Yellowknife RCMP say their new police dog has done no wrong, but won't release details of an alleged attack by the dog on a man who says he had already surrendered to police.
Lyle Omilgoituk required hospital treatment for bite wounds following his arrest on Dec. 9.
Omilgoituk admits fleeing police who had come to arrest him at his girlfriend's apartment, but says about a dozen police officers released the dog on him after he surrendered by lying prone on the ground.
Then he says the dog tossed him around by the pant leg, then bit his arm.
"They pulled the dog off, and I said, I was cool, I was cool. I looked up," recalls Omilgoituk. "They had the dog on the leash. Then one of the cops yelled out, saying I wasn't cool and he let the dog go again. The dog then came onto my left arm and tore my arm up."
Police won't talk about what exactly happened during the arrest, and refuse to release the report the dog handler wrote about what happened.
"I'm satisfied beyond 100 per cent that things were done properly and that we've met all the protocols and processes that we're required to meet," says Inspector Parker Kennedy.
Lasse, the Danish-trained police dog, arrived in Yellowknife in December.
At the time, Lasse's Yellowknife handler, Corporal Marks Hicks, told CBC European police dogs are generally all business, and less socialized toward people.
"Although we're policemen, we're still citizens of this country and we have a way that we do things," he says. "We're not quite as aggressive in our nature as some of the things that we do as compared to the European countries that work these dogs, the Czechoslovakians, the Germans."
Like all police dogs used in Canada, the 43-kilogram German shepherd received training at the Police Dog Service Training Centre in Innisfail, Alberta.
Staff Sergeant Warren Ganes, the senior trainer at the centre, says police dogs are taught to clamp on to the limbs of fleeing suspects.
He says there are only a few situations in which a dog would bite someone repeatedly.
"The dog certainly would defend itself. The dogs will only bite when they're told to or when their masters are threatened or they're threatened," he says.
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