The city is comparing Grand Rapids Police Department K-9 policies to those of other police departments. It expects to publish its report in June.
City Manager Mark Washington told members of the Public Safety Commission on Tuesday that he tasked the Office of Oversight and Public Accountability (OPA) with collecting information on other police departments’ K-9 policies.
GRPD will provide data on its own policies as part of the process, and OPA will review what national professional police organizations recommend as best practice.
Washington said that he and Brandon Davis, the managing director of OPA, were still in the fact-gathering phase. The report will not focus on any specific instance of K-9 deployment but on general policies. Davis said this report focused on K-9 policies and K-9 pursuit policies, not foot pursuit policies more generally.
This policy review follows the fatal shooting of Da’Quain Johnson, 32, by a Grand Rapids police officer. The City Commission also asked Washington to review the 12 officer-involved shootings in the last five years.
Video from a police dashcam shows officers following Johnson on his bike, after receiving calls about a person biking with a gun.
The chase ended in the parking lot of the Eastern Lofts Apartment Complex. GRPD dashcam and body camera footage show Johnson stumbling off his bike. The videos then show a K-9 apprehending and biting Johnson. Officers can be heard yelling that Johnson was reaching for his gun and ordering him to stop. Johnson was facedown in the parking lot, when GRPD Officer Christopher Carlson shot Johnson three times in the back. WZZM 13 ON YOUR SIDE reported that a tan two-tone Taurus 9mm handgun with eight rounds in the magazine and one round in the chamber was recovered from the scene.
Following the shooting, Grand Rapids Mayor David LaGrand said that if the K-9 had been his pet dog, he would have put the dog down. LaGrand walked that comment back in a Facebook post, stating it was made in the heat of the moment from the “lens of a pet owner.”
“I recognize that there is a profound difference between a household pet and a highly-trained police K-9,” he wrote in the post.
“While no tool is perfect, K-9s often provide our officers with a less lethal option that is designed to protect both the safety of the suspect and the safety of the responding officers in highly volatile situations,” LaGrand continued.
Kent County Prosecutor Chris Becker declined to press charges against the officer in early April.
“I have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they did not act in self-defense,” Becker said at an April press conference, “and based on the facts and circumstances as I see them, I just cannot simply do that.”
Write to juliana@grherald.com.