Woman injured by police dog sues Sheriff’s Department

A woman who was attacked by a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department dog is suing the county, demanding that the agency end its search and bite dog program.

In a lawsuit filed this week in Los Angeles County Superior Court, attorneys for Rosa Ramirez say the 44-year-old was standing right outside her front door talking to a deputy sheriff last year when a loose patrol dog approached her and bit her hand, leaving her with permanent injuries.

“There cannot be any more victims like Rosa Ramirez,” attorney Colleen Flynn told the Times on Friday. “The only way to stop this dog attack program is to end it immediately – these are search and bite dogs that not only find people, but also bite them.”

The sheriff’s department said in a statement that it had not officially received the complaint, but acknowledged that the incident occurred and said dogs were only used under “strict guidelines” and in high-risk scenarios.

“The department is committed to ensuring that handler control dogs are used in accordance with our policies and rigorous training standards,” the statement said.

In recent years, police dog programs have come under increasing scrutiny. According to a Investigation by the Marshall Project, a nonprofit news site, there is little oversight over the use of animals, even though data shows that dog bites hospitalize more people than any other type of force used by police.

Last year American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California published a report Demand for legislation to limit the use of police dogs, as they are often used on people with mental crises and sometimes attack passers-by.

Shortly after 9 p.m. on Feb. 22, 2023, sheriff’s officers searching for a fugitive suspect in South Los Angeles arrived at Ramirez’s door, the lawsuit says. She opened her mouth and took a step outside when a 55- to 65-pound patrol dog attacked her from the left. The dog bit Ramirez, ripping a large chunk of flesh from her left hand, the lawsuit says.

She was taken to the hospital, where her injuries required multiple surgeries and a skin graft. More than a year later, her lawyers say, Ramirez still cannot grip or write with her left hand and suffers from numbness and limited mobility.

“Her hand is now permanently disfigured and nonfunctional,” Flynn said Friday at a news conference outside the downtown courthouse, where she was flanked by large posters showing graphic images of Ramirez’s injuries.

According to the lawsuit, the Sheriff’s Department began a program in 1980 that used dogs to search for suspects. At the time, the lawsuit says, department leaders knew the dogs would bite suspects they tracked down. But the lawsuit says they “improperly and unreasonably allowed dogs to make the decision about whether to bite suspects,” shifting the decision about whether to use force from humans to animals.

When officers use other weapons – such as batons, pepper spray or pistols – they can be held accountable for the outcome..

“They evade responsibility by blaming the dog, and since the dog has no human judgment, they just treat it as an accident,” Flynn told the Times. “But these attacks are predictable. It’s not an accident if you’ve been doing this for nearly 50 years.”

At one point, the lawsuit refers to a 1992 report that warned officials of “serious problems” in the dog program and highlighted several cases in which dogs were allowed to bite people for much longer than was deemed necessary.

“In all that time, they’ve never learned how to control these dogs because they can’t,” Flynn said. “They can’t control where a dog bites someone, how hard a dog bites someone, or how much flesh is ripped out, and they can’t even control who gets bitten.”

According to their lawyers, the attack on Ramirez resulted in officers no longer recognizing the fugitive suspect and him not being found.

The lawsuit does not specify a dollar amount Ramirez is seeking in damages.