When I heard Richard’s story and spoke to his mother, there were just too many questions.
How does a teen with no convictions for violence or weapons end up with a police dog rushing into his house and biting him?
In my decade of covering policing in Cincinnati, the department’s use of police dogs was rarely questioned. Now, there was a kid who was not only bit but had to spend time in the hospital with an infection. It just wasn’t adding up.
Because that particular part of policing has not been publicly controversial, I started with the basic questions: How many people have been bitten by police dogs and how does the department track that?
After gathering three years worth of records and interviewing several top police leaders, I learned that from 2022 to 2025 there were 29 people bit in Cincinnati. The department uses a metric called “bite ratio” to track those bites, a metric that was laid out under the federal consent decree in wake of the 2001 civil unrest but has since changed.
Overall, the bite ratio in Cincinnati is low for a canine unit that performs hundreds of deployments a year.
I also learned that social media monitoring by the police department played a role in how the officers approached Richard’s house that day.
All of this could have could have quietly passed under the radar. It wasn’t until one family decided to share their story that the inner workings of the department came to light. It’s through Richard’s story that now everyone can know more about this policing tactic.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: How we reported on a Cincinnati teen who was bitten by a police dog
Reporting by Cameron Knight, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
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