City police dogs are misbehaving
Too many people end up in hospital because of the way the animals are trained and deployed, statistics show
In the last few weeks there has been a lot of discussion in the Lower Mainland about police dogs, and more specifically about one of my clients at Pivot Legal Society, Christopher Evans, who, with our help, has elected to file a civil suit against the Vancouver police department in an effort to change the way police dogs are trained and deployed.
It’s an emotional issue, intensified by the fact that the day after Evans filed his lawsuit, a family in Surrey went to the media with the story that an RCMP police dog apprehended their son by biting him in the face, breaking his nose and leaving deep scars. Close on the heels of the Surrey case came the news that an RCMP constable and dog handler from Kelowna was convicted of assault for using his dog and punching a man during a confrontation outside a bar.
A lot of people were surprised by the flood of stories, imagining that cases of severe injury involving police dogs were few and far between. Unfortunately the limited statistics available on injuries involving police dogs suggest that this reality has been staring at us in the face for some time now.
Last spring, after working with another Vancouver man who sustained serious wounds to his torso following an incident where an officer lost control of his dog during a routine interaction, Pivot filed a complaint with the Vancouver Police board asking them to take a look at alternative methods for training and deploying their dog squad.
We looked at places where regulatory changes, some quite minor, could significantly decrease the number of police dog incidents requiring hospitalization each year. The research we conducted into other jurisdictions showed the potential for a striking decrease in the number and severity of injuries caused by police dogs. One city in particular stood out: Los Angeles.
In 1991, following the beating of Rodney King, the Los Angeles police department looked to institute new policies and procedures in order to reform conduct of their officers. Part of that reform tackled the deployment of the LAPD’S 16 police dogs which, in the preceding three years, had sent 639 people to hospital. The LAPD switched from bite- and- hold, the method of training currently employed by the Vancouver police department and RCMP, to the bark-and-hold method. Bark- and- hold is a more intensive method of training designed to have the dog use its stature and bark to stop a suspect. The dog will resort to a bite if the suspect continues to move, attempts to flee, or attacks the dog or its handler.
The effects of the changes in policy were seen almost immediately. A 1997 study conducted by six emergency room doctors in Los Angeles, and published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, found that after the LAPD changed the deployment and training of their dog squad the number of hospitalizations attributed to to police dogs decreased from 639 ( 1988- 1991) to 66 ( 1991- 1994).
So why should Vancouver be paying attention? Because last week the provincial Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner confirmed that the Vancouver police department has had at least 121 incidents within the last two years where a police dog made contact with a suspect and caused injuries severe enough to require hospitalization. For a city six times smaller than Los Angeles our statistics remain alarmingly high, with dog bites in Vancouver accounting for a significant proportion of injuries caused by police. In fact last year 48 per cent of serious civilian injuries reported by municipal police forces in B. C. were the result of a run- in with the dog squad.
While Vancouver may not be the worst of the worst, there is a wealth of international support for a method of training and deployment which suggests that we can do much, much better. In response to our policy complaint last year, the VPD have said they are not convinced there is a need for reform. Unfortunately, provincial statistics, not to mention the horrific injuries sustained by our client and many others like the young man in Surrey, tell another story.
Merrick Bobb, who was assigned as special counsel to the Police Assessment Resource Centre in Los Angeles and played a major role in reforming the actions of the LAPD, would later reflect on the Los Angeles dog squad reforms, sending a stark warning: “It would be folly on the part of any law enforcement agency to bury its head in the sand in the face of lopsided statistics about dog bites.”