Another Seattle Police K9 Mauled a Civilian
Another Seattle Police K9 Mauled a Civilian
This time, it was the roommate of a rookie K9 handler.
Two weeks ago, the Seattle Police Foundation made a post welcoming the most recent additions to the SPD K9 unit: Ofc. Kame Spencer and K9 Frodo. Spencer was supposed to start working a year ago with a different dog named K9 Thor, but that plan was derailed when the dog mauled Spencer’s housemate. Last March, Thor attacked the woman from behind while she was folding laundry inside their shared home in Redmond, according to a damage claim filed with the City of Seattle.
Six months before the attack, the city paid $225,000 to a woman mauled by a different Seattle police dog in Tukwila during a training exercise. Valerie Heffernan was eating lunch outside her car in the parking lot of the office complex where she worked when K9 Jedi turned the corner on a long lead and attacked her.
Jedi was killed in January 2022 after his handler Paul Anthony Ducre directed him to attack a naked man in a mental health crisis armed with a knife.
Ducre is the thread that ties the two cases together. He helped train Spencer. While Pierce County’s K9 unit was primarily responsible for training Spencer and rookie K9 Officer Dillon Butenhoff, SPD K9 Sergeant John O’Neil assigned Ducre to provide notes as a senior handler.
Sgt. O’Neil and Ducre had a falling out over his behavior during the training and other issues, according to a complaint the sergeant filed against Ducre with the Office of Professional Accountability. O’Neill thought Ducre was overstepping his boundaries and eventually removed him from training.
The sergeant’s complaint also hinted at problems with the new handlers’ training. O’Neil paraphrases the Pierce County trainer saying the dogs were “tough” to train and that he believed they might need more time. Ducre likewise told O’Neil that the handlers weren’t ready and expressed doubts that they would be certified on time. He complained to O’Neil that Pierce County “didn’t know what they were doing.”
Ultimately, Spencer and the other trainee Dillon Butenhoff were certified on schedule in December 2021. However, O’Neil remarked that he believed the handlers’ training was “subpar” and that they “were a long way from being able to work the streets.”
The attack by K9 Thor echoes the control problems Ducre had with Jedi throughout his career, including the final deployment that killed him. During the fatal January incident, Jedi ignored commands and jolts from a shock collar.
Multiple OPA investigations into Ducre found that Jedi repeatedly disobeyed commands to release. On one occasion, multiple officers had to help Ducre pry Jedi off a person he bit. Jedi escaped Ducre’s cruiser once and attacked a handcuffed man.
Pierce County’s patterns and practices may also be to blame. The county’s use of force data shows a tendency to deploy police dogs as weapons frequently. According to Police Scorecard, Pierce County reported 212 bites from 2016 to 2021, or roughly 40 a year.
Spencer’s roommate is asking for $250,000 from the city for lost wages, hospital bills, and trauma. She is represented by personal injury attorney Greg Colburn. While they haven’t filed a suit in court, filing a personal injury claim to the city is the first step of litigation.