WEST VALLEY CITY — West Valley police on Monday submitted 25 cases to the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office for review in which a person was bitten or scratched by a police K-9 while being arrested.
But Chief Colleen Jacobs is confident that no improper uses of force will be found in any of the incidents.
“Every single one of these has been through our use-of-force review and our supervisors have found them within policy. And our Citizen Review Board has found them within policy. And our policy is in line with state law,” she said Monday.
Police K-9 units across Salt Lake County are being scrutinized after an incident in Salt Lake City in which a man who had his hands in the air and appeared to be complying with the officer’s commands was still bitten and suffered a significant injury. That incident resulted in Salt Lake police officer Nickolas John Pearce, 39, of Herriman, being charged with aggravated assault, a second-degree felony.
It also prompted Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall to suspend the use of K-9s for apprehending suspects until the Salt Lake police K-9 unit can be reviewed. The department conducted an audit of all dog bite incidents over the past four years and submitted 19 incidents with body camera videos to the district attorney’s office for review.
Those 19 cases were identified as needing “further review” by Salt Lake Police Chief Mike Brown. Several videos from officers’ body cameras appear to show suspects who either have their hands in the air, are already on the ground, or both, and do not appear to be resisting or running away. But K-9 officers can be heard repeatedly giving commands of “hit him” or “get him” to encourage the dog to latch onto an arm or leg.
On Oct. 2, District Attorney Sim Gill sent out requests to other police agencies to conduct reviews of their K-9 programs as well.
Monday, West Valley police fulfilled that request for information and made public the body camera videos for the incidents that have video available.
The West Valley police K-9 unit consists of two bloodhounds, two Belgian Malinois, and two German shepherd-Belgian Malinois mixes. Since 2018, K-9 officers have deployed their dogs 833 times, resulting in 25 injuries. Police on Monday said the injuries ranged from multiple incidents of “scratches” to one person who required hospitalization after being bitten on the calf.
In a handful of cases video was not available because either the officer was working with the U.S. marshals — who prohibit officers from wearing body cameras while working with the apprehension team, even if the local departments that they work for require them — the officer “misactivated” the camera, or in one case an officer had not yet picked up a replacement body camera for his that was not working, according to police.
Jacobs said the videos were released to the public in the interest of transparency, and to help educate the public, which largely doesn’t understand how K-9 units operate.
There were five incidents involving dog-related injuries in 2018, 10 in 2019 and 10 so far in 2020. Almost all the cases occurred at night. Many involved a person who was being chased in a stolen vehicle before abandoning the car and running, or a burglary suspect who refused to come out from a hiding spot.
- In one case, a burglary suspect was stopped by a K-9 officer on July 19. The man did not run or advance on the officer, but he ignored the officer’s command to get on the ground, even after the officer made the command 30 times.
“Get on the ground or you’re going to get bit,” the officer tells the man in body camera video.
“Do you have probable cause?” the suspect asks several times while standing still. “What’s the probable cause?”
When the K-9 is deployed, he latches onto the man’s forearm and brings him down.
- On June 26, 2018, a naked man entered a neighbor’s house without permission and was found on the resident’s bed, according to police. When the dog is released, the man is heard saying, “OK, I’ll stop.”
- On Feb. 21, police were looking for a man who had bitten off a portion of his brother’s ear. Police say the man tried to hit officers while fleeing in his car, and then refused to get out of his vehicle once it was stopped. A K-9 was used to get the man out of his car.
- Most recently, a police K-9 was used to apprehend a 15-year-old boy believed to have fired numerous shots at another vehicle, who then ran off and tried to hide in a yard.
- West Valley police used terms such as “puncture wounds,” “minor abrasion,” “lacerations” and “scratches” to describe most of the injuries in the 25 cases. In one case, police described the injury as a “significant laceration to the right calf, and puncture wound to the left thigh.”
In that case on May 29, Jacobs said a K-9 grabbed hold of a man’s right calf as he was trying to scale a fence to escape. The man was wanted in a stalking investigation.
“Please, I’m begging … please get off me,” the man is heard yelling in pain.
While in some cases it may not appear like a person is resisting, both Jacobs and Sgt. Jake Palmer, head of the department’s K-9 unit, said in many cases the suspect is also disobeying the commands of officers, such as in the July 19 and June 2018 incidents.
In other cases, a suspect tries to run away and hide, but then gives up just as the dog catches up with them.
“At last second they’ll surrender, but it takes a moment to process, to react,” Palmer said. “This person has had every opportunity to surrender, and then once the dog is engaged moments before the actual apprehension they decide it’s in their best interest to surrender. That takes a moment for the handler to process what’s going on, to give the dog the command, for the dog to process what’s going on.”
According to the department’s policy manual, an officer may deploy a K-9 if a suspect poses a danger to the public or an officer, has the potential to flee, or based on the “degree of resistance or threatened resistance, if any, the subject has shown.”
Before releasing their dog, a K-9 officer is required to identify his presence as well as the K-9’s, give an order to surrender as well as at least two audible warnings that the dog will be released if the suspect disobeys, and give the suspect a reasonable amount of time to surrender, according to the manual.
In many of the videos released Monday, an officer can be heard yelling, “Last chance, call out now or you’re going to get bit.”
- In a scary situation on Dec. 18, 2019, a police K-9 was assisting the SWAT team serving a warrant on a house. The dog chased a man who had run out of the house and then back inside. As police waited for several minutes for the dog to come out or the suspect to surrender, they could hear that the dog was in trouble.
“My dog’s crying in there,” the officer is heard saying on body camera video. “We gotta move, I gotta get my dog.”
When officers entered the home with guns drawn, they found the dog and the suspect struggling on the ground. The dog held onto the man until officers could put handcuffs on him. The K-9 was not seriously injured.
West Valley’s K-9 unit is highly decorated, winning several local and national competitions. Each officer is required to go through 10 hours of training a week, even after their dogs are certified for duty.
Jacobs calls K-9s “an excellent de-escalation tool,” as most people are willing to surrender rather than risk being bit.
But Palmer, who is certified as one of the top dog trainers in the state, said the unit is always looking to improve. For example, there has been recent criticism from the public that handlers praise their dogs by saying “good boy” after biting someone. Police say the praise is a way to tell the dog he has completed his task and to reenforce their training. Jacobs said police are now looking at a new way to accomplish that without saying “good boy” in front of the suspect.
“We’re always looking to improve no matter what. We always want to exceed best practices. So we’re constantly assessing everything and thinking about how we can do it better the next time. Even if it’s a perfect deployment or perfect training scenario, we like to debrief it just to see what we can do better,” Palmer said.