The city of Brentwood, California, has paid nearly $1 million to settle a lawsuit by a Black woman who was mauled by a police dog during an arrest four years ago, ripping off part of her scalp and causing lasting brain damage.
The settlement resolves the civil claim of excessive force against Brentwood police filed by Talmika Bates, who was 24 years old in February of 2020 when Officer Ryan Rezentes sicced his 85-pound German Shepherd named “Marco” on her during a police pursuit and arrest.
Bates and two other women had stolen more than $10,000 worth of perfume and cosmetics from an Ulta Beauty store and led police on a car chase through the streets of Brentwood, at one point ramming a patrol car before abandoning their vehicle and running through a field into a wooded area.
As Bates, who was unarmed, hid in thick shrubbery, Rezentes, a trained canine handler, commanded his dog to search the area. Marco soon found Bates, who was “crouched down and on the phone with her mom … biting her on the head from behind, pulling and dragging her backwards onto the ground,” according to court documents.
Police bodycam video shows that Bates shouted, “I’m right here,” as Rezentes approached and demanded that she crawl out of the brush and commanded his dog to release her.
The dog did not let go of her head.
Bates then shouted, “He’s biting me!” and “Oh my god … I’m coming out, please get your dog!”
Thirty seconds later, Bates repeatedly called out for her mother, shouting, “Mama, the dog,” “My whole brain, Mama,” and “My whole brain is bleeding,” then cried, “Can you get the dog?”
Rezentes did not respond to her question but commanded her to “get off the phone” and “Sit up right now,” and again commanded his dog to release her, but the dog refused.
More than a full minute into the attack, Rezentes waded into the thicket and manually removed his dog from her head. He and another officer helped Bates out of the bush, with large open wounds exposing bone visible at the top of her skull on the video.
Bates was initially handcuffed, then rushed by ambulance to the hospital, where she underwent surgery to repair deep lacerations that tore parts of her scalp off of her skull. She needed more than 200 stitches to repair the damage to her scalp, according to her attorneys.
Since then, she has been diagnosed with a “mild diffuse traumatic brain injury, mild post-traumatic brain syndrome, and post-traumatic stress disorder,” according to medical records submitted in the case.
She has experienced intense and frequent headaches, dizziness, vertigo, issues with short-term memory and concentration, depression, and her sleep is interrupted by nightmares.
“I really thought I was going to die,” Bates said at the time, reported Fox KTVU. “I really didn’t think I was going to be able to tell this story and really explain to nobody. It’s just traumatizing. It’s just sad.”
Her lawsuit charged Rezentes and the City of Brentwood with excessive use of force in violation of her Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. It contends that he never gave her a verbal warning before setting the canine on her and then took too long to remove the dog once it was biting her, despite the fact that she posed no threat to him or another officer, who had his firearm trained on her during the encounter.
Rezentes and the city argued that the prolonged bite time was warranted and reasonable use of force due to “officer safety purposes” because Bates had not been searched for weapons, and he did not have a clear view of Bates, who was “resisting.”
The officer further asserted that he was immune from liability per California law.
In response to the defendants’ motion to dismiss the case, in April, U.S. District Court Judge Rita Lin ruled that the initial deployment of the dog was justified but that “a reasonable jury could conclude that Rezentes violated the Fourth Amendment by allowing his dog to hold its bite on Bates’s head for forty seconds after she indicated her surrender.”
Bates, who was likely “physically incapable of following Rezentes’s commands while the dog was actively biting her head,” posed no immediate threat to the officers or anyone else, the judge wrote, observing that Bates, who was “crying and screaming — for her mama, for help, for her brain — was unarmed.” She further noted that “another officer provided Rezentes with lethal cover throughout the entire interaction,” and that Bates made no attempt to attack or flee after the dog bit her.
Bates, who was released from the hospital and transported to jail on the same day of her arrest, later pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges of grand theft and resisting arrest. She spent 120 days in jail and a year on probation.
The district court’s ruling denying the officer’s qualified immunity claim likely led to the city’s decision to settle the case.
Brentwood police Chief Timothy Herbert said in a statement the city agreed to settle the lawsuit “to avoid further litigation and appeal costs,” reported ContraCosta News. 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. He also noted that the city “does not currently have any working canines.”
“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,” Adanté Pointer, a civil rights attorney representing Bates, 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.”
Pointer said he received the $967,000 settlement check this week and soon plans to distribute it to his client, reported KTVU.
