Dashcam video from a Brunswick County Sheriff's cruiser shows a police pursuit after a man failed to stop at a checkpoint. During the pursuit, the suspect rammed 3 cruisers. Once the suspect is boxed in, you can see a Wilmington PD K9 officer lifting his dog into the suspect's vehicle. Recently,  a grand jury cleared the K9 officer of any wrongdoing in the chase that ended with the driver being attacked by the police dog because people thought it was excessive force. 

 

Edited December 11, 201312 yr by Bossnix

Dashcam video from a Brunswick County Sheriff's cruiser shows a police pursuit after a man failed to stop at a checkpoint. During the pursuit, the suspect rammed 3 cruisers. Once the suspect is boxed in, you can see a Wilmington PD K9 officer lifting his dog into the suspect's vehicle. Recently,  a grand jury cleared the K9 officer of any wrongdoing in the chase that ended with the driver being attacked by the police dog because people thought it was excessive force. 

 

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What do you guys think? Excessive force?

 

I don't think the officer used excessive force. I think he did a good job and that the suspect got what he deserved since he led officers on a pursuit, ramming 3 cruisers. 

My thought is, if you have a K9, then use the K9.

 

 

Agreed

Agreed

Also you never know. The person fleeing might have a gun or some type of weapon.

Also you never know. The person fleeing might have a gun or some type of weapon.

 

Thats what these people that are complaining don't understand. 

Also you never know. The person fleeing might have a gun or some type of weapon.

But in this case he did have a weapon. A 2,000 pound+ vehicle that had already been used to assault 3 officers. That guy is lucky he didn't get himself shot, which the police would've been fully justified to do.

 

EDIT: Just in case it wasn't clear, I wasn't saying you believe it wasn't justified. I was just adding onto your thought.

  Generally I don't like to Monday morning quarterback and I generally give officers a good amount of leeway to use the appropriate amount of force to end a situation, but this encounter just felt wrong to me.  As a police officer you have to be able to transition from going from cool calm and cooperative, to deadly force and back down again.  I don't know this specific agencies policies for deploying the K-9 but you have a suspect surrendering with his hands in the air, that is in plain sight and you stuff a K-9 into the open window into the suspects face.  I'm not aware of any Law Enforcement group that trains their people to do that and it doesn't feel like an appropriate use of force for a cooperative suspect.  I'll go out on a limb here and say that the agency will make their K-9 deployment policy more clear on this matter for the future (so this is not repeated again).  Yes he had just endangered lives, yes he almost killed officers, but again officers have to use the proper amount of force at that specific time.  So yes there were periods of time that they would have been justified at using deadly force, but when the suspect surrenders you can't turn around and shoot him or beat the piss out of him (but we all know this still happens).  If they had dragged this suspect out of the car and he had gotten a little beat up from being removed and taken into custody that's one thing.  Its an entirely different thing when you turn a K-9 on a surrendering suspect.  The thing that the public perceives is that it felt like the officer had the intention of causing significant bodily harm to this suspect because of his earlier actions, NOT his actions at that very moment.  Yes, suspects should be treated as a threat until they are cuffed and searched (even then they can bite and kick), but you have to keep in mind that you had enough officers on scene to safely extract a seemingly cooperative/ surrendering suspect without the use of the dog.  Now if the suspect refused to come out of the vehicle you have a different set of circumstances and then maybe I could see deployment of the dog if it were in line with department procedures.  On a side note even though this officer was cleared criminally expect a civil case to be brought against him and based on what I've seen I expect it to go in the favor of the suspect.

But in this case he did have a weapon. A 2,000 pound+ vehicle that had already been used to assault 3 officers. That guy is lucky he didn't get himself shot, which the police would've been fully justified to do.

 

EDIT: Just in case it wasn't clear, I wasn't saying you believe it wasn't justified. I was just adding onto your thought.

Oh ok. So he did have a weapon. Sorry I didn't watch the video the whole way through.

I see nothing wrong with what the police officer did

I would see it as an very good TV show to watch