This brings back ugly shades of the 1960s when police used to sic their dogs on peaceful civil rights protesters. A Salt Lake City police officer has been charged with aggravated assault for ordering his dog to attack 36-year-old Jeffery Ryans, who had his hands up.
The Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office filed a felony charge against Nickolas Pearce, The New York Post reported. Body camera footage of the police attack was published by the Salt Lake Tribune.
“(Ryans) wasn’t resisting arrest,” Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill said in explaining his decision. “He certainly wasn’t posing an imminent threat of violence or harm to anyone and he certainly wasn’t concealed. He was fenced in an area and was being compliant.”
The incident happened on April 24 when police were called to Ryans’ home after his daughter called 911 to report her father was screaming at her mother and had hit her, the police report said. Police were preparing to arrest Ryan because his wife had filed a protective order in December that barred him from being at the home.
Ryans is reportedly facing domestic assault charges. He said his wife had informed him that the order was lifted. He had been living at the home for weeks before the arrest.
On the day of the incident, Ryans was in the backyard smoking a cigarette. Pearce approached him and ordered him to “get on the ground or you’re going to get bit,” according to the recording. Ryans is seen kneeling to the ground with his hands up as the officers get closer and the leashed dog, named Turco, starts biting Ryans and pulling at his left leg.
“I’m on the ground! Why are you biting me?!” Ryans shouts in the clip. He begins to shriek in pain as the K9 officer in the encounter, Nickolas Pearce, praises the dog with “good boy” several times.
“Why are you guys — ow, what the f–k!? Holy s–t!” Ryans screams. “Why the f–k are you biting me!?”
The video footage not only outraged many but brought up old scars for Black people.
“The video evidence reflected a gory episode of state violence through the jaws of a canine that conjures up a long history of such images,” The Washington Post reported. “For centuries, Europeans and Euro-Americans used police dogs as a tool for racial terror and conquest. European colonists and ‘slave hunters’ initiated the system of racist, interspecies violence too often reflected in modern K-9 units today.”
Besides the police dog incident in Salt Lake City, the Navy is investigating videos of a training demonstration where dogs attacked a man wearing a Colin Kaepernick jersey.
The videos are from a 2019 fundraiser at the National Navy SEAL Museum in Florida, according to CBS Miami.
“The inherent message of this video is completely inconsistent with the values and ethos of Naval Special Warfare and the U.S. Navy,” the military branch said in a statement. “We are investigating the matter fully, and initial indications are that there were no active duty Navy personnel or equipment involved with the independent organization’s event.”
The Navy learned of the videos in August after they were shared on Twitter by Florida filmmaker Billy Corben.
Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 73: Jamarlin Martin Jamarlin makes the case for why this is a multi-factor rebellion vs. just protests about George Floyd. He discusses the Democratic Party’s sneaky relationship with the police in cities and states under Dem control, and why Joe Biden is a cop and the Steve Jobs of mass incarceration.
One video shows three dogs attacking a man wearing protective gear underneath a Kaepernick jersey. In a second video, after the dogs are called off, the man in the jersey appears to say something like “oh man, I’ll stand,” apparently in reference to former NFL players kneeling in protest against police brutality. The remark prompted chuckles from the crowd at the fundraiser, CBS News reported.
