Excessive-Force Case Filed Over Lab Mix Who Dared to Sniff Police Dog's Butt

By Nina Shapiro
Seattle Weekly
Jan. 19, 2011

Police departments are perennially accused of excessive force--the poignant SPD shooting of Native American carver John Williams being just the latest example. Usually, however, the victims are human beings. Not so in an excessive-force case recently filed in federal court, which details the fatal shooting of a Labrador retriever mixed-breed dog named Slyder, allegedly for doing little more than sniffing the butt of a police dog.

That is the picture painted by attorney Adam Karp in his lawsuit filed last week on behalf of a Grant County man named Nicholas Criscuolo. Karp (pictured at left) is the Bellingham attorney whose relentless quest for four-legged justice we wrote about in September.

According to the complaint (see pdf) , Criscuolo was letting his two dogs, including Slyder (pictured above), have a little off-leash fun in a Moses Lake park last January when Grant County Sheriff's deputies proceeded to make a drug bust nearby. One of the deputies was Beau Lamens, who brought his police dog, Maddox, to search a car that contained some suspected meth.

Slyder took off after Maddox, giving rise to the alleged butt-sniffing. The deputy kicked Slyder, according to the complaint, causing the dog to run back toward his owner--"tail between his legs, not charging Lamens or Maddox or any other officer." Nevertheless, the complaint says, Lamens followed Slyder and shot the dog three times, killing him.

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