A 33-year-old Vancouver man is suing the city and two constables after a police dog allegedly bit him during an arrest and left him with a gruesome leg wound.
Christopher Evans, 33, was arrested June 12 after he smashed a city bus window with his skateboard. During the arrest, a police dog allegedly attacked his right leg, ripping the skin and causing a nasty gash on his thigh.
Vancouver police declined to comment Thursday as the civil suit is before the court.
Evans was transported to Vancouver General Hospital where almost 100 staples were needed to close the wound.
“The nurse at the hospital told me it was amazing the dog didn’t rupture my artery and kill me,” Evans said in a written statement Thursday.
He was initially charged with mischief, but the charge was later dropped.
“I shouldn’t have hit the bus, but the repercussions were way overboard. They shouldn’t have responded like that.”
According to Evans’ claim, the construction worker was returning from his sister’s place and, frustrated by being unable to board a bus, smashed his skateboard against a bus door, shattering a window.
The claim says Evans was skateboarding through an alley, with headphones on, when a police dog attacked him, biting him first on his lower leg and then seizing his right thigh. He estimates he was bitten five times; the longest was for more than a minute. He was bleeding heavily when an ambulance arrived about five minutes later.
Douglas King, a lawyer with the Pivot Legal Society, wants the VPD to examine its policies and see if there are ways to reduce dog-bite injuries.
“It’s easy to say, ‘He committed a crime, he deserved it.’ But the reality is, we can’t send everyone who commits a small crime to the hospital.”
Statistics from the Office of the Police Complaints Commissioner, released Thursday by Pivot, show that dog bites account for almost 50 per cent of serious injuries by municipal police departments.
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