Woman mauled by 'find and bite' police dog sues L.A. County Sheriff's Department

A woman who was mauled by a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department dog is suing the county and asking the department to end its “find and bite” canine program.

In a lawsuit filed this week in Los Angeles County Superior Court, attorneys for Rosa Ramirez say the 44-year-old was standing just outside her front door talking to a deputy last year when an off-leash patrol dog swooped in and clamped down on her hand, permanently injuring her.

“There needs to be no more victims like Rosa Ramirez,” attorney Colleen Flynn told The Times on Friday. “The only direction to take this dog attack program is to end it immediately — these are ‘find and bite’ dogs so they don’t just find people, they bite them.”

The Sheriff's Department said in a statement that it had not officially received the lawsuit, but acknowledged the incident occurred and said it only uses canines under "strict guidelines" in high-risk scenarios.

"The department is dedicated to ensuring that handler control canines are used in adherence to our policy and rigorous training standards," the statement said.

In recent years, police dog programs have come under increasing scrutiny. According to an investigation by the Marshall Project, a nonprofit news site, there is little oversight of how the animals are used, though data show dog bites send more people to the hospital than any other type of force used by police.

Last year, the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California released a report calling for legislation to limit the use of police dogs, noting that they are often used on people experiencing behavioral health crises and sometimes maul bystanders.

Just after 9 p.m. on Feb. 22, 2023, sheriff’s deputies searching for a fleeing suspect in South Los Angeles came to Ramirez’s door, the lawsuit says. She opened up and took a step outside, when a 55- to 65-pound patrol dog charged her from the left. The dog bit Ramirez, gouging out a large chunk of flesh from her left hand, according to the lawsuit.

She was rushed to the hospital, and ultimately her injuries required multiple surgeries and a skin graft. More than a year later, her lawyers say, Ramirez still can’t grip or write with her left hand and struggles with numbness and limited movement.

“Her hand is now permanently disfigured and functionally disabled,” Flynn said at a Friday news conference outside the downtown Hall of Justice, where she was flanked by large posters showing graphic images of Ramirez’s injuries.

In 1980, according to the lawsuit, the Sheriff’s Department launched a program relying on dogs to find criminal suspects. At the time, the suit alleges, department leaders knew the dogs would bite the suspects they located. But the suit says that “impermissibly and unreasonably delegated to the dogs the discretion whether to bite suspects,” effectively shifting decisions about how much force to use from humans to animals.

When deputies use other weapons — such as a baton, pepper spray or a gun — they can be held accountable for the outcome .

"They evade accountability by blaming the dog, and since the dog doesn’t have human judgment they just treat it as an accident,” Flynn told The Times. “But these attacks are foreseeable. It’s not an accident if you’ve been doing it for close to 50 years.”

At one point, the suit points to a 1992 report that warned leaders of “serious problems” in the dog program and showed several instances in which dogs were allowed to keep biting people far longer than appeared necessary.

“In all this time they’ve never learned to control these dogs because they can’t,” Flynn said. “They can’t control where a dog bites someone, how hard a dog bites someone or how much flesh is torn away and they can’t even control who’s bitten."

According to her lawyers, the attack on Ramirez derailed the deputies from the fleeing suspect, who was not found.

The lawsuit does not list a dollar amount Ramirez is seeking in damages.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times .