RALEIGH -- A state administrative law judge ruled Thursday that a state trooper fired for kicking his canine police dog in a training exercise must be reinstated.
Judge Fred Morrison decided that state officials did not give Sgt. Charles Jones due process before they fired him in September. Therefore he ordered them to rehire Jones, give him back pay for the time he has been out and pay his attorney fees.
Jones was fired after video from a cell phone showed him kicking the legs out from under his police dog while it was suspended from a loading dock. The move briefly chokes the dog, and Jones used the method as a way to get his dog, Ricoh, to release something from his mouth.
The dog was not hurt by Jones’ actions, and Jones testified at a hearing that what he did was not abusive. Other troopers testified that they too have choked dogs and suspended them before, but doing both at the same time was not normally done.
State employees are not allowed to be fired or demoted unless there is just cause, and the state must be able to prove that there is just cause in each case. In his ruling, Judge Morrison said that the burden of proof was not met and that Jones was making “a good faith training effort to make Ricoh release.”
The judge also recommended that the state suspend its use of K9 dogs like Ricoh for law enforcement purposes unless it “purchases fully trained canines to be handled by fully trained troopers who are given specific written compliance techniques.”
The fact that there was no state guideline on how to train K9 dogs was a major issue in the case. It was hard to prove Jones went to far in his actions when there were no guidelines explicitly saying what the troopers should do to make their dogs release.
Ricoh, a 7-year-old Belgian Malinois, was retired from service after the incident.