Woman mauled by ‘find and bite’ police dog sues L.A. County Sheriff’s Department

Rosa Ramirez, 45, right, suffered permanent injuries to her dominant left hand during a police dog attack, her attorney Colleen Flynn said at a news conference on Friday. A woman who was mauled by a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department dog is suing the county and asking the department to end its “find and bite” canine program. “The only direction to take this dog attack program is to end it immediately — these are ‘find and bite’ dogs so they don’t just find people, they bite them.” The Sheriff’s Department said in a statement that it had not officially received the lawsuit, but acknowledged the incident occurred and said it uses canines only under “strict guidelines” in high-risk scenarios. “Her hand is now permanently disfigured and functionally disabled,” Flynn said at a Friday news conference outside the downtown Hall of Justice, where she was flanked by large posters showing graphic images of Ramirez’s injuries. It’s not an accident if you’ve been doing it for close to 50 years.” California Maulings by California police dogs linked to lack of regulation, ACLU report finds The civil liberties group said police across the state use K-9s to inflict ‘unnecessary, disproportionate harm on people’ who commit minor crimes, and that bystanders and ‘people experiencing a behavioral health crisis’ have also been attacked.