As an expert witness who has read thousands of police reports and supporting documents in criminal and civil cases dealing with law enforcement canine apprehensions and use of force, I’m able to see how plaintiff’s attorneys and experts view and opine on the actions of canine handlers during deployments.

In this blog series I’ll share some of these ideas and opinions which lend themselves to supporting their assertions of the Fourth Amendment infringements on behalf of their clients from my personal experiences defending the actions of law enforcement canine handlers.

THE RELEASE FROM THE BITE- Plaintiffs often list the technique law enforcement canine handlers perform to cause their dog to release from the bite on the suspect/plaintiff. I’m seeing more cases where handlers use the “breaker bar”. While there are many other things written into the complaints, I’ll just focus on this one.

1)     The plaintiff’s complaint to the courts will often be that the use of the breaker bar was a requirement just to get the canine to release the bite, thus causing the bite to continue while the technique was applied.

2)     The plaintiff’s experts will sometimes opine that the use of the breaker bar is an admission that the handler has no verbal control over their canine and is forced to use the breaker bar as the only way to get the canine to release.

3)     The plaintiff’s experts will sometimes opine that the use of the breaker bar causes the canine to bite harder and shake their heads violently, which caused more pain and physical damage to the flesh of the plaintiff/suspect.

Many times, video footage of the apprehensions are used by the plaintiff’s experts in support of their opinions, but “there’s always more than one way to look at it”.

Good report writing by canine handlers can support their actions when using force to make and arrest. Providing the readers of these reports with your thoughts before and during canine deployments can help build a clear foundation when the camera footage is watched. These aren’t just random thoughts, but rather the details of how and what information you received and how it supported your decision to use the canine as use of force to apprehend.

To further this process of explaining what led to you using the canine, it can also be helpful to document in your report what information moved you to release the dog from the bite when you did and why you believe dusing the breaker bar was the most appropriate method.

Here are some ideas for documenting in your police reportswhy you used the breaker bar.

1)     Your training with the canine on different methods for the release might help support the use of the breaker bar.

a.     You’ve trained with the verbal command(s) forthe dog to release.

b.    You’ve trained with the “lift off" where the dog is held by the collar with pressure on the dog’s neck to restrict breathing.

c.     You’ve trained with the breaker bar.

2)     Have you had experiences with all these types of bite release techniques in various training scenarios which give you an idea ofhow the dog will react when each is applied?

a.     Have you been trained in various situations that have helped you understand that physical control of the canine up close, including holding his collar with your hand might be the best option when considering the safety of others and the suspect during the release from the bite? Have you been trained or have you learned through other experiences that canines that are in a high state of aggressive arousal might mistakenly bite again when removed from the bite?

b.    Would those experiences and training make physically holding the canine’s collar while applying the breaker bar make you know that it’s the most effective for you canine and the safest for the suspect to prevent unintentional re-bites?

“The totality of the circumstances” isn’t a phrase to take likely, it should be the reason you pause to think clearly before deploying your canine and the reason you pause again when you start formulating your thoughts about how to write your police reports. Good police reports will have clarity and move with a purpose to progress the ideas for your actions. It should be clear to the readers of your report that you understand the law and the policies that govern your lawful actions and give you authority. Those actions should be supported by the facts and circumstances that were known to you, and which helped you to make the decision about using the canine as a use offorce and then to choose the breaker bar as the technique for this incident.

As an expert witness who has read thousands of police reports and supporting documents in criminal and civil cases dealing with law enforcement canine apprehensions and use of force, I’m able to see how plaintiff’s attorneys and experts view and opine on the actions of canine handlers during deployments.

In this blog series I’ll share some of these ideas and opinions which lend themselves to supporting their assertions of the Fourth Amendment infringements on behalf of their clients from my personal experiences defending the actions of law enforcement canine handlers.

Many times, canine handlers will be questioned during depositions about the “time on bite” and be asked to explain why body camera video footage appears to show a complaint and surrendering suspect who’s still being held by a police canine. Does your police report make me understand WHY and does it comport with the videos?

It’s important to have the answers both in your written police report and be able to verbally articulate the facts that support not removing the police dog from the bite from a suspect who appears to be compliant in videos.

What you knew about the suspect, his crimes, his criminal history, his emotional history, his current emotional condition, and his current capacity or potential to escape, fight, resist, or otherwise place officers and others in imminent danger are things that you might consider important for the readers of your report to understand and to make sense of an incident that might not at first glance.

You cannot gloss over this concern nor paint it with the broad stroke of a “catch-all” phrase or idea. For example, we cannot simply write in each incident that “The dog was removed from the bite after he was handcuffed” OR “I left the canine on the bite for fear that he would injure us (officers) or escape into the neighborhood where he would be an imminent threat to citizens”. The details must support this idea and without them, your actions can be visually overwhelming and seemingly outside of the laws and your department’s General Orders.

Our society affords law enforcement officers the power to use force to make arrests, but it holds us accountable to being reasonable with uses of force and so it is expected of us to be educated, well informed and be able to articulate our actions so that we make them understand why.

Here’s a comparison example of how the circumstances and facts of an incident guide the courts in determining whether an officer is justified in their use of force with their police canines.

Here’s two different court cases with similarities but clear and distinguishable differences in the circumstances. In both cases, a police dog was used to bite a suspect, but the circumstances differ enough that they can help show the contrast between a justified use of force and one that wasn’t.

Research these two cases, Preister v. City of Riviera Beach and Crenshaw v. Lister. You’ll see from reading them that the totality of the circumstances helped support the time on the bite in the Crenshaw v. Lister case. Whereas the Preister v. City of Riviera Beach case fell short in proving the time on the bite was a proper use of force.