It was an early Sunday early morning in October 2020 when corrections officer Iliana Velazquez “heard and felt a bone in her hand breeze.”
As an incident report stated, she had actually been moving an attack-trained patrol dog in between kennels in an Arizona State Prison Complex simply outdoors Tucson, Arizona, when the dog secured down on her left hand.
In Iowa, an attack-trained patrol dog called Maverick bit a corrections officer on the ideal butt in May 2020 while reacting to a battle at the state penitentiary.
The following September, a patrol dog called Oscar assaulted Ryan Edwards, a Virginia Department of Corrections canine-officer student, throughout obedience training. The dog bit both of Edwards’ lower arms and his right-hand man, according to an incident report; he was right away carried to a neighboring medical center for treatment.
Insider determined a minimum of 8 state jail systems that have in recent years released dogs to assault individuals in state custody or as a program of force. The departments of corrections that release these dogs state the animals make jail centers much safer for corrections officers and jail employee. Some departments argue that the existence of the dogs alone — their barking and snarling — is so challenging that it prevents lots of violent occurrences prior to they happen. When utilized as a use of force, jail administrators state, the dogs are a workforce multiplier that change corrections officers in unsafe circumstances where they’d run the risk of injury — like separating a violent battle or by force getting rid of somebody from a cell, a method referred to as a “cell extraction.”
Records obtained by Insider reveal that from 2017 to 2022, patrol dogs utilized by state jails were commanded to assault incarcerated individuals a minimum of 295 times. The dogs likewise went rogue and bit corrections officers or other jail employee a minimum of 13 times: 3 times in Iowa, 4 in Arizona, and 6 times in Virginia. The bites were often serious, needing emergency situation medical attention, even surgical treatment.
In 2018, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined the Iowa Department of Corrections $5,000 for unsafe working conditions consisting of making use of patrol dogs, which had actually indiscriminately bitten detainees, corrections officers, and canine handlers. In an unredacted OSHA report obtained by Insider through a public-records demand, the OSHA inspector discovered that the Iowa jail system had actually stopped working to offer adequate time for training the dogs; as a repercussion, the report said, “the possibility of officer injury from security animals is substantially increased.”
The labor union representing Iowa corrections workers did not react to Insider’s ask for an interview about the risk that patrol dogs present to office safety. Nor did the Virginia labor union that represents corrections officers, consisting of canine handlers.
Carlos Garcia is the executive director of the Arizona Correctional Peace Officers Association, the union that represents corrections officers. He’s likewise a previous canine officer in the Arizona jail system, and he consented to examine Insider’s findings. He kept in mind that almost all of the recent bites on staffers in Arizona happened in the dog kennels that use individuals, like Velazquez, without specialized canine training. She was cleaning up the dog kennels when a dog bit her hand so badly that she needed emergency situation surgical treatment.
He said unintentional bites sustained in regular training or throughout the turmoil of a cell extraction were to be anticipated.
“A dog is a packed handgun,” Garcia said.
Garcia said among his dogs — an animal called Duco — bit him lot of times throughout training prior to ending up being certified. But some dogs, even after weeks of compulsory training, can still end up being indiscriminately aggressive, Garcia said. If a dog went “rogue” and consistently bit handlers or other staff, it’s most likely the dog would require to be euthanized, he said.
The Virginia Department of Corrections argued in a 2022 court filing that patrol dogs safeguard the safety of the jail staff. But a previous Virginia jail warden, Jeffrey Kiser, acknowledged in a June 2022 deposition that the department did not have information to validate its claims. Rick White, the existing warden at Red Onion State Prison in Wise County, Virginia, informed Insider that he, too, was uninformed of any research studies that develop the effectiveness of the dogs. He said his own expert observations have actually taught him their effectiveness in stopping dispute.
Kathleen Dennehy, a corrections specialist who formerly worked as corrections commissioner for Massachusetts, said that in spite of the recorded danger attack-trained dogs position to staff and detainee safety, some rank-and-file officers and the unions representing them hesitated to quit any use-of-force alternatives. She said lots of jail administrators felt the exact same method.
Yet the toll on corrections officers can be severe, especially in Virginia, which utilizes the dogs more greatly than any other state. Matthew Johnson, a previous canine officer at Wallens Ridge State Prison in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, informed Insider that his last dog bit his lower arm badly, leaving a 4-inch gash that needed stitches.
Records reveal that another dog, a 93-pound German shepherd called Oscar, bit a minimum of 2 canine officers in 2021 and 2022. He was the dog who bit Ryan Edwards on both lower arms and the right-hand man throughout training. Seven months later on, according to an internal incident report, he bit another canine officer’s hand, triggering “severe injury,” as the officer was attempting to move Oscar to a brand-new kennel.
Oscar was ultimately labeled by a training authorities as a “extremely worrying liability” and euthanized.
Getting bit by your own patrol dog is an anticipated — even regular — part of being a jail canine officer, Johnson informed Insider.
But he still explains it as “the very best job I ever had.”
In Virginia jails, patrol dogs and their handlers are anticipated to get here initially on the scene to any occurrence that might need force, such as a violent battle, and presume command, according to Johnson and 2 other previous department workers. It’s a high-pressure and high-risk required that puts canine handlers and their dogs at the cutting edge of a few of the most violent episodes in Virginia’s high-security jails.
Insider talked to 2 previous Virginia canine handlers, Johnson and Daniel Clinton, in addition to Brian Mitchell, a previous Red Onion corrections officer who went on to end up being a sergeant, lieutenant, and detective at Keen Mountain Correctional Center, a high-security jail in western Virginia. All 3 said the department’s overdependence on dogs might threaten employee. “The obstacle is, in the centers, specifically in the stairwells, it’s an extremely tight location,” Mitchell said. “Everybody’s crammed in there. The possibilities of somebody getting bit are truly high.”
Mitchell said he examined an occurrence at Keen Mountain in which a canine officer did not have appropriate control over his dog as they came through a door and shocked a mental-health therapist simply on the other side. The dog bit the therapist on her thigh. When Mitchell went to take pictures for the internal examination, he discovered a swimming pool of blood on the boulevard in between structures.
“It was a quite bad bite,” Mitchell said.
Officers reacting to possibly unsafe circumstances run the risk of more than simply a bite when depending on a patrol dog. The requirement that handlers react to violent occurrences initially puts them at increased danger, the previous staffers said, since if the dog stops working to stop the violence, their handler is stuck protecting themselves alone while connected to the animal.
Johnson said he was when captured reacting to a battle without backup when his dog, Fuga, stopped working to efficiently bite the detainees included. Fuga had actually formerly split or lost all 4 of his canine teeth, however this was the very first time he had actually stopped working to lock on. Johnson said he was delegated combat the detainees alone, one-handed, while grasping Fuga’s lead. Johnson said that right away later, he asked for a brand-new dog and retired Fuga.
In January 2021, an internal log report files that a group of incarcerated individuals stabbed a sergeant at Sussex I State Prison and after that assaulted the reacting canine officer. A VADOC press release released the next day said the dog was likewise hurt, stabbed several times. The dog needed emergency situation surgical treatment however made it through.
The consistent watchfulness the canine-officer function needs took a toll on Clinton, who was a canine handler for 12 years at Sussex I State Prison. His spouse has actually informed him he still yells canine commands in his sleep, he said, almost 3 years after he left the department.
Mitchell, the previous detective, said that simply experiencing a dog attack might be distressing for corrections officers. “The yelling, the battling, the blood,” Mitchell said. “It’s simply not something you forget.”
The large bulk of state systems do not utilize dogs even in high-security jails — in many cases since of the severe danger of damage. An agent for the Arkansas Department of Corrections informed Insider that the department had one patrol dog in 2012 however officers chose the dog was incapable of “discernment” and were stressed he would assault indiscriminately. The program was ditched not long after it began.
Other jail administrators have actually knowingly chosen to carry that danger. In a 2017 email obtained by Insider, the administrator of a Virginia patrol-dog program acknowledged issues following an unexpected patrol-dog bite there. Using dogs in the staircases, the administrator composed, put employee and detainees at danger of unneeded contact, offered the close distance to the animals.
The administration,” the email concluded, “has actually suggested that the security of the organizations are much more essential than the threats of these occurrences.”
