‘Get him!’ Officer ordered K-9 to bite ‘defenseless’ man on his porch, Alabama suit says
An Alabama man has accused police of using excessive force and causing physical and emotional distress when a police K-9 attacked him on his own front porch, a lawsuit says.
On June 26, attorneys for 53-year-old disabled veteran Marvin Long filed a lawsuit with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama against the City of Sheffield, the County of Colbert and various members of law enforcement in connection with a 2021 incident.
The lawsuit alleges on July 17, 2021, Long noticed there was a large police presence outside his Sheffield home.
Long went outside and stood near police cars and officers as they executed a search warrant at a nearby home as part of a drug task force operation, the lawsuit said.
When Long was outside, officers in the area told him if he didn’t leave they would arrest him for “obstruction of governmental operations,” the lawsuit said.
According to the lawsuit, Long started walking back to his house, but as he did so he questioned why the police were there out loud, told them he had a right to be there and used some expletives.
Long then says that officers yelled back at him to “kick rocks” followed by an expletive, according to the lawsuit.
In body camera footage later released by the Sheffield Police Department, officers are seen walking up to Long’s home and asking if it was his property.
In the video, Long is standing on the porch and telling the officers to “Go, man,” pointing away from the house.
The officers then jump up onto the porch and grab Long as he tries to go into the house. They take Long to the ground, the video shows, and Long begins to yell for help.
Another officer approaches with a police dog and releases the dog, which begins to bite Long and yank at his clothes, the video shows.
The K-9 handler is heard in the video yelling, “Bite him! Bite him! Get him! Good!”
The body camera footage then shows Long telling officers he does live there and that he gives up. The officers tell him to lie on the ground before they handcuff him.
(Warning: The video below contains graphic content.)
“It’s sickening,” Harry Daniels, one of the civil rights attorneys representing Long said in a release that accompanied the lawsuit. “We expect to see this kind of brutality on old news reels or hear stories about it from our parents or grandparents. But here it is, in 2023. Apparently not much has changed in Alabama in 60 years.”
The lawsuit names the City of Sheffield and Colbert County, as well as three individual officers from the police department and seven deputies from the Colbert County Sheriff’s Office.
McClatchy News reached out to attorneys for the city and county and is waiting for a response.
According to the lawsuit, Long had to have surgery to place rods in his leg following the bites from the dog, but immediately after Long was attacked, he was taken to jail and not given proper medical attention.
“From what we could tell, the dog never broke the skin of the subject,” Mayor Steve Stanley told local outlets, according to the lawsuit. “The actions by our officers certainly got Mr. Long to stop and come into compliance with the arrest attempt.”
Long says in the lawsuit that he had the bite on his leg, along with a knot on his head and back pains following the arrest. He also said he experienced PTSD-like symptoms, including “sadness, anxiety, stress, anger, depression, frustration, sleeplessness, nightmares and flashbacks.”
Nick Risner, the officer who Long says was the handler of the K-9 while it attacked, was not included in the lawsuit, Al.com reported, because he was killed in the line of duty in October 2021.
Another officer named in the lawsuit, Max Dotson, was also shot in the shootout that killed Risner, AL.com reported.
Long was charged with obstruction and resisting arrest in the July 2021 incident, but the obstruction charge was later dropped, the Montgomery Advertiser reported. Long is still facing a misdemeanor resisting arrest charge.
“These officers weren’t satisfied with violating Mr. Long’s civil rights and siccing their police dog on him while he was unarmed, defenseless and crying for help,” Long’s attorney Roderick Van Daniel said in the release. “If we let criminal cops assault an innocent man and then charge him for the crime, none of us are safe.”
Sheffield is in the northwest corner of Alabama, about 115 miles northwest of Birmingham.
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