California Woman Who Was ‘Mauled Off’ By a Police Dog While Officers Watched Files a Lawsuit
Brentwood Police Department officer identified Benton’s car at a intersection after it sped through a red light.
He tried to block the car with his vehicle, however, instead of stopping, Benton rammed the car into the front end of the patrol car. The car tried to drive away, however, while leaving the scene collided into a street curb. After the crash, all four of them ran.
However, before Bates was detained by the arresting officers, according to a federal lawsuit filed in Northern California, she was found hiding in some bushes. One Officer Ryan Rezentes, allowed his police dog, Marco ze Zeliner Uzlabint (nicknamed “Marco”), to attack her without warning.
Marco has been under the command of Rezentes since 2015.
During the encounter, the dog mauled the woman’s head so savagely that her scalp had to be reattached to her head, the lawsuit reveals.
Bates alleges in the lawsuit that Rezentes’ German Shepherd “sunk its teeth into the unarmed woman’s head.”
The lawsuit alleges that Rezentes “ignored Ms. Bates’ chilling screams” and “stood by and watched his canine viciously maul the young victim,” in an altercation that led to her scalp being torn off her head and “exposing bone and tissue.”
Bates was on the phone with her mother during the encounter and could be heard on the officer’s bodycam crying to her, “The dog’s biting me” and then later saying, “My whole brain is bleeding.”
During the incident Rezentes yelled the command to “heel” in German, but the dog ignored him twice.
Eventually, Rezentes goes into the bushes and he physically stops the dog attack on Bates.
According to the bodycam footage, she told the officer that she didn’t expect the dog to bite her and he responded, “Well, you shouldn’t run from the police.”
The lawsuit says that Bates should have been warned and that Rezentes was in violation of his training and the law when he put Marco on the woman without any warning or a reasonable opportunity to surrender. Bates was taken to the John Muir Medical Center Walnut Creek to be treated for her injuries. The police report, prepared by the officer, says that he didn’t have a cover officer with him to physically remove the dog from Bates. However, Rezentes’ partner was next to him. The partner’s body camera captures a conversation between the two stand next to each other. They had a conversation about whether he would shoot the dog. The partner assures him he would not.
In January 2021, Bates pleaded no contest to two misdemeanor charges of grand theft (from shoplifting) and resisting a police officer. She spent 120 days incarcerated and is currently on probation for a year. The Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office states, according to records.
Bates is seeking monetary damages from the City of Brentwood in her lawsuit. She claims that Rezentes used excessive force and violated her constitutional rights when he sicced Marco on her.
One of her lawyers, Adante Pointer, told The Washington Post, “This is an example of the way in which police do not look at Black and Brown people, or criminal suspects, as humans. Instead, they are numb to … the pain their use of excessive force causes.”
For the 50 million kids who attend public schools in the US, the 2020 election is personal. Watch more 2020 Read more
A Maryland resident is breaking barriers as an entrepreneur, becoming the first Black woman to solely own a tequila brand. Tiffany Hainesworth Read more
A police union in Philadelphia has demanded its members be paid to wear body cameras. The Fraternal Order of Police Read more
A driver has come forward, turning himself in on Wednesday for the hit-and-run accident that resulted in the death of Read more
Miami police are investigating the “vicious” homicide of a 45-year-old, Black transgender woman who was killed in her apartment earlier Read more
In 1964, the rift between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammed, founder of the Nation of Islam, would reach a tense Read more
Police in Southern California released video of the fatal incident involving Kurt Andras Reinhold, a 42-year-old homeless Black man who was Read more
A woman who oversaw a murderous religious cult in Florida in the 1980s was sentenced to 30 years in prison on Read more
A former NYPD police officer had a dying wish to have his letter, in which he admits he'd been a Read more
The mother of 11-year-old Cristian Pineda, a boy who died in his family's mobile home during the historic cold weather Read more
The Chicago Police Department are at the center of a lawsuit around footage of an arrest. Leroy Kennedy IV was Read more
A Black Michigan woman is speaking out after a Grosse Point man hung a KKK flag in a window that Read more