An Edmonton police officer has been cleared of any wrongdoing in the 2017 arrest of a woman whose ear was bitten off by an EPS service dog.
While the injuries to the 25-year-old woman were “extreme and unexpected,” the dog’s handler acted reasonably, the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team said in a news release Friday.
“It was expected that the dog would engage in the usual way, dragging a person out by one of their limbs, but for reasons we will never understand the dog latched onto the right side of her head and she sustained severe injuries,” ASIRT said.
“While the consequences were terrible, that does not change the lawfulness of the officer’s actions.”
The woman was arrested on May 29, 2017, following an “extremely dangerous” high-speed chase through Edmonton.
After the chase, the woman hid under a truck, and suffered severe lacerations to her face and scalp when a police dog latched onto her head and dragged her across the cement.
Dogs can be unpredictable
Police dogs act on instinct and training and are not always predictable, ASIRT said.
“While the dog is not trained to latch onto the head of a person, it is trained to apprehend and drag a person out of an area that might be unsafe for an officer,” ASIRT said in a statement.
“Given her attempt to hide up into the undercarriage of the vehicle and wheel well, it is not an unreasonable inference that the dog might have latched onto what it could easily access. Unfortunately in this case, it was the woman’s head.”
The woman’s run-in with police began around 11:30 p.m. the night before, when a Ford Expedition with stolen plates was spotted by police as it travelled east on Yellowhead Trail from Winterburn Road.
The Ford driver ran a red light, ASIRT said, and sped away. At one point, the SUV crossed the centre line and drove into oncoming traffic.
Police tried unsuccessfully to box in the SUV, which finally pulled into the parking lot of the Hilton Hotel on Stony Plain Road and 178th Street, moments ahead of police cruisers but still in view of a police helicopter. All four occupants of the SUV jumped out and fled the area in a stolen GMC Sierra.
Officers found a sawed-off .410 shotgun in the abandoned SUV.
Driving dangerously, the second stolen vehicle sped south toward Leduc. At around 12:45 a.m., police finally stopped the GMC using a spike belt.
The suspects fled on foot.
‘Repeated opportunities to surrender’
The woman crawled under a truck. She was warned repeatedly to surrender but did not respond, ASIRT said.
“[The police officer] advised the person that they should come out from underneath the truck immediately or he would send the dog in, and that the dog will bite them.
“The dog emerged seconds later dragging a screaming woman by the right side of the head and face.”
The officer commanded the dog to release the woman, and the dog complied, ASIRT said.
Bleeding profusely, the woman was taken to hospital but doctors were unable to reattach her ear.
Charges against the arresting officer are not warranted in the case, ASIRT said.
“The officer provided the young woman with repeated opportunities to surrender and she did not do so,” the ASIRT statement said.
“She was one of four unidentified individuals who had gone to extreme lengths to avoid apprehension and who had been in possession of at least one prohibited firearm. The officer had no way to know whether the young woman was armed.”
ASIRT investigates incidents involving police that result in serious injury or death to any person, as well as serious or sensitive allegations of police misconduct.