Police demonstrate a “culture of complacency” when it comes to deciding whether to use police dogs to effect arrests, putting suspects, officers and the public at unnecessary risk, a provincial court judge concluded in a sentencing in Campbell River.
Judge Dwight Stewart criticized the use of a police dog to arrest Preston Hale Jaramillo, who was the subject of an arrest warrant in January 2023 because he was suspected of an aggravated assault. Stewart found the use of the dog violated Jaramillo’s Charter right to life, liberty and security of the person.
Jaramillo described a chaotic arrest, with officers yelling commands at him to get on the ground while the dog pulled on its leash and was standing on its hind legs.
He said he could not hear the officers’ commands over the dog’s barking and its “aggressive behaviour,” Stewart wrote in his decision. That led to a hesitation between going down to his knees and going to his stomach, which an officer perceived as a threat, putting Jaramillo at risk.
“I find that because there was no formal or informal risk assessment supporting the use of a police service dog, the actions of the police here created a real risk of harm to Mr. Jaramillo,” Stewart said when sentencing Jaramillo in December for possession of firearms. While Jaramillo was found not guilty of the aggravated assault for which he was arrested, he was found in possession of firearms at the time. He pleaded guilty to firearms charges and was sentenced to three years and one month, reduced from four years as a result of the violation of his Charter right.
Even though the police dog did not bite Jaramillo during the arrest and no one was injured, Stewart called it a “logical fallacy” to conclude the use of the police dog was well reasoned.
“A careful review of this record reveals a degree of institutional nonchalance concerning the use of a police service dog in effecting an arrest,” Stewart said.
“Despite the fact that there was an opportunity to make a considered or reasoned decision about when and whether to involve a [police service dog] in the execution of this search warrant, this did not occur.”
Instead the record shows a “presumptive use” of the police service dog whenever the police dog handler, Const. Kurt England, responds to a call, Stewart said.
There was almost no oversight of the dog handler and no consideration prior to the deployment of the dog, he said.
Stewart stressed that his focus was not on England or his detachment. Instead, his finding of “institutional nonchalance” describes a broader police culture related to the deployment of dogs, he said.
Criminal defence lawyer Sarah Runyon, who represented Jaramillo, said the case is the first she’s aware of that explicitly acknowledges that police service dogs, like any other weapon, can and do cause harm, and that police are expected to consider the necessity of using a dog before deploying it.
“It inherently increases the volatility of any situation. And unfortunately, these pronouncements derive from a jurisdiction that has, in a very high-profile way, experienced the harms that flow from the presence of a police service dog,” Runyon said.
Multiple incidents in Campbell River involving police dogs have resulted in injury or death.
In July 2021, Jared Lowndes was fatally shot by police after an officer lifted a dog and put it into Lowndes’s vehicle, according to a case overview by the B.C. Prosecution Service. Lowndes stabbed the dog, which died of its injuries. The officer’s hand was cut.
The prosecution service declined to approve charges against officers, despite a recommendation from the province’s police watchdog, saying it couldn’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt any officer committed an offence.
Runyon also represented Shane Roberts, who was bitten during an arrest in 2016 after driving away during a traffic stop. As a result of the dog bite, he spent several months in the intensive care unit, almost losing his leg.
A Campbell River woman had an arm suddenly bitten in 2010 by a police dog that wouldn’t let go. She received a settlement from the RCMP for what she said was a random attack.
Potential injuries from police dogs to a detainee can be just as, if not more, severe than those from a Taser, Runyon said.
Police need to have some form of analysis they can walk through before deciding to bring a dog to a scene or to deploy a dog, she said.
“Something that’s going to prompt the officer to stop and think, ‘Is this dog truly necessary on scene?’ Why? Why am I bringing this dog on scene? Is it going to increase or decrease the volatility of the arrest scene? And do I need to deploy this dog? What’s my reason for deploying him?’ ” Runyon said.
“And in this particular decision, the judge deems it helpful for there to be at least some level of oversight so that the decision doesn’t rest strictly on the shoulders of the handler.”
The province brought in standards on the use of police dogs in 2014, saying police would no longer be able to deploy dogs to bite people suspected of relatively minor crimes. The standards followed a 2014 report by Pivot Legal Society that found dogs are the leading cause of injury by police forces across B.C.
But the guidelines are “so ambiguous that they can be moulded to suit any particular situation,” Runyon said.
Doug King, a lawyer who authored Pivot Legal Society’s 2014 report, said there has been a reduction in the use of police dogs and better controls over how dogs are deployed since the province brought in standards a decade ago, but problems persist.
King said the default training for police dogs is what’s called a “bite and hold” technique, where the dog is instructed to bite a target and hold until their handler tells them to release.
The province should default instead to a “bark and hold,” which has a dog stop short of an individual and bark until an officer can make an arrest, King said.
“We’re still seeing those situations where police dogs are being instructed to bite individuals and biting the wrong individuals. Those things are still happening because of the training issues we have,” he said.
People who are bitten by a police dog are often marginalized and unlikely to lodge a complaint, King said, so it’s important to listen to judges who give clear direction on what they deem inappropriate use of a dog. “My hope is that the province sees this decision and is willing to reexamine the guidelines and whether or not they’re strict enough,” he said.
King said police dogs are considered an intermediate weapon, and he would like to see them reclassified in the same category as Tasers and firearms.
“If you look at the bites, if you look at the injuries they cause, they really aren’t intermediate. They can cause life-changing injuries,” he said.
Tasers were initially considered intermediate weapons until an inquest into the 2007 death of Robert Dzieka艅ski, who died in 91原创 airport after being Tasered by an RCMP officer, King said.
The Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General, which sets policing standards, was not able to comment by publication deadline.
The use of police dogs is “uniquely dehumanizing and exceptionally problematic,” Meghan McDermott, policy director at the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, said in a statement.
“We completely reject the use of dogs as police weapons. It is extremely difficult to mitigate or regulate the scope of harm that dogs are capable of — including grievous bodily harm and even death — and B.C. policing standards [are] not strong enough to protect the public from such harm. The only role of dogs in public safety should be as cadaver dogs or for search-and-rescue missions,” McDermott said.
