The Salt Lake City Police Department stopped its K9 program on Wednesday, a day after the release of a body camera footage of an officer who found his dog lying on the ground while he was kneeling a black man with his hands up.
In a statement, the department said it began asking outside experts to conduct an in-depth review of the program’s policies and procedures, while several investigators are investigating the April 24 incident that left Jeffrey Ryans, 36, with serious injuries that his lawyers said amputation was necessary.
The K9 officer involved in the meeting, Nickolas Pearce, was placed on administrative leave while the city’s civil review and internal affairs investigators investigated, the department said.
“I’m disturbed by what I saw in that video, frustrated by how the situation was handled, and I’m working hard to make sure it does not happen again,” he said. Saltin City Mayor Erin Mendenhall tweeted Wednesday.
Lawyers for Ryans, a train engineer, said in an interview Wednesday that he was ready to go to work early that morning when officers arrived at his wife’s home, where he was staying.
In disturbing body camera footage, first published by the Salt Lake City Tribune and obtained by NBC News, officers can be seen talking to Ryans, who is standing in the backyard of the house. “I’m just going to work,” he says. One officer asks how they can get to the garden; another appears to say that Ryans is jumping the gate.
Pearce then seems to run to the other side of the house, where he approaches Ryans and says, “Come to the ground or you’ll be bitten.”
While Ryans kneels with his hands up, Pearce appears to say “hit” and “good boy”, while his dog bites Ryans, who repeatedly kicks in pain and asks why the dog bites him.
The Salt Lake Police Department denied a request for an interview with Pearce, and the Salt Lake Police Association did not immediately return a request for comment Wednesday night.
In a notification of claim dated June 29 that was filed with the Salt Lake City Recorder’s bureau – the first step in filing a lawsuit – lawyers for Ryans said Pearce’s dog, Tuco, bit him several times for about one minute. biten.
On each side of his leg lay Ryan’s two-inch gaskets, one of his lawyers said, Gabriel White.
“We’ve seen a lot of dog bites, but this one looks like something else,” he said. “I would assume he had an accident with a chainsaw.”
Salt Lake City police spokesman Detective Greg Wilking said authorities were called to the home because of a report of domestic violence. Wilking cited the offensive legal behavior, Wilking declined to discuss details of the incident, but in the film camera footage, officers can be heard telling Ryan after he was bitten that he wrote a protective order and was not allowed to do so.
In an interview Wednesday, Gabriel White and another attorney, Daniel Garner, said Ryan’s wife had secured the order last year amid “agreements.” The arguments were not violent, they said, although they told Ryans to leave in December. They reprimanded her later, and he moved back when the coronavirus outbreak began, when she asked her three children for help, they said.
After talking to someone in the local district attorney’s office, she believed the protection order would be lifted, they said.
“Unknown to her, a judge should lift it,” Garner said.
A request for comment left at the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office was not returned Wednesday. Garner and White refused to make Ryans available for an interview as his wife.
Lawyers said they were not sure who reported the suspected domestic violence on April 24, but said there were no allegations that anything violent happened. “It was just a marriage contract,” White said. “Then she went to bed.”
Wilking said Ryans was arrested on suspicion of violating a protective order, prosecutors said.
Garner and White said Ryans was fired after he was injured. Several surgeons have left him tens of thousands of dollars in debt, they said.
They said the officials mentioned in notice of claim have 60 days to respond. “If they take responsibility, there will be no lawsuit,” Garner said.
“My client’s main goal is to see the reform that the nation has a conversation about,” Garner said. “And he has a mountain of medical bills that he has to get now.”
