BRENTWOOD — A woman who was mauled by a police dog while being arrested more than four years ago in Brentwood will receive a nearly $1 million settlement from the city, according to her attorneys.
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The agreement resolves an excessive force lawsuit filed in connection with the gruesome episode.
At the time, Talmika Bates was wanted in connection with a shoplifting incident at a cosmetics store. Her attorneys said she was surrendering when then-Brentwood police Officer Ryan Rezentes allowed his German shepherd to bite and pull off her scalp.
Police body camera footage of the incident captures Bates screaming that she will surrender, but Rezentes does not release the dog and instead tells her to first come out of the bushes she is hiding in, according to her attorneys.
“By the time Rezentes pulls the dog off, Bates’ scalp is torn from her skull, big pieces of flesh are missing and she is bleeding profusely from the gaping wound,” the attorneys said.
Bates needed more than 200 stitches to repair the damage to her scalp, according to her attorneys. In addition, she has been diagnosed with “mild diffuse traumatic brain injury, mild post-traumatic brain syndrome and post-traumatic stress disorder.”
“We need to recognize that K-9s are dangerous, sometimes lethal, weapons that can cause life-altering damage or kill someone even when an officer is trying to get them to release and relent,” the woman’s attorney, Adanté Pointer, said in a statement.
“Here we saw a trained K-9 handler stand by while his dog mauled an unarmed young lady who was surrendering,” he said. “Using a dog to exact street justice doesn’t make the abuse of someone’s civil rights any better — and we want our police to do better.”
In a statement, Brentwood police Chief Timothy Herbert said the city agreed to settle the lawsuit to avoid further litigation and appeal costs. The settlement, he added, was “obtained while the matter was on appeal in the Ninth Circuit on the issue of qualified immunity for the involved officer,” who is now retired from the force.
Herbert said Bates was one of several suspects who committed felony retail theft at Ulta Beauty on Feb. 10, 2020, and then fled in a vehicle. After crashing into a police car, the suspects abandoned their vehicle in a field, according to the police chief.
Rezentes’ police dog found Bates hiding in dense shrubbery in a nearby wooded area.
“She did not obey officers’ instructions to come out, and the officers had no way of knowing whether she was armed,” Herbert said in the statement. “The canine made contact with Ms. Bates, who could not be seen through the thick bushes, and eventually the canine was removed and Ms. Bates was placed in handcuffs and arrested.”
Herbert said Bates was treated at an area hospital for scalp injuries, released the same day and taken to jail. Bates, who was on probation at the time, was eventually convicted of misdemeanor theft and resisting arrest, according to the chief.
The court ruled that Rezentes lawfully deployed his dog and that he had a lawful right to use his dog to apprehend Bates under the Fourth Amendment, Herbert said. But the court also stated that there were triable issues of fact with regard to the duration of the bite.
“Officer Rezentes appealed the denial of qualified immunity as to the duration and the case settled while that appeal was pending before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals,” Herbert said.
Currently, the city does not have any working police dogs, according to the police chief.