The Bay Area News Group dug into hundreds of internal documents and other materials, including police reports, use of force reviews and officer-worn body camera videos, to examine the Richmond Police department’s canine unit.
Click here to read the story “One Bay Area city, 73 police dog bites, and the law that made them public.”
The once-secret police files came to light through the efforts of the California Reporting Project, a media coalition that has sought information on police shootings and other uses of force under SB 1421, a landmark 2018 transparency law. The project is now working with Stanford University and UC Berkeley on a multi-year effort to make records from departments around the state available to journalists, researchers and the general public.
Here are links to some of the records featured in this article:
- December 28, 2019 – “I attempted to call K-9 Gunnar to my side several times”
- April 9, 2019 – “There’s a kid under here!”
- February 12, 2018 – His “lip was torn off and missing”
- March 9, 2019 – “It was horrible, horrible, to see my son get eaten up!”
- April 30, 2019 – “Please investigate what happened”
- January 13, 2015 – “Attempted to make contact with a suspicious BMA”
These documents include redactions by the Richmond Police Department. The Bay Area News Group made minor additional redactions of personal information about witnesses and victims.
