Toledo police said an internal investigation is underway after a traffic stop this month in which a police dog injured a Black man pulled over on suspicion of driving a vehicle with a stolen license plate.
On April 11, Toledo police officers pulled over 38-year-old Brandon Upchurch on suspicion of displaying a stolen license plate on his pickup truck.
Upchurch told ABC News police stopped him in the northwestern Ohio city as he was driving his cousin home from work in his pickup truck.
“They instantly came out with the guns drawn,” Upchurch said. “They did not come to my car and ask me for license, insurance, etc., anything.”
Upchurch captured the harrowing incident on his cellphone along with bodycam footage from the officers.
“Man, I’m not even doing nothing,” Upchurch can be heard saying. Followed by repeatedly asking officers, “What did I do?”
The officers only gave him orders to face away from them and lie down in some wet grass on the side of the street.
Bodycam footage showed Upchurch stepping away from the curb and beginning to kneel as a cop released a K-9 on him. He said he was bitten seven times on his right forearm and elbow.
“My elbow was already messed up,” he told ABC News, explaining that the injury has left him unable to work for the time being. Upchurch’s plea for medical aid was not well received by the officer who assured him that it’s “coming,” but muttered to a colleague that Upchurch was a “petulant child.”
It wasn’t until after the K-9 bit him and officers cuffed him that Upchurch was told his truck had a stolen license plate, which Upchurch denied.
Moments after the arrest, the officers realized the license plate reader “misread” Upchurch’s license plate and delivered incorrect information. The plate on Upchurch’s truck was “misshapen and angled down,” according to police, and did not match the the alleged stolen plate that officers were investigating.
Regardless, Upchurch was arrested and charged with resisting arrest and obstructing official business. A police report claimed he ignored “multiple commands” from police and “refused to comply throughout the entirety of the event.”
That same report said an officer released the K-9 because he believed Upchurch posed a risk to officer safety due to the “unknown involvement of weapons.” He also claimed he believed Upchurch would try to flee the scene on foot.
“This is uncalled for over a stolen tag. All they had to do was run the plates again and found out it wasn’t stolen,” Upchurch said. “I have license, insurance, everything is clean with me. He even said it on his bodycam that he messed up.”
Upchurch was taken to a hospital to be treated for the injuries he sustained from the K-9, then taken to jail.
The Toledo chapter of the NAACP called for an investigation into the traffic stop, calling the encounter “unwarranted” and “inhumane.”
“Our police are here to serve, not to occupy our neighborhoods even when they believe a violation of the law has been committed,” the Rev. Willie Perryman III, president of the Toledo NAACP branch, told the Toledo Blade.
Toledo police confirmed with the Toledo Blade that an internal affairs investigation is underway, but have not released any more details.
“It scared me. I’m traumatized for real,” Upchurch said. “Somebody’s got to be held accountable.”
