Complaint regarding police dog bite - Devon and Cornwall, September 2017

At 10.30pm on 14 September 2017, staff at a children's home reported to Devon and Cornwall Police that a thirteen year-old girl and a fifteen-year-old boy in their care had gone missing. Three officers, including a police dog handler, attended the area to search for them, but were initially unable to find them. The officers re-attended following a report that the young people had returned to the home and a further report that they had left again. The police dog managed to locate the missing young people, but the dog bit the boy just after finding him. He received minor puncture wounds to his forearms, to his left leg and to his right elbow and was taken to hospital, where he received antibiotics.

We investigated the boy’s complaint that a police dog had bitten him.

The police dog handler stated that a muzzle he had fitted to the dog prior to deployment had come unclipped shortly after he had re-buckled it while the dog was tracking the missing teenagers. In a statement completed one day after the incident and prior to the beginning of this investigation, the dog handler accepted that he should have checked that the muzzle remained fitted and that he had learned from the incident.

Our investigators reviewed the police incident logs, radio communications, documentation from the children's home, the written account of the police dog handler and relevant national police guidance. They also interviewed the boy who was bitten by the police dog and the girl with whom he went missing, who witnessed what happened.

The investigation concluded that the decision to deploy the police dog was appropriate. The investigation report noted that the dog handler had a clear opportunity to observe that the muzzle had come unclipped when lifting the dog over a barbed wire fence. The investigation concluded that the dog handler paid insufficient attention to whether the dog's muzzle had remained fitted after re-buckling it, but that the lack of a muzzle did not require the search to be abandoned as there is no procedural requirement for officers to use muzzles.

Based on the evidence available, we did not uphold the complaint.