Thursday, July 6 was a regular night for Linus Kaysaywaysemat. He was sitting outside his home with his partner having a smoke. He heard what sounded like keys behind him, looked back, and saw a dog coming from between his home and his neighbour’s house.
The next thing he knew a German Shepherd was biting his arm.
“It chewed on me a few times, as you can see there’s a few holes underneath my arm, and I got bit maybe three times,” Kaysaywaysemat explained.
This wasn’t just any dog. It was a member of the Regina Police Service (RPS) K-9 unit. They were in the area looking for a teenage suspect in an attempted murder investigation in the area of 3rd Avenue and Rae Street.
“To have my children witness it, and I just did the best that I could to try to stay calm. I didn’t want to run because if I ran then I’d look like a bad guy,” Kaysaywaysemat said.
“So either way I sat there and I took it.”
This was the second time in a week that a Regina police dog bit someone who wasn’t a suspect. Two days earlier, a 56-year-old man was bitten by a police dog and dragged off his front step on the 1700-block of Arthur Street during a training exercise.
READ MORE: Regina Police reviewing dog bite incident
RPS Superintendent Darcy Koch said both of these incidents are under investigation by the use of force review committee.
“Anytime that happens of course it’s a concern for us. We’re definitely going to review what happened there, and get all the information around what happened, and make sure our standard operating procedures were in place, and that we followed those procedures. ” Koch said.
Koch believes that both dogs were on-leash at the time of the bites. Both dogs remain in active service.
“Both those dogs were fully trained up to the provincial standard for police service dogs, and their training is ongoing all the time,” Koch said.
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“If it was highly trained, why was I attacked while I was sitting down smoking? Is that highly trained?” Kaysaywaysemat said.
When a dog is involved in an incident like this, it is tracked. The RPS have seen four accidental K-9 bites since 2004, including these two incidents.
Koch said the RPS have been in contact with the victim of the training exercise incident. He said the service had been unable to contact Kaysaywaysemat.
“It was accidental we believe because he wasn’t a suspect. He was in the area, and unfortunately that happened. We work in a public environment,” Koch said.
Kaysaywaysemat was at RPS headquarters while Koch was speaking with local media. During the police press conference, Koch said no one from the RPS had been able to contact Kaysaywaysemat since the incident.
The two met privately Tuesday afternoon. This was the first time Kaysaywaysemat has spoken with police since the bite. He said RPS members collected his contact information.
Kaysaywaysemat said he is currently reviewing his options going forward, which could include legal action. His primary concern is that this doesn’t happen to anyone else again.
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