“That’s what happens when you don’t answer questions,” a Prince George’s County police officer mentioned as Erica Umana’s canine lay on the bottom, paralyzed and bleeding out.
Minutes earlier, on a summer time day in 2021, officers had shot Umana’s canine, a boxer combine named Hennessy, throughout a chaotic confrontation inside Umana’s condominium.
Now Umana and her roommates—Erika Sanchez, Dayri Benitez, and Brandon Cuevas—have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit towards the Prince George’s County Police Division and a number of other of its officers, saying the police had no proper to enter their condominium, shoot their canine, and detain them. The lawsuit seeks over $16 million for allegedly subjecting them to extreme drive, illegal search and seizure, and false arrest.
“This case is an outrage. It is disgusting, disgraceful, and despicable,” William Murphy, an legal professional representing the roommates, mentioned in a press launch Monday. “These officers outright abused and mistreated our clients, lied to unlawfully break into their house, manhandled them illegally, and shot their dog. And in utter disregard for the severity of their intolerable behavior, they laughed about it.”
The incident started on June 2, 2021, when Prince George’s County cops arrived at an condominium complicated in Landover Hills in response to a 911 name from a lady claiming two canines had allegedly jumped on her and bit her.
Prince George’s County Cpl. Jason Ball encountered Sanchez sitting outdoors of the flats, however she refused to reply any questions. Ball then threatened to arrest Sanchez for trespassing if she did not depart. On physique digicam footage, Ball mentioned into his radio that he believed Sanchez lived within the condominium complicated however that he was about to arrest her anyway as a result of she refused to reply his questions—the primary of a number of retaliatory threats and feedback from Ball.
Sanchez walked off, and Ball and his associate went to knock on the door of the condominium the place Sanchez, Umana, and the opposite lawsuit plaintiffs lived. Nobody answered.
“This would be open by now, by the way, if it wasn’t…,” Ball mentioned to his associate, trailing off and tapping his physique digicam. “I used to open them all the time.”
“Times have changed,” Ball’s associate responded.
As a substitute, the officers received a grasp key from a upkeep employee and returned to open the door—illegally, the lawsuit alleges. The officers had been additionally violating division coverage, the lawsuit says. As The Washington Submit detailed in a 2021 story on the capturing:
The overall orders — the police worker guide — instruct officers to finish a case document for his or her supervisor if an animal is harmful however contained. If an animal poses a direct risk, officers are supposed to seek out and comprise it “without endangering themselves or the public,” then name animal management, based on the protocol.
If officers can not discover the animal, they’re to create a case document and provides it to the animal administration division inside 24 hours.
Division protocol additionally says that officers ought to help animal management in implementing animal-related legal guidelines solely after a warrant has been issued.
Contained in the condominium, Benitez emerged from her bed room, shouting that the officers had no possible trigger to be there. In the meantime, Sanchez and Umana returned after they realized police had been coming into their condominium. Nevertheless, officers blocked them from coming in. When the 2 girls pushed their well past, the police tackled, restrained, and threatened to tase the ladies.
It was at this level that Hennessy slipped out of the bed room and ran towards Umana. “Get the dog, get the dog!” one of many officers shouts. Inside seconds, two officers shot the canine from behind whereas a 3rd tased it.
Umana ran to the canine’s aspect, regardless of officers threatening to tase her if she didn’t step away from it.
“I was just begging them, begging them,” Umana informed The Washington Submit in 2021. “They just had no remorse.”
Benitez referred to as 911, complaining that officers had stormed into her condominium and not using a warrant.
It was throughout this bloody aftermath, as Umana cradled her wounded pet in her arms, that Ball mentioned, “That’s what happens when you don’t answer questions.”
The lawsuit claims the roommates had been detained for an hour at the back of a police van earlier than being launched with out being charged. Umana traveled to an animal hospital the place Hennessy was being handled. The canine was alive, however completely paralyzed. Umana selected to have it euthanized. She obtained an $800 invoice.
In line with the lawsuit, the county provided to pay the veterinary invoice, however provided that Umana agreed to not communicate out in regards to the capturing or sue the police division. She declined the provide.
At a press convention asserting the lawsuit on Monday, attorneys for the roommates had been joined by representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, the NAACP Maryland State Convention, and a number of other different native activist teams, who all mentioned that the incident was a part of a protracted historical past of civil rights violations by the police division.
“Without a badge, these officers would be trespassers. Without a badge these officers would be called burglars. Without a badge, these officers would be called assailants,” the Maryland NAACP’s NaShona Kess mentioned on the press convention. “With a badge and without a warrant they are trespassers. With a badge and without a warrant they are burglars and assailants.”
After an inside affairs investigation, Ball and Officer Joseph Mihanda had been discovered responsible of violating administrative fees of “conduct unbecoming an officer.” The division referred the case to the native state legal professional’s workplace for attainable prison prosecution, however the workplace declined to prosecute.
“After reviewing all of the evidence in this matter a determination was made that actions of the officers didn’t generate criminal liability because they were acting in good faith,” the workplace informed The Washington Submit.
Officers are not often disciplined for capturing canines; supervisors nearly all the time discover that shootings are justified by departments’ free insurance policies, which normally solely require that an officer really feel threatened by a canine to deploy lethal drive. For instance, a Motive investigation right into a string of canine shootings by Detroit police found one officer who had killed greater than 80 canines over the course of his profession. In actual fact, there’s an entire class on Motive‘s web site referred to as “puppycide” documenting instances of police wantonly capturing canines—capturing toy breeds together with a vicious Pomeranian, capturing canines at kids’s birthday events, dumping useless pets in ditches and trash cans, and extra.
The Prince George’s County Police Division didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.