As temperatures in Warren, Oregon, hit 99 degrees on July 25, 2022, Portland Police Officer Christopher Verbout brought his narcotics dog Stitch inside his home to help keep the animal cool.
Normally, and in accordance with the Portland Police Bureau canine unit’s standard operating procedures, Stitch was kept in a fenced-in kennel at Verbout’s home 20 miles north of Portland in Columbia County. That day, Verbout chose to make an exception.
According to a written statement Verbout later gave to the Portland Police Bureau, when his wife came inside, Stitch “pushed by my wife through the open front door and ran out of the house.”
Stitch is a Belgian Malinois, a breed of smart, loyal working dogs frequently used by police and military. Verbout told investigators he chased Stitch as she jumped a 6-foot-high fence, entered his neighbor Yvonne Pea’s property and pursued Oreo, Pea’s 14-year-old llama. Stitch chased Oreo over two more fences. The dog latched on multiple times, biting Oreo’s legs and clamping her jaws around Oreo’s neck, according to witnesses.
This February, extreme temperatures again hit Warren, this time plummeting to the low teens. Oreo died from hypothermia. After the attack last summer, Pea said, they had to shear Oreo outside of his normal schedule in order to assess his injuries. As a result, his wool did not grow back in time for winter. Pea said the thin coat, combined with his rapid weight loss in the weeks after the attack, led to his fatal hypothermia.
Oreo, a llama who was attacked by a Portland Police dog in July 2022, sits in his heated shelter with Miss Piggy Sue, a pig, in Warren, Ore. Oreo's owner said he had to be shorn after the attack to check for injuries and his thin wool coat led to his death February death from hypothermia.
Courtesy of Pea family
“I 100% blame you and the incident last July,” Pea wrote to Verbout in an email days after Oreo died.
The July incident is at least the second time in two years a Portland police dog has escaped its handler’s home and attacked a person or animal. The two attacks come as the use of police dogs nationwide is coming under closer scrutiny and a growing number of unintentional bites call into question how much control officers have over their dogs.
A Clackamas County Sheriff Deputy’s canine bit a Portland Police officer in 2018, while the officer was helping arrest a man who had fled a stolen vehicle. It took the deputy about 30 seconds to get his dog to release the officer’s leg, leaving a serious injury. An NPR investigation also found police dogs are frequently used against people who don’t pose a threat and that the dogs are more violent and inflict more severe injuries than their human partners. NPR also found police dog handlers often, in private, express concern about getting their dogs to release on command. In 2016, 190 law enforcement officers in California reported being injured by their dogs.
And in Georgia, a sheriff’s deputy was forced to shoot and kill his own dog when the animal bit the deputy’s leg. The deputy said it was a case of mistaken identity.
Handling dogs that attack
Oregon state law affords some leeway for counties to decide what to do when a dog — any dog, not just one working for law enforcement — injures livestock.
For a dog’s first offense, Columbia County is required to impose a fine between $250 and $1,000. Commissioners also have the option of requiring the dog be surrendered or removed to a location where it can’t threaten livestock. If other options aren’t available, county leaders can have the dog euthanized.
Although drug dogs aren’t trained to bite, the Police Bureau has procedures in the event one does. A dog handler is required to photograph any injuries, provide treatment as necessary, report the bite to their supervisor and write a summary of what happened. A supervisor has to write a dog bite summary report which is reviewed by an assistant chief. The handler and the dog are evaluated by a trainer to determine if the dog is becoming more aggressive and if the handler can control their dog.
Police Bureau spokesperson Lt. Nathan Sheppard said the bureau anticipates a lawsuit in Stitch’s case and declined to answer a list of questions about the incident.
Last July, as Verbout chased Stitch across Pea’s property, she said Verbout looked like a “scared bunny.” He “had absolutely no control of the dog physically or verbally,” she said.
“When my husband, Terry, caught up to the animals, [Verbout] was tugging the dog, with his arms wrapped around the dog, trying to get it off the llama’s side.”
Columbia County Commissioners held a hearing to determine what penalties would be imposed against Stitch in August 2022. In written testimony, Pea’s daughter, Jessica Pea-James, said she saw Stitch dangling from Oreo’s neck and doing a “death shake.” She watched Verbout struggle to free the dog from Oreo for about two and a half minutes.
“I never heard a release word or command, just Chris Verbout muttering over and over, ‘please let go,’” she wrote.
In a written statement after the incident posted on the county website, Verbout said only that when he caught up to Stitch and Oreo, he put the dog back on her leash and returned her to his property.
“I never pried the jaws open,” Verbout told commissioners. “I grabbed ahold of her and pulled her off…I didn’t see any blood. I truly believe she was just attached to fur.”
Testifying at the county hearing, Verbout described Stitch as “collar smart,” explaining she behaves better when wearing her electronic collar that can shock her when she misbehaves. Stitch wasn’t wearing her collar when she escaped Verbout’s home.
A photo of Stitch, a Portland Police narcotics dog, provided to Columbia County commissioners in August 2022. Stitch escaped from her Portland Police officer handler's home and attacked the neighbor's llama in July 2022.
Columbia County Records
He told commissioners that during a later evaluation with her collar on, Stitch stopped mid-sprint while chasing a tennis ball and returned to Verbout on command. He said in the future, Stitch will have her collar on any time she’s out of her kennel. That, he said, should ensure her obedience.
“I would recommend that she be able to behave without a collar,” said County Commissioner Margaret Magruder, who was less forgiving of the dog’s work life. “Dogs can do that.”
Oregon state law requires any dog to be impounded if it kills, wounds, injures or chases livestock, llamas included. The county animal control officer, Roger Kadell, wrote in his report that he had Stitch impounded in Verbout’s home. Kadell seemed to acknowledge it was an unusual step taken “with the special circumstances for this case as the dog involved was a working dog and taking the dog out of service for 30-45 days would not be in the public interest.”
Kadell did not return messages asking to speak about this incident. County commissioners disagreed with the special treatment.
“The dog should have been immediately taken into custody because that’s what we do with all dogs,” then County Commissioner Henry Heimuller said during the hearing. “I don’t think that we should create new processes on the fly for these kinds of things.”
Stitch is obviously an aggressive dog, Heimuller said, describing her as a “highly trained, very expensive police officer for the City of Portland.”
At the August hearing, Kadell, the animal control officer, said the dog had injured Oreo and that there’s no guarantee it won’t happen again.
“They’re dogs, they can bite,” he said.
Stitch’s assessment
Stitch is a drug detection dog trained to search cars, homes and people for narcotics and other contraband. The bureau also has patrol dogs trained to pursue and, at times, bite people. The bureau’s dogs are owned by the city of Portland but live with their human partners and handlers, an arrangement typical for working dogs and one which deputy city attorney Michael Porter told county commissioners is critical to their relationship.
Stitch was purchased from the Springfield Police Department and partnered with Verbout in October 2021, about nine months before Oreo was attacked. She and Verbout trained together for two weeks before passing the Oregon Police Canine Association Detection Dog Certification Test the following month.
According to his statement, at the time of the hearing, Verbout and Stitch had over 149 hours of drug detection training together. The many certifications Verbout submitted as evidence of the dog’s training all pertained to drug detection, not obedience.
Belgian Malinois occasionally have a gene which researchers at the University of California, Davis, found was associated with increased reports of “seizure, ‘glazing over’ behaviors, episodic biting behaviors, and general loss of clarity.” The university’s veterinary genetics laboratory sells a $50 test for the gene. The Portland Police Bureau didn’t respond to questions asking if Stitch or any other Belgian Malinois at the bureau had been tested.
After the incident, Portland police Sgt. Jeffrey Dorn assessed Stitch at the request of Police Bureau Cmdr. Art Nakamura. Dorn is a sergeant with the bureau’s Canine Unit. The review included three officers playing with Stitch in a conference room, an obedience assessment, and time interacting with other police dogs.
“We observed no unwanted behaviors from Stitch and Ofc. Verbout appeared to have acceptable control of her,” Dorn wrote in his assessment, which was provided to Columbia County. “The Oregon Police Canine Association standards for narcotic detection dogs do not have a set of obedience standards that they train to so it was not possible to put her through the same tests that those on the patrol side train to.”
Dorn’s police dog has also attacked neighbors. After escaping his Happy Valley home in March 2021, Dorn’s German Shepherd attacked and severely injured two people. According to a lawsuit filed last month against Dorn, his wife, and the City of Portland, the dog lunged at Kristina Norris, bit her arm and dragged her to the ground. Her husband Jason Norris was attempting to pull the dog off her when the dog let go and bit his lower leg and attempted to drag him.
“The dog mauled Mr. Norris for several minutes while both he and Mrs. Norris screamed for help and tried desperately to end the vicious attack,” their lawsuit says.
The couple is seeking $1.7 million.
Both the incident with Stitch and the llama and the attack by Dorn’s police dog appear to violate several canine unit standard operating procedures put in place by the commander of the Specialized Resources Division, the police bureau group that oversees canine officers. Those procedures include requirements that officers “exercise control over his or her canine at all times,” and to always “keep the canine locked in its home kennel or a fence-controlled area when off duty.”
Standard operating procedures are not the same as binding policies. Portland’s Independent Police Review, the group that investigates police policy violations, told Pea that because no policy was violated, they could not recommend a formal investigation.
Sgt. Ryan Derry, who did the bureau’s internal investigation into the llama attack, called the incident “an isolated event put into motion by a series of abnormal factors.”
“The Verbouts are a family that takes great pride in Stitch as well as the other animals they have on their property,” Derry wrote in the bureau’s after-action review. “I can tell after speaking with them they feel terrible about what happened, not only for letting Stitch escape but also for the health of Oreo.”
Columbia County commissioners voted 2-1 to allow Stitch to remain with Verbout on the condition that the city of Portland paid to install electric fencing around the property, Stitch and Verbout received obedience training, and the city implemented the animal control officer’s recommendations. Those include ensuring the dog remains in her kennel or under the control of an adult at all times and that she is leashed when inside the house or going to and from a car. Portland Police Assistant Chief Jami Resch told commissioners the bureau leadership would be inspecting all canine kennels, and they were planning to review narcotics dog training “to make sure that they are receiving the highest level of training.”
When asked this month, the bureau did not say if those reviews had taken place.
Magruder, who along with being a county commissioner is a lifelong farmer who has raised livestock, wanted Stitch removed and relocated someplace where the dog couldn’t harm farm animals. She told OPB, in her experience, “dogs do the job they’re trained to do, and if they don’t, we don’t keep them.”
The county also imposed a $1,000 fine and ordered Portland to pay for all medical bills associated with the attack.
“I have a check that they sent me, and I just tucked it in my box,” Pea said. “I didn’t know if I signed it, if that meant I was closing the case.”
She said she doesn’t want to sue the city but wants Stitch removed from her neighbor’s property.