A police dog attack that left an innocent man in hospital this week has triggered calls for the animals’ handlers to wear body-mounted cameras.
The victim was chased down and bitten during a frenetic police takedown on a residential street in New Westminster on Monday evening.
Officers had fired off flashbang rounds while trying to arrest three potentially dangerous suspects, and the man, who had no connection to the incident at all, was trying to run to safety.
On Wednesday, Pivot Legal Society argued the unfortunate incident highlights the need for more oversight of police dog programs.
“You look at this individual who did absolutely nothing wrong, and he’s going to be forever disfigured,” lawyer Douglas King said, adding there have been many similarly troubling incidents.
“This is not a case that sits by itself. There are a number of cases that call into question the use of police dogs, and in each of those cases the individual was bitten with extremely horrific injuries.”
Authorities haven’t confirmed the extent of the injuries the victim in Monday’s incident suffered, but they were serious enough to warrant an investigation by B.C.’s Independent Investigations Office.
The police officers involved were rescuing a man who was kidnapped from the scene of a double murder in East Vancouver over the weekend. Police said they had a small window of opportunity to retrieve the abduction victim and arrest his alleged captors, and that the situation unfolded very quickly.
King said he understands that arrests can be frantic and dangerous, but the onus is still on police to protect innocent people.
“At the end of the day this person did not pose a threat, it was not the right person, and it’s on the police to determine that and make sure they’re only using force against the people who need to have force used against them,” he said.
Pivot also has ongoing concerns that police dog handlers are using the animals as a “method of punishment,” King added, which is a problem that could be rooted out using cameras on the handlers or even the dogs themselves.
The East Vancouver advocacy group previously released a critical report on police dogs that found the animals are the number one cause of police-related injuries in the province.
It led to new rules for training and deployment of police dogs in 2014 that, among other things, barred officers from sending the animals after young or elderly people.
King said the regulations have been an improvement but didn’t go far enough.
With files from CTV Vancouver's Jon Woodward
