XPost: ucb.politics.progressive, chi.general, alt.hollywood   
   XPost: ca.politics   
   From: gay.perverts@gladd.org   
      
   The man running through the canyon was high on LSD,   
   hallucinating and naked, police said. He was covered in sweat,   
   scratches and scrapes.   
      
   He was alone but agitated — and screaming for somebody named   
   “Josiah,” whom he desperately wanted to find.   
      
   And he wasn’t obeying the commands of the officers who had been   
   called about his strange behavior.   
      
   As he climbed to the plateau where a half dozen San Diego police   
   officers and their K-9 were waiting, officers repeatedly yelled   
   for the man to turn around.   
      
   “No!” he screamed, defiant, balling up his fists and inching   
   toward officers.   
      
   “No!”   
      
   So the officer handling the dog told his police colleagues to   
   stand back, then gave his dog a command.   
      
   What followed was recorded on an officer’s body camera — footage   
   that was obtained by the NBC affiliate in Los Angeles:   
      
   The dog lunged forward and his teeth ripped into the man’s leg.   
   The man fell, screaming as the biting dog growled. The man   
   writhed and kicked to free himself, but the dog was latched onto   
   his leg, shredding it.   
      
   “Put your hands behind your back and the dog will stop biting   
   you,” one officer said.   
      
   The man didn’t, and the dog continued, shaking its head back and   
   forth as ribbons of bloody flesh opened up on the man’s calf.   
      
   Forty-four seconds passed before the handler told the dog to   
   release the man.   
      
   It panted as it backed away, its mouth bloody.   
      
   The incident occurred at about 8:30 a.m. on a Saturday in August   
   2015, in a canyon in the San Diego suburb of University City.   
   The body-cam footage was broadcast this week by KNBC.   
      
   The full video, the news station warned, “is extremely graphic   
   and disturbing. It includes footage of a police dog biting a   
   subject’s leg until blood and other injuries are visible. .?.?.   
   Viewer discretion is strongly advised.   
      
   The man in the video is a 25-year-old businessman who said he   
   ended up in the canyon after a hard night of partying.   
      
   His face is blurred in the video and his name is redacted in a   
   police narrative about the incident — but he told KNBC that he   
   won’t be able to fully use his right leg ever again.   
      
   He settled with the city for $385,000 and was never charged with   
   a crime, according to the station. But, he said: “No dollar   
   amount is worth having a disability for life.”   
      
   The San Diego Police Department said the use of force was   
   justified.   
      
   “This video shows the agitated and defiant demeanor of a man   
   under the influence of LSD,” Lt. Scott Wahl, a department   
   spokesman, said in a statement.   
      
   “When played in its entirety, the video shows our officers   
   trying to gain his compliance before he became defiant. While   
   the split second decisions of police officers are easy to second   
   guess when you know the outcome, keep in mind the deployment of   
   our K9 is intended to prevent the situation from escalating.”   
      
   The department’s K-9 policy allows officers to order a dog to   
   attack to protect officers or apprehend “assaultive, violent or   
   dangerous” people, or criminals trying to hide or flee. It says   
   officers who handle dogs should warn suspects that the dog is   
   going to be released, unless the handler has “specific and   
   articulable facts” that the announcement will endanger other   
   officers or the public.   
      
   In a narrative written by police officials after the August 2015   
   attack, the officer handling the dog said he believed the man   
   was under the influence of drugs, which would give him “a high   
   tolerance to pain.”   
      
   “I believed he was going to punch or assault an officer,” the   
   dog handler wrote.   
      
   Making the situation especially precarious, according to the   
   handler: Officers were just a few feet from the edge of the   
   canyon. The man “could have easily pulled or pushed an officer   
   to the bottom of the canyon, causing death or serious bodily   
   injury. Had [he] been tazed, he could have fallen backward into   
   the canyon where large rocks and boulders were scattered   
   throughout.”   
      
   The incident comes to light as law-enforcement officers across   
   the nation remain embroiled in a debate about whether they are   
   too quick to use force, especially against minorities. (The man   
   in the video appears to be Caucasian.) Police have killed 912   
   people so far this year, according to a Washington Post   
   examination of fatal use of force by police.   
      
   Donald W. Cook, a Los Angeles-based civil rights attorney who   
   specializes in cases involving bites by police dogs, called the   
   incident “barbaric” and told The Post that the dog never should   
   have been ordered to attack.   
      
   “It’s not Lassie or Rin Tin Tin come to the aid of the police   
   officers,” Cook saidt. “The dog cannot handcuff. The dog cannot   
   restrain. .?.?. All the dog can do is attack and bite and   
   mutilate.”   
      
   Instead of releasing the dog, Cook said, the officers should   
   have used their training to subdue the man, who was unarmed and   
   outnumbered.   
      
   Cook, who is not representing the man in the San Diego video,   
   took exception to the K-9 officer’s claim that using the dog   
   made the situation safer for officers. They ended up grappling   
   with the man on the ground anyway and had to contend with his   
   thrashing to escape a biting dog, he said.   
      
   “The purpose of using force is to control,” Cook said. “You’re   
   using it to control, to stop a threat of some type, to get the   
   person taken into custody. Using a dog to subdue a guy is the   
   antithesis of control. You see that in the video. The guy goes   
   crazy. Now he’s reacting to the dog.   
      
   “If the police objective is to mutilate the guy and have him   
   scream, then using the dog makes sense.”   
      
   https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-   
   nation/wp/2016/12/15/video-he-was-naked-unarmed-and-tripping-on-   
   lsd-police-ordered-their-dog-to-attack-   
   him/?tid=hybrid_experimentrandom_1_na&utm_term=.485fd4c18471   
        
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)