for example, it didn’t initially include the incident with Ronin).
The data also conflicted with its annual reports on the city website. They say that in 2016, the city’s police dogs caught 49 felony suspects; six of them were bitten, according to an annual report. The 2017 report doesn’t include similar data. In 2018, the dogs apprehended 53 people accused of felonies, including 15 who were bitten, according to another annual report. Neither of those reports includes stats on misdemeanor cases.
Huntsville police have “an excellent oversight process for all dog bite incidents involving the K-9 units, officers and dogs,” and investigate every bite, according to a statement from Eddie Blair, an assistant city attorney. “Our K-9 unit is frequently asked to assist other nearby jurisdictions, which could account for the number of interactions.”
Police in Madison, a suburb of Huntsville, said their dog bit just one person in the past few years. It happened to be captured on cellphone video.
They won’t release bodycam video or other records of their lethal encounter with a man they were questioning about taking photos at a gym on the evening of Sunday, Oct. 27, 2019.
Officers found Dana Fletcher sitting in his van with his wife and child in the parking lot of a Planet Fitness. Cellphone video published by a local TV station shows police talking to Fletcher and telling him to get out of the van, as the dog pants and barks outside.
The authorities said that Fletcher reached toward a gun and repeatedly asked officers to shoot him. Eventually the dog bit him and tried to pull him out of the van. There was a struggle, and officers shouted that Fletcher had a gun. Then they shot him.
Fletcher’s family questions why a large police response, including a dog, was needed for a man suspected of taking pictures and asking questions at a gym. Every Sunday, the family protests across a highway from the gym, demanding release of bodycam footage.
“Dana would have been scared of the dog,” said Fletcher’s sister, Radiah. “How is it that within a few minutes of the police showing up, a man ends up on the ground with dog bites and shot to death?”
The Madison County prosecutor scoffed at community calls to see video of the Fletcher shooting, which he has called “entirely justified.”
“We’re not turning evidence over to the public,” District Attorney Rob Broussard told an angry crowd last year. “Even if the public has the information, what’s the public going to do?”
On his third try that day in Huntsville, Ronin did what he was trained to do. As his handler shouted “Get him!,” and pushed his head under the car, the dog bit down and grabbed the man by the arm. Ronin dragged the man out. The handler struggled to pull the dog off; it continued to bite for nearly half a minute after the man was handcuffed.
He turned out to be a 43-year-old Black man named George Matthews, who is a disabled veteran. He did not have a weapon. In an interview, he told AL.com he was hiding because he was frightened of the officers with guns, and of the dog, too.
Matthews was charged with felony theft of the SUV and a misdemeanor count of attempting to elude police. His court appointed defense lawyer has requested a mental evaluation, but Matthews has missed court dates, records show, and the case has been repeatedly postponed.
Lawsuits
When people are bitten by police dogs, they sometimes try to sue — often unsuccessfully.
Hank Sherrod, a civil rights lawyer, represented Matthews, the man who hid under a car in Huntsville. Sherrod argued that the handler should have known that his dog wouldn’t let go of Matthews when commanded because that’s what happened when Ronin bit the two officers.
“If there is a problem with dogs biting officers,” Sherrod asked, “how much control do these folks really have over these dogs?”
But a federal judge ruled the handler, Saltzman, was entitled to qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that often shields police and other government employees from liability when they are on the job. Though Ronin kept biting Matthews after he was handcuffed, that did not rise to the level of excessive force, the judge found.
Officer Saltzman whooped and praised Ronin as a “Good boy!” after the dog pulled Matthews out from under the car. The handler then apologized to the injured officer: “Man, I am so sorry, dude.”
His body camera was still filming when he called his supervisor to tell him about Ronin’s three bites. Like many K-9 officers, he described his dog’s actions as his own.
“That was a good one,” Saltzman told his sergeant. But, he added, “I’m gonna go ahead and give you a heads up that I bit two officers, also.”