Officer Michael Brown and his police dog Odin burst into the bedroom with a pack of officers from Richmond’s gang unit, and there he was: the intruder hiding under the bed.
It was around midnight as the swarm of police, guns drawn, crowded into the dark, cramped room to capture the 21-year-old man who had barged into a neighbor’s apartment after police showed up at his home to search for an illegal weapon.
But in the shaky glow of their flashlights, they quickly discovered the suspect wasn’t the only one concealed under the bed.
“Hey, there’s a kid under here!” an officer called out with alarm.
The revelation came moments too late. In the chaos, Odin had lunged for the intruder, and then refocused his attack, tearing into the scalp of an 8-year-old boy who police thought was safe in another room.
And that wasn’t the only shocking mixup when police and the Belgian Malinois police dog showed up at a Richmond apartment complex on the night of April 9, 2019.
Before attacking the boy, Odin sank his teeth into one of the police officers, too.
The case stands out in a Bay Area News Group analysis of more than 70 dog-bite arrests by Richmond police as a glaring example of just how quickly — and terribly — things can go wrong when police unleash dogs that are bred, trained and deployed to attack.
“You’re creating anxiety, chaos — and why did this all come about? Because you have a darn dog,” said Don Cook, a Los Angeles lawyer who represents canine bite victims and reviewed police body camera video of the arrest at the request of this news organization.
The use of a dog in this case was “outrageous,” Cook said. “What the hell’s the dog doing for you? You know where the guy is. You’ve got your guns drawn. You have the dog attack and bite, and you think that’s gonna make it less likely the guy is going to go for a gun?”
VIDEO: “There’s a kid under here!”
SETTING THE SCENE: Richmond Police search for a suspected gang member who has fled from officers and barged into a neighbors’ apartment. The neighbors’ two young sons are asleep somewhere inside.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR: When the suspect is discovered hiding under a bed, police dog Odin mistakenly attacks an officer, then the suspect and then an 8-year-old boy.
THE OUTCOME: The boy is treated for puncture wounds to his head; the officer for wounds to his arm. The suspect has a chest injury. Police accuse the suspect of using the boy as a human shield. An internal review supports the use of force but recommends more joint training between gang and canine units.
(Note: To turn on closed captioning, click the “CC” button on the bottom right of the video and choose “English CC.” The video contains scenes that some viewers may find disturbing. Some faces in the video were obscured by the city of Richmond before release.)
Police discovered the man they were after, Marjani Martin, did not have a weapon when they pulled him from his hiding place under the neighbor boy’s bed.
The boy and his 6-year-old brother had been asleep in separate bedrooms when Martin took refuge in the family’s apartment. Body camera videos show what happened next.
When the officers entered the 8-year-old’s bedroom, they found the bed empty but for rumpled blankets. That’s when confusion and havoc began as police spotted the suspect under the bed.
“Let me see your hands!” an officer yells.
“Hands! Hands!” Martin yells back — a video shows him extending his arms out from under the bed.
Just then, Odin springs forward, lunging at an officer and clamping down on his arm. Brown yanks the dog back.
In a flash, Brown lets Odin loose again on Martin, who screams in terror and rolls from under the bed as police grab him. But the dog isn’t done.
“Where’s the dog?” an officer yells as Odin dives under the bed again.
That’s when you hear the boy’s frightened whimper.
His legs dangle in the air as an officer carries him from the room.
Nearly two years later, the boy’s mother stood in the same doorway and briefly recounted what happened that night. Her son is 10 now, and all he remembers is his father carrying him and his head hurting.
But she remembers all too clearly — and the body camera videos show — her terrifying screams as her wounded son, blood streaking down his neck, was carried by a police officer, past the picture of the Madonna and child hanging on the wall. She collapsed on the floor, the video shows, then crawled down the hallway on her hands and knees to reach her other son, wailing all the way.
“It was bad,” the mother says. “Very bad.”
The city paid the boy’s medical bills, she said, and the family made no formal complaints.
Richmond Police reviewed what happened, as it does with all use-of-force cases, and recommended joint training between the canine squad and special investigations detectives who participated in the raid.
Despite the potential for tragic results, Mayor Tom Butt said he’s still “all for dogs.”
“Given the choice, I would rather have our officers using police dogs with the chance that one or two incidents like this might happen once every couple of years than not using police dogs and having to revert to even more deadly force,” he said.
Officer Brown explained in his police report that he thought he heard a colleague say they had both kids safe in another room. He also said he released Odin when he saw Martin’s arms “quickly tuck under his body” and feared he was reaching for a gun.
Police accused Martin of using the boy as a “human shield,” and he later pleaded no contest to charges of false imprisonment and resisting arrest and spent 270 days in jail.
Last month, in an interview during canine training, Brown said he couldn’t discuss the case.
“We all have kids,” Officer Brown said with Odin obedient at his side. “So no one wants anything bad to happen.”
Staff writers Nate Gartrell and Harriet Blair Rowan contributed to this story.
