Bryce Bates was riding his bike to get the mail, just as his mother had asked, when he saw a police car coming toward him.  It must have been scary to see the speeding car, and in an exercise of a child’s sound judgment, the 10 year old 5th grader jumped off his bicycle and ran back toward his home.  That’s when the officer released the dog on him.  From the Gainesville Sun :

The 10-year-old, who is 5 feet tall and weighs 85 pounds, said he became scared, jumped off his bike and began running for home.

“I saw the police car, and he was speeding real fast. I thought he was going to hit me, so I jumped off my bike and ran,” Bryce said. “I heard the dog barking and looked behind and saw it running after me.”

The dog caught Bryce just as he reached his front door, biting the back of his left thigh. Bryce had one puncture wound that tore the flesh and several smaller bite wounds and scratches.

The officer was responding to a call about a burglary in progress.

Cpl. Tim Durst, with his dog Grady, responded and saw a youth on a bicycle in the area.

Police say Durst yelled for the boy to stop. The officer then released Grady, which bit the boy on the leg and caused minor injuries, Book said.

When an officer yells halt from a distance, is he talking to you?  Is he commanding a 10 year old boy to stop?   Since Bryce knew that he had done nothing more than follow his mother’s instructions to get the mail, and certainly that wasn’t a reason for the police to care much about him, the officer’s command couldn’t possibly be intended for him.  He was just a kid.  He was just going to get the mail,  He was getting out of the middle of something that had nothing to do with him.  Clearly, the officer must have been yelling stop at someone else, for it surely couldn’t have been Bryce.

As it turns out, the woman who called in the burglary in progress has “a mental health condition that causes her to see things or imagine things,” though that merely reduces what transpired to a deeper depth of futility.  It does not, however, alter the question of whether Durst had any reason to believe that 10 year old Bryce was a burglar.  Did he match the appearance of the alleged perpetrator?  Was he carrying a color TV under his 10 year old arm?  Apparently not, as there is no suggestion to the contrary.

Or could this have been a 10 year old boy, a child, who found himself in a scary situation having nothing to do with him, who ran to the comfort of his mother and his home?

It’s inadequate to chalk this up to an instance of bad judgment, or lack of the dreaded “common sense.”  Releasing the dog to hunt down a human being, about whom the officer knows absolutely nothing to suggest that he’s engaged in any criminal conduct, no less conduct that sufficiently threatens harm to another to mandate that he be mauled, viciously bitten by a dog trained to take down a human being with his teeth.

Bear in mind, when a police officer releases his dog, the intended outcome is not that the dog approach its target and bark commands to halt.  The dog is trained to attack, bite and subdue the person through violent means.  The dog cannot distinguish between a child and an adult, a criminal and an innocent.  He’s just a dog.  He will attack as commanded.

That Bryce Bates is a 10 year old boy only makes this attack more grievous, but this wouldn’t have been inconsequential had he been a 24 year old.  No one, child or adult, should be subject to an attack by a dog, bitten and subdued, in the absence of awfully good cause. 

The only arguable cause here is failure to heed a command, for there was nothing to suggest that Bryce was the putative burglar (albeit the non-existent burglary). or that Bryce had any idea that the command was meant for him.  

“It attacked him right in the doorway. I saw the dog just bear down on him and moving and tugging and constantly biting and biting,” [Bryce’s mother] Hampton-Bates said. “(Bryce) didn’t know the officer was telling him to stop. He was screaming my name the whole way here.”

An officer will describe Bryce’s running toward his mother as “flight”.  But an innocent person has the right to run to his mother’s arms, to take such action as a reasonable person would under the circumstances to protect himself from a threatening situation about which he knows nothing. 

Had this been an adult, flight alone would not have provided probable cause to believe that he was engaged in criminal conduct.  Human beings have a protective impulse, called fight or flight, that has served us well throughout our history.  It’s allowed our species to survive.  It’s in our nature.  It is not an excuse for the cops to release their attack dog.

That Bryce Bates was only 10 years old, however, is what changes this from just another case of police excess, of incredibly bad judgment, to one that makes a point about police perspective,  Cpl. Durst was too ready to capture his perp, too ready to have a person attacked by a dog, despite the absence of any reason to believe that the target of his dog was a criminal.  He was just too ready to do harm in the name of order.

Bryce Bates was ten years old and a 5th grader.  He was also black.  And he did nothing wrong.

H/T Turley