Police in a small northwest Alabama city sicced a K-9 on an unarmed Black man on the front porch of his home two years ago, newly released body camera footage reveals.
“Bite him! Bite him! Yes! Get him!” an officer is heard shouting in the footage, which shows 53-year-old Marvin Long on the ground shouting for help as the dog attacks.
Civil rights attorneys representing Long, the Sheffield man who was bitten by the police dog, released the footage this week.
“These gang of officers didn’t have the right to even walk onto Mr. Long’s property, much less attack him with a police dog,” attorney Harry Daniels said in a press release. “The video is clear. These men aren’t protecting the public or enforcing the law. They’re attacking an unarmed Black man for no reason and they’re enjoying it.”
Long is scheduled to go on trial this summer for resisting arrest. A judge in Sheffield City Court found him not guilty on an obstruction charge, court records show.
The attorneys, Daniels and Roderick Van Daniel, say the bodycam footage backs up Long’s claims that the Sheffield officers assaulted him and arrested him without probable cause. Van Daniel argued that the resisting arrest charge is invalid because Long had not committed any crime.
“How can you charge a man with resisting arrest when there wasn’t a lawful arrest in the first place?” said Van Daniel. “For two years, they’ve done everything they can to keep this video from coming out. Now it’s out and the people can see the truth with their own eyes.”
Efforts to reach Sheffield Police Chief Ricky Terry were unsuccessful.
A drug task force staffed by Sheffield police and Colbert County deputies was executing a raid at a nearby home on June 17, 2021 when Long, who was unarmed, went outside to see why a police cruiser was parked outside his property, the lawyers said.
Officers approach Long and ask whether the porch he was standing on was in fact his property, the bodycam footage shows.
“Go, man,” Long, 53, tells the officers before two grab and subdue him.
“What are you doing, bro?” Long asks in the video.
“You must think we’re f—— stupid,” one of the officers says as Long screams for help, according to the footage.
During the attack, one officer is heard ordering the dog to “bite him” and shouting “you’re resisting” as Long screams for help.
A spokesman for the lawyers said he did not have information about the severity of Long’s injuries.
Daniels and Van Daniel said they were able to identify two officers in the video: Sgt. Max Dotson and Sgt. Nick Risner, who was a K-9 handler. Risner was killed and Dotson was injured in an October 2021 shootout with a suspect in Muscle Shoals.
The attorneys did not say in a press release how they obtained copies of the footage — whether the authorities handed them over, or if they obtained them in court. A spokesperson told AL.com he did not know how the lawyers obtained the footage.
Long has not filed a lawsuit over the dog attack or arrest.
His trial is scheduled for June 6 in Colbert County Circuit Court. If convicted, he faces up to six months in prison.
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