No discipline for problem K-9 handler's latest out-of-policy bite

SPOG deadlines mean no punishment for a cop with multiple force complaints and a lawsuit for an accidental bite. His last dog died on a suicide mission.

K-9 handler Anthony Ducre dodged a sustained complaint for ordering his dog to bite a burglar who posed no imminent threat, according to a report released last Friday. Though the bite was found to have violated policy, deadlines in the police guild contract gave the disciplinary agency only two weeks to finish the investigation instead of the normal 180 days.

On Aug. 30, 2023, Ducre was one of several officers dispatched to a business near the intersection of Dearborn and Rainier Ave S, where a man had broken in during working hours and refused to leave. When they arrived, officers ordered the man over the PA to exit the building with his hands up and warned him that the dog was present.

When the man came out, Ducre was still harnessing his dog. The man fled and Ducre ordered the dog to “take him.” The dog initially ran toward an employee of the business, seen below wearing a reflective vest, until Ducre redirected him, yelling “Here! Here! Here!”

Ducre and his dog chased the man up the alleyway, where he dropped his backpack. He again ordered his dog to “take him.” The dog bit the man in the shoulder, while Ducre caught up with him and pushed him onto his stomach. The dog released and bit the man on his other shoulder until Ducre pulled him off.

According to the report, the Force Review Board referred the case to the Office of Police Accountability, noting that Ducre’s use of the dog may have violated the department’s canine policy.

Though the canine policy lists burglary as a crime for which a “directed apprehension” (bite) is allowed, the board maintained that Ducre’s deployment did not satisfy the requirement that K-9s only be used on suspects who pose an “imminent threat of harm” to the public or are fleeing while in possession of a deadly weapon.

The board wrote that Ducre’s explanations for the bite were “speculative.” He claimed that he had reason to believe that the man was armed because burglars sometimes carry weapons. He argued that the man’s willingness to break into an occupied business and confront employees made him dangerous.

These rationalizations echo ones Ducre made earlier in his career to justify a disastrous deployment of his previous dog Jedi, whom Ducre ordered to maul two people in a stolen car. He told the OPA that the two could have been armed. Ducre also concocted an elaborate scenario in which they may have run into the house and taken the residents hostage with the weapons they may have had.

After other officers arrived and arrested the two, Jedi escaped from Ducre’s cruiser and attacked the handcuffed man on the ground.

The OPA ultimately agreed with the Force Review Board’s finding that using the dog was unjustified. Though Ducre rattled off a list of potential threats the man could’ve posed, none of them were imminent, which the OPA defined as, “ready to take place, near at hand, hanging threateningly over one’s head, or menacingly near.”

The OPA would’ve sustained the allegation were it not for language in the SPOG collective bargaining agreement that starts the 180-day clock 14 days after a case has been submitted to the chain of command. Ducre’s chain of command received it in September 2023 and judged his use of force “necessary and proportional” before the force review board had a chance to complete its review.

By the time OPA was notified in March 2024, the clock had nearly run out. This is the third time this year that the SPOG contract’s arbitrary deadlines have blocked discipline. In another case, a detective avoided a suspension for a DUI arrest. More recently, an officer was spared punishment for pepper-spraying a fleeing driver.

This would’ve been only Ducre’s second sustained complaint, but he has had half a dozen training referrals while working in the K-9 unit, primarily for the use of force. Furthermore, he’s had two cases that would’ve likely been sustained, but the OPA faulted ambiguities in the SPD policy manual.

In 2020, Ducre was named in a lawsuit brought by a woman his previous dog Jedi mauled in the parking lot of her workplace. The city settled that lawsuit for $225,000. Two years later, Ducre ordered Jedi to take down a mentally ill man who was carrying a knife and naked except for a towel. The man stabbed Jedi to death before another officer shot him.

Though the deployment was unnecessary and escalated an encounter that directly led to the death of a human being and a police dog, Ducre was never investigated.

Ducre made $159,126 last year and received $61,739 in back pay under the most recent SPOG contract.