Oregon’s leading civil rights group for people with disabilities is calling for an end to using dogs in jails to forcibly control inmates.
Disability Rights Oregon is calling for a statewide ban of the practice in a report that focuses on the Columbia County Jail, the scene of a violent interaction between a police dog and an inmate in 2017.
Oregon is one of only five states that allow police dogs to be applied in use-of-force situations, and Columbia County is the only county in the state that reports using them that way, according to a survey by DRO. On Aug. 1, 2017, Columbia County deputies sicced a police dog on 47-year-old Christopher Bartlett when he failed to follow commands in preparation for leaving his cell. Bartlett suffered a dog bite on his arm, among other injuries, and was sent to the hospital for medical attention.
Bartlett “identifies as having mental illness,” said Emily Cooper, legal director with DRO. “The jail records support that, and there was a detailed assessment by a mental health clinician after the attack that showed that he does have auditory and visual hallucinations. He’s the exact reason why jails can be difficult for people with disabilities because they’re not following the rules or the norms – not because they don’t want to but because the disability prevents them from doing it.”
A video of the attack recorded on one of the deputy’s body cameras shows the dog pulling Bartlett to the floor of his cell and biting him repeatedly with several deputies in attendance.
A grand jury found no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the officers, and no charges were filed. Bartlett ultimately sued the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office for $500,000, claiming cruel and unusual punishment. In October, the county settled with Bartlett for $251,000 without admitting any wrongdoing.
In its report titled “You Are Going to Get Bitten,” released Tuesday, DRO said that using K-9s to intimidate and control inmates is dangerous to both the inmates and the deputies and that it is unnecessary, given the range of options available to compel inmate compliance. However, Oregon doesn’t have a protocol for using K-9s in use-of-force situations like the cell extraction on Bartlett, Cooper said. DRO is calling on the Oregon Legislature to institute a statewide ban on the practice.
“We would like not a single county in the state to use canines to forcibly control or intimidate inmates,” Cooper said. “It’s partly because of the harm the dogs can inflict, and also lack of control of that harm. There are other proven techniques.”
Cooper said law enforcement is trained to treat someone who fails to follow a command as a threat, but that can lead to tragic outcomes when that failure is due to a disability. She referenced the Seattle case in 2010 when police shot and killed John Williams, who was walking across a street with a woodblock and a carving knife when he didn’t respond to calls to put the knife down. The man was deaf in one ear. The city of Seattle eventually settled with Williams’ family for $1.5 million.
“Many police and law enforcement have policies that if a felon doesn’t respond to a command, that means they are at risk or at danger,” Cooper said. “But that disconnect when inability to follow command is related to disability is something that experts have been looking at for a long time. This is not the first time we’ve seen disproportionate use of force against a person with a disability with horrible results because of that inability to understand that nexus between behavior and disability.”
Cooper said K-9 units have many uses in the field, for searches and apprehending suspects, for example, but they should never be used as force against prisoners in a jail setting.
“I think using canines to control people in a small confined, controlled involvement has no place in a civilized society,” Cooper said.
DRO said it will also seek proper protocols for training K-9 units for use-of-force incidents and training corrections staff on appropriate ways to respond to inmates with disabilities.
Email Executive Editor Joanne Zuhl at joanne@streetroots.org.
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