An Army veteran with a medical condition was left to urinate on himself after two off-duty Dallas officers denied him access to a pizza restaurant’s facilities and then laughed about the fact that he soiled himself with two other police officers.
Those officers are now under investigation after Dynell Lane went before the Community Police Oversight Board in Dallas, Texas to report what happened to him.
It was sometime in June when Lane was out in the Deep Ellum part of town and found he needed to use the bathroom. He approached two off-duty security officers at Serious Pizza at 2 a.m. to ask if he could use the restaurant’s bathroom. He told them about his disability, but they still denied him access.
He was left to soil himself but called police for help. Two on-duty officers arrived at the restaurant just before 3 a.m. when the restaurant was beginning to close. Their body camera footage captured the exchange they had with the officers working security about the vet, which was shown to the Community Police Oversight Board.
The footage shows one officer telling the two off-duty officers, “Somebody called saying they just pissed themselves because of you two guys.”
Another female officer chimed in to say, “You just made a guy pee himself?”
One of the off-duty officers then said, “He called on us?” and began laughing.
The female officer continued, “He said you wouldn’t let him use the restroom, and then he called and said it’s okay, he doesn’t need to use the restroom anymore because he soiled himself.”
In his testimony to the board, Lane explained to board members that he was formerly an Army sergeant who had served in Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Iraq before he suffered a life-threatening injury to his lower extremities.
Subsequent surgeries left him with a disability that requires potential emergency use of a restroom.
“The Dallas Police Department failed me. They declined to assist me by not giving me the courtesy of checking my ID or medical documents,” Lane said. “I had to endure urine and bowel leakage while inside the restaurant. As a retired sergeant, I had higher expectations for the city. Please hear me when I ask for change so no one with a disability has to endure what I endured.”
A Dallas Police Department spokesperson said, “The department is looking into the complaint, and the Internal Affairs Division will conduct an administrative investigation.”
Serious Pizza released a statement to local news outlet WFAA about the incident. They told the station that employees are conditioned to close their bathrooms to the public as they begin closing up shop for the night. However, they also said that “none of the employees were presented any documentation indictating that Mr. Lane was disabled” and are “disheartened” to not have the opportunity to resolve the situation as it was happening.
“We are disappointed by the conduct of the officers involved in this incident, the extent to which we were not aware of until the bodycam footage was released yesterday [Wednesday, Aug. 16]. We have requested that the contracted off-duty officers who were on duty that night not be assigned to our restaurant moving forward, as their actions were not representative of how we treat our guests and the general public.”
