Bad Pigs and Vicious Dogs

On October 9th 2020, SLCPD posted 19 bodycam recordings involving K9 incidents over the preceding two years to its YouTube channel. Eighteen of the nineteen incidents audited for the use of force were deemed to “need further review.” In statements made by Mayor Erin Mendenhall and SLCPD Chief Mike Brown, both claimed this release was done in the interest of “transparency.” This claim seems dubious if for no other reason than that each incident only provides a single body cam recording despite almost all of the incidents having multiple officers present. In many other cases SLCPD has posted multiple body cams to their YouTube, when they post any at all.

This footage is upsetting, but its release and the investigation of these cases by the District Attorney’s Office, the Civilian Review Board, and Internal Affairs is critical to our vision for a police department that is always transparent, accountable, and fair.– Erin Mendenhall Statement

As soon as SLCPD, in coordination with Mayor Mendenhall, released the videos, a flurry of local news coverage followed. The Salt Lake Tribune, Deseret News, KUTV, and more released pieces covering the videos. Unsurprisingly, almost all of these pieces are nearly identical in the information they contain. For each case, they provide a small description with little to no actual investigation into who was in the videos, or the connections between the incidents.

Our initial investigation of the videos uncovered some shocking revelations. We were able to identify the officer, or officers, primarily responsible for the attacks in 13 of the 19 cases.

The best way to understand the viciousness of the SLCPD K9 Unit is to sift through some of the incidents linked below. But even without doing that, the raw numbers tell a story of officers that are extremely eager to have their K9s attack people while they’re restrained, regardless of whether the individual is a “threat” or any other supposed “tactical” concerns.

Tyler Tomlinson exemplifies this sadism to an almost unbelievable degree, not only being involved in more attacks than any other officer, but having two attacks seemingly in the same shift! Cases 20-49094 & 20-49176 were about four hours apart. Not only does SLCPD see no issue with his behavior, it appears to want the rest of the department to learn from it. As of July 2023, Officer Tomlinson is a part of the SLCPD training unit (~37:48 here), where he can teach others his brutal tactics for attacking the people of Salt Lake City.

The use of “dual purpose” K9s, reportedly trained to detect substances and humans, was suspended within SLCPD in late 2020. Opportunely enough, there has been very little information released regarding the audit results, or the future of the K-9 program. What we do know is that many of the SLCPD officers involved in the attacks are still on the SLCPD payroll as of January 1st 2024. With many of the officers responsible for these brutal attacks still active in the city, much less held accountable for this violence, the future of SLCPD’s use of K9’s remains uncertain. Continuing to document these incidents will allow abolitionists in Salt Lake to not be blindsided if the SLCPD returns to these barbaric tactics, and one day, will allow us to actually hold the police accountable.

Some observations about each incident are included below. Click on the case number to open the full incident report, all of which contain observations and details not covered here.

Cases with no officers identified: 16-242388 12-26-2016, 18-193004 10-20-2018, 18-1015 01-02-2018, 20-16488 01-25-2020, 20-36249 2-25-2020, and 20-86367 5-17-2020.