KASTE: Raw video like this is changing public perception
of police dogs.
Here, police in St. Paul, Minn. use a K-9
unit, a dog and a handler, to apprehend Frank Baker.
Baker is an African-American man who was identified
mistakenly as a criminal suspect.
[ BAKER screaming ]
OFFICER: Don't f****** move.
BAKER: Well what I was hearing was, "Get out the
car, with your hands up and walk toward us."
So I walked toward them.
And I took like about seven or eight steps,
and they said, "Turn around," and as soon
as I turned around he let the dog out on me.
And the dog just started just biting me and
just tearing me up.
OFFICER: Good boy.
Get on the ground.
BAKER: That dog, he made me a cripple,
deformed all my life.
I can't dance no more.
I can't play sports no more.
I can't run.
My whole life I always played football and
ran track and did things,
I can't do that no more.
I can't do it.
I loved dogs all my life.
Now I fear dogs.
OFFICER: Cuff that hand.
Good boy. Good boy.
KASTE: Baker got an apology from the police chief
and a settlement.
And police K-9 handlers would say that the
severity of injuries here
make this case an outlier.
For decades now, police have considered dogs
to be a valuable tool
for subduing potentially dangerous suspects.
Bites are seen as a form of pain compliance
that quickly convinces a combative person
to hold still for arrest.
It does mean injuries, sometimes serious ones,
but police say that's preferable to risking
the safety of officers and civilians.
Officer Dan Lesser of the Spokane Police Department
says he weighs several factors before he lets his dog loose on anyone.
LESSER: What is the risk of allowing this guy to
escape armed with a gun?
What kind of damage, what kind of mayhem is
he gonna cause if we allow him to escape and
go carjack a car or go kill somebody else?
Those are the factors that I'm constantly
running through my head.
You know, severity of crime, poses an immediate
danger to themselves or others,
you know, he's actively resisting, evading
arrest.
KASTE: K-9 units can also be good public relations.
They're the familiar, likable face of law enforcement.
Though the dogs also have some
very negative associations.
Especially the lingering memories of their use
during the civil rights era.
A series of lawsuits in the 1990s
led to tighter rules,
and reformers say things generally got better.
But in the last decade or so, the number of
police dog bites has been growing again.
That's according to emergency room
estimates by the CDC.
And with the advent of police body cameras,
we're now getting a close-up view of what
K-9 apprehensions actually look like.
Here, San Diego police are responding to a report
of a man walking through traffic brandishing a machete.
Though at this moment, his hands are empty.
When he ignores verbal commands from the police,
they quickly use a K-9 to try to get him to comply.
OFFICER: ...you're going to get bitten by the dog.
Get on the ground I said.
Roll on to your stomach and stop fighting.
Roll on to your stomach. Give me your hands.
KASTE: We showed this scene 
to a use-of-force expert, former cop
and now assistant professor of law, Seth Stoughton.
He says a dog can actually make it harder
for someone to obey an officer's commands.
STOUGHTON: It’s very likely that 
when you get bitten by a dog,
you just look at that dog as the source of pain
and you do everything you can to address that pain,
and you'll deal with that other stuff, 
those shouted commands--
you'll deal with that later when the pain stops.
OFFICER: Hey, stop fighting
so we can get the dog off of you.
Give us your hands.
STOUGHTON: It’s going to be exponentially 
more difficult for someone
who is experiencing some form of mental health or substance crisis.
OFFICER: Stop. Stop resisting.
SUSPECT: OK, I'm not resisting.
OFFICER: OK, let me have your hands.
Let me have your hands.
Hey stop kicking.
KASTE: Since Ferguson, American police have been
under pressure to de-escalate encounters like this,
to find ways to slow things down and use less force.
But videos show dogs having the opposite effect
-- escalating things --
especially when the suspect may be mentally impaired.
Here's our last and most extreme example:
San Diego police again,
responding to a report of a naked man.
He's incoherent and pretty obviously unarmed.
His mistake is telling the police "No."
OFFICER: Turn around Josiah.
Turn around.
SUSPECT: No.
No.
OFFICER: Get your hands on your back.
Hands on your back.
Stop resisting.
Stop resisting.
STOUGHTON: Yeah, so when someone is naked,
that’s what we call a clue.
It’s a pretty good indication that they’re
either experiencing some mental health issues
or some substance abuse issues.
KASTE: The biting lasted for 52 seconds, causing
extensive injuries.
Generally, police are not supposed to use force
like this unless they have reason to believe
a person poses a threat of serious injury
to someone else; in this case,
they cited the threat posed by the man's clenched fists,
plus the fact that there were stones on the ground, which he might have picked up.
STOUGHTON: So it's not that dogs
are always excessive,
it’s not that dogs have no role.
They can bring a lot to the table
in the right situations.
 
But we have to start from the baseline that
a dog bite is a very serious use of force.
KASTE: There are no detailed national statistics
on police dog bites --
we don't have a reliable count
of how often the dogs bite people --
much less how long the bites tend to last.
So the public is left with these videos.
Some handlers have resisted wearing body cameras
because they believe gory images of longer bites
will be used out of context and misunderstood.
The videos also make it easier to sue and
win settlements -- which is what happened here.
But Seth Stoughton says resisting the cameras
is the wrong response.
STOUGHTON: So I'm a little bit skeptical
of the argument that
we should be worried about video because
it will require us to justify
things to the public.
I think the right response there is: "Yes,
we should be justifying things to the public,
and if there’s things that we cannot justify
to the public, then maybe that's a clue that
we shouldn't be using them."
