Trained to “bite and hold” suspects, some K-9 patrol dogs in
the Puget Sound area have bitten innocent bystanders more than once, inflicting
major injuries and triggering expensive lawsuits.
By Mike Carter
Mark Roberts had fallen asleep in the family room of his
Puyallup rambler, the windows open to take in the breeze of a mild September
evening. He was jolted awake by the sound of a helicopter.
Roberts, clad in a T-shirt and boxers, walked out the back
door and took a few steps into his driveway for a better look.
Seconds later, he was in a bloody life-or-death struggle
with a beast with a badge.
“I caught something moving out of the corner of my eye,”
recalled Roberts, 58, of the split-second before he was “flattened” by K-9
Officer Vasko, a police dog with the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department, that
night in 2008.
Vasko, a big German shepherd, hit Roberts at full stride,
knocking him to the ground. The snarling dog grabbed Roberts’ right thigh in
its mouth and bit.
“The pain was something indescribable,” said Roberts. He
screamed. “It was a sound I’d never heard before coming out of me.”
Roberts is not the only innocent bystander to be caught in
the crushing grip of Vasko’s jaws.
Three people, including Roberts, have filed claims against
Pierce County after being bitten by the dog. Two claims have cost Pierce County
$352,500: the $350,000 settlement with Roberts earlier this y ear after he
filed a federal lawsuit, and $2,500 awarded to a 53-year-old woman after she
was bitten by Vasko while the dog was tracking a suspect, according to court
documents.
A third claim, by a woman bitten by Vasko while she was
painting a sign in 2010, is pending.
A Seattle Times review of dog-bite claims from the risk
managers and insurers of more than 100 Washington cities and counties shows
such incidents happen several times a year in the state.
Over the past five years, at least 17 people claim they were
mistakenly attacked by police dogs from Western Washington law-enforcement
agencies. As a result, the agencies have paid nearly $1 million
in damages, with several large claims pending.
In many cases, individual dogs are responsible for several
attacks, an issue that dog trainers and experts say is a warning sign that the
dog and handler might need additional training.
Of those 17 incidents, three dogs — two from Pierce County
and one from Seattle — were responsible for nine of the incidents and more than
two-thirds of the damages paid.
Even after multiple bites on innocent people, many K-9s
remain on duty.
A Pierce County sheriff’s dog, K-9 Officer Cliff, has been
named in three claims, which have cost the county $247,000. Those costs
included a $230,000 settlement with Alda Zaldivar-Cira, 53, an Auburn
landscaper who was attacked in August 2010 while he and his sons were
attempting to help police capture a fleeing criminal.
Cliff also bit a 17-year-old Graham boy who was watching a police
search from a friend’s driveway in 2008. According to court documents, deputies
had to pry the dog’s mouth off the boy’s leg with a flashlight. Pierce County
paid him $17,000.
Cliff was named in a third action after he severely bit a
passenger in a car that police had been chasing. That was the same incident in
which Roberts was attacked by Vasko, who also was involved in the search for
the driver.
A federal judge dismissed the passenger’s civil-rights
claim, finding that the bite was the “accidental effect of otherwise lawful
government conduct.”
Sgt. Jerry Bates, a spokesman for Pierce County Sheriff Paul
Pastor, said Cliff remains on the force.
Critics say the frequency and severity of bites on innocent
people are tied directly to training. Most U.S. dogs are trained to “bite and
hold,” releasing their prey only on orders from their handlers.
In Europe, dogs are trained to track prey, but rather than
attack, they are taught to circle and bark at the target — a technique known as
“find and bark” or “bark and contain.” The dog bites only if the suspect
attempts to flee or the dog or handler is attacked.
Both the U.S. Department of Justice and the International
Association of Chiefs of Police recommend this type of training for U.S. police
dogs. However, there is resistance to the “find and bark” method among many
law-enforcement agencies.
“K-9s, like any other tool issued to and used by law
enforcement in the application of any force ... carry an inherent risk,” said
Bates, the Pierce County sheriff’s spokesman.
“The decision to utilize a K-9 team for a wanted-felon
search is not made lightly,” he said.
Bates said one way not to be injured by a dog is to do what
the dog’s handler tells you to do.
That is, if the handler is around.
Alone in the grip
Roberts, the Puyallup man attacked outside his home, said
Vasko’s attack lasted at least five minutes before the dog’s handler, Deputy
Micah Lundborg, was able to locate him and call him off.
“He yelled at me, ‘Don’t fight the dog,’ ” Roberts recalled.
In the meantime, the dog inflicted a muscle-crushing wound
to his right thigh that took nearly two years to heal. The dog also bit his
left leg and worked its way from hand to biceps on his left arm, tearing flesh
every inch of the way.
His wife and daughter awoke to find Roberts sitting in a
pool of blood in the driveway.
“This was a life-or-death situation for me,” Roberts said.
Bates said Vasko retired when Lundborg was promoted.
Another dog, from the Lakewood Police Department, has been
named in two claims involving serious injuries, including attacking the wrong
man in a field while searching for a suspect in a domestic-violence assault in
May 2011.
Chad Boyles was simply taking a walk to cool off following
the argument when he was attacked by K-9 Officer Astor, according to his claim.
The dog bit him on the arm and shoulder, leaving a deep wound in his forearm.
“All I could hear was crunching,” Boyle recalled. He filed a
$3 million
claim against the county last week.
Lakewood police have declined to comment on the claim.
Astor is also named in a federal lawsuit filed by Noel
Saldana over injuries he suffered on June 27, 2010.
In this instance, Saldana was being sought by the dog and
his handler after police responded to Saldana’s apartment on a report of
domestic violence. He was gone by the time police arrived. Although nobody had
been injured, the officers decided they had reason to arrest him, according to
police reports.
Saldana, 27, said he was intoxicated and urinating in some
bushes several blocks away when he heard a “loud voice telling me to get down.”
“I did exactly as I was told,” he said, but Astor tore into
his leg.
The attack lasted only a few seconds, but the animal tore
out a fist-sized piece of his calf, rending ligaments and gristle. Saldana said
the sound was “like tearing a chicken into pieces.”
He was never charged with a crime.
Astor continues to work, the department said.
One of the largest settlements — $175,000 — resulted not
from a bite on an innocent bystander, but on a law-enforcement officer.
In January 2012, King County sheriff’s Deputy Matthew
Olmstead was attacked by a Tukwila police K-9 named Gino while he was
approaching the trailer of a suspect. The dog tore into his right calf.
“ I was forced to the ground and screamed in pain,” Olmstead
wrote in his claim against Tukwila. “I seriously contemplated shooting the
K-9.”
Training
In the U.S., police dogs are trained to bite and bite hard.
A study comparing injuries caused by police dogs and bites
from domestic dogs, published in 2006 in the medical Journal of Injuries, found
“much higher” rates of hospitalization for those who tangled with K-9s. The
study’s author, Dr. Peter C. Meade, found that police dogs were far more likely
to inflict multiple, serious bites than were domestic dogs, and victims’
injuries were almost twice as likely to require surgery.
Part of the reason, Meade concluded, was that the dogs used
by police were bred for size and trained to bite and not let go.
Most U.S. police departments use large breeds such as German
shepherds, Belgian Malinois and Rottweilers. With the police-dog injuries he
studied, Meade said the forces the animals inflicted reached 800 pounds of
pressure per square inch — enough to puncture sheet metal.
Many, if not most, of the K-9 patrol dogs used by police
departments today are bred in Europe and receive their initial training there.
The dogs can cost up to $4,000 and their training an additional $10,000,
according to experienced dog trainers and handlers.
Initially, most of the dogs are exposed to “Schutzhund”
training, a sport developed by German dog breeders in the early 1900s as a test
for the large shepherd breeds. It is demanding, and involves working closely
with a human handler and being tested in difficult conditions for tracking
skills, obedience and protection.
According to the Web page for the German-based Schutzhund
training organization DVG (Deutscher Verband der Gebrauchshundsportvereine), the
dogs are trained to track and find human targets.
But rather than attack, a dog learns to circle and bark at
the target, the “find and bark” technique that is at the core of Schutzhund and
is favored by police in most European countries.
The International Association of Chiefs of Police, in its
model canine-use policies, said the “find-and-bark approach” is preferable,
partly because it reduces the risk of the dog inflicting serious injuries on a
suspect “or even an innocent bystander before the handler can locate the dog
and command it to disengage.”
U.S. K-9 trainers, handlers and researchers say that “find
and bark” sounds great but doesn’t work in practice.
They claim it endangers the dog and handler, and leaves too
much discretion to the animal.
The ready availability of firearms in the U.S. — unlike
Europe — also undermines the use of the find-and-bark technique. A dog that
stands off and barks makes an easy target, and so does the police
officer/handler coming up behind it, they said.
Zbigniew Kasprzyk, vice president of the Washington State
Police Canine Association and a 27-year veteran dog handler for the King County
Sheriff’s Office, said the threat of the bite is what it’s all about.
“If I’m going to deploy my dog, I want that person to know they
are going to be bitten unless they come out. It’s a huge incentive,” he said.
At the same time, Kasprzyk said, it should be the handler’s
decision, not the dog’s.
Kasprzyk points out that most dogs are deployed hundreds of
times without incident, but that accidents happen. Dogs lose tracks and make
mistakes, and the whole point of having a handler is to control the animal.
A dog that repeatedly bites the wrong person, or whose
deployments often result in serious injuries, needs to be looked at, as does his
handler and their training regime.
“If you’re seeing one dog with several problems from an
agency, it’s something that the agency should be addressing.
“These incidents are rare,” he said. “But too many can hurt
the whole canine industry.”
Mike Carter: 206-464-3706 or mcarter@seattletimes.com
