LYNNWOOD — Young people were on the roof of The Party Store, trying the windows.
A neighbor had called 911. The group took off into the woods as the Lynnwood police officer pulled up.
It was getting dark. He caught a glimpse and thought they were adults, eluding arrest for felony burglary. He sent his German shepherd after them.
The 89-pound dog caught up with the group and bit one of them on the arm. But it was a boy, only 11 years old. Later, police determined that the child’s only potential offense was trespassing.
The May 31, 2016, incident led the Lynnwood Police Department to tighten its policy that governs when officers can release their dogs. The boy and his friends were not charged with a crime. That decision was based on their ages and the circumstances, Police Chief Tom Davis said. The department also apologized to the child and his family.
In addition, the city paid the $1,752 in medical bills for puncture wounds that required stitches. The officer received a written reprimand last October.
The department knew it would face scrutiny early on, according to documents obtained by The Daily Herald through a series of public records requests. The boy’s family filed a complaint in June 2016. The complaint said they’d been in touch with the NAACP, along with the ACLU. Days later, the Snohomish County chapter of the NAACP also filed a complaint. The boy is black, and the civil rights organization wanted to know whether race was a factor in the officer’s decision-making. The department sent the NAACP a response this past January, describing its findings.
The boy said he had stayed on the ground while his friends climbed a ladder to the store roof. He said they told him to run, so he did. He claimed he heard the officer and stopped running. He said he was about 15 feet away when the dog came after him, which the police department disputes.
Davis said there was no evidence of racial bias by the officer, who hasn’t faced any documented allegations along those lines. His discipline history consists of two reprimands related to driving.
If there was any indication of bias, the discipline would have been “much different,” the chief said.
“No one feels worse about this incident than the officer,” he said.
Lynnwood’s former policy said a police dog could be deployed when the officer had a “reasonable belief” that a person had committed a felony. Now, a higher standard, adopted in August 2016, requires the officer to believe that probable cause has been established for a felony. That is the same legal threshold for making an arrest.
Davis was hired as chief in August 2016, three months after the boy was bitten. He learned the investigation was ongoing and “insisted we not let this languish,” he said.
By that time, Lynnwood officers who work with dogs already had been directed to undergo a liability training session, along with a “lessons learned” debrief, records show.
A bite from a police dog is considered a use of force, which is defined as any police action capable of causing injury. In Lynnwood, all bites are reviewed by a board of internal experts on police dogs. The board seeks to determine whether the application of the dog was justified and within policy. They also consider whether the dog obeyed its handler.
Lynnwood has four police dogs. They are used far more often for tracking someone than for apprehension. From January 2011 through July 2017, the dogs were deployed 1,932 times, according to data provided by the city. They were involved in 639 arrests. In those same years, there were 43 bites.
The review board unanimously found that the officer in the Party Store case did not have grounds for reasonable belief to connect the 11-year-old to a felony.
The bite review is separate from an internal investigation, which addresses officer discipline. In October 2016, Davis directed staff to write a reprimand to include in the officer’s file.
“While the circumstances are absolutely less than desirable, we do take these (complaints) seriously and our actions demonstrate that,” Davis said in a recent interview.
Public records shed light on what went wrong that night in the woods along 196th Street SW.
Often times, a dog handler arrives after other officers have determined the boundaries of the scene and talked to witnesses. That hadn’t happened. The officer was in his third hour of overtime. He said he yelled to those fleeing that he was police and ordered them to stop. Moments later, he realized he had chased them onto a poorly lit trail. He worried he could be surrounded.
The review board considered the solo foot chase a tactical error. The boy “just happened to be the last person in the line of fleeing subjects,” it found.
According to police, the boy never was put in handcuffs. They also ruled out allegations in the complaints that he was forced to share a backseat with the dog after being treated at the hospital.
The boy’s family could not be reached for comment for this story. They have not pursued legal claims against the city. The day after the dog bite, Deputy Police Chief Jim Nelson went to their home. He shared what he knew as well as the department’s plans to investigate.
After the discipline decision, Nelson and Davis met with the family again. In January 2017, Cmdr. Wes Deppa wrote a letter about that conversation to the NAACP.
Davis and Nelson “expressed our remorse for what had occurred,” Deppa said.
They also outlined “actions that have been taken to ensure this does not happen again.”
Rikki King: 425-339-3449; rking@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @rikkiking.
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