Federal lawsuit filed in Graton incident involving sheriff’s K-9

A Graton man who was badly injured when he was bitten last April by a Sonoma County sheriff’s dog has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against two deputies and the county.

Jason Anglero-Wyrick, who was 35 at the time, contends the deputies used excessive force when they shocked him with a Taser and sicced Vader, a police dog, on him following an unsubstantiated report that he pointed a gun at another person earlier that day, the lawsuit filed in federal court late last month said.

Sonoma County Sheriff’s deputies Jeremy Jucutan, the K-9 handler, and Nikko Miller, who fired his Taser, are additionally accused of being negligent in the tactics they deployed during the April 4, 2020, incident, which left the Anglero-Wyrick with long-term physical injuries that have required multiple surgeries, the lawsuit said.

Video captured by a witness, and subsequently released body-worn camera footage, shows Anglero-Wyrick standing near his home, arms held above his head and hands empty moments before he is struck with an electro-shock weapon.

K-9 dog Vader is set loose on Anglero-Wyrick seconds later and the dog latches onto his leg for about 90 seconds. Jucutan appears to struggle to remove Vader from Anglero-Wyrick’s calf for about a minute after he is placed into handcuffs, the video shows.

“Without any justification, he gets Tased and they put a dog on him,” Izaak Schwaiger, a lawyer representing Anglero-Wyrick in the federal case, said. “Any use of force in this scenario was uncalled for. There’s no provocation.”

The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office declined to respond directly to the allegations laid out in the lawsuit given that the litigation was ongoing, Sonoma County Sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Juan Valencia said.

Both Jucutan and Miller were still employed by the agency as of Friday afternoon, he said.

Vader was pulled off patrol after his encounter with Anglero-Wyrick to undergo additional training. He was eventually recertified as a police dog and has returned to patrol, Valencia said.

“In this case, the dog did not release when he was told to, so that was a training issue,” Valencia said.

Jucutan, Miller and several other deputies, converged on the home after receiving a 911 call from a man who claimed Anglero-Wyrick pointed a gun at a Forestville man and his wife.

But a search of Anglero-Wyrick’s home the day of the incident turned up no weapons, and deputies pursued charges only related to their encounter with Anglero-Wyrick once they showed up at his home to investigate the report.

Anglero-Wyrick was initially charged by the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office with two felony counts of resisting arrest by means of threats and violence, though the case was dismissed after prosecutors moved to drop all the charges against him, citing a lack of sufficient evidence.

Schwaiger described the caller as a man who had been involved in an ongoing feud with Anglero-Wyrick.

The man had thrown a water bottle at Anglero-Wyrick’s car before placing his call to police, and in a separate incident a week prior hurled racial slurs at Anglero-Wyrick, who is Black, at a local pharmacy, the lawsuit said.

Schwaiger said the man’s call to police last year was a form of “swatting,” which involves someone making a false report to police in order to garner a large police response to a specific address.

“Absent corroborating evidence, you don’t get to go into there with this level of force when you’re facing an individual who is clearly unarmed,” Schwaiger said of the deputies’ response to the call.

Miller is additionally accused of failing to intervene after Vader did not let go of Anglero-Wyrick’s leg despite Anglero-Wyrick showing no signs of resistance as he crossed his ankles and put his hands on the small of his back while lying on his stomach.

Karlene Navarro, the director of the county’s law enforcement watchdog office, said in an email that she received the bulk of the Sheriff Office’s internal affairs investigation into the incident on Wednesday.

Outstanding portions of the investigation, such as related social media posts made by the Sheriff’s Office about the incident, should be sent to her office for a review in coming weeks, Navarro added.

The internal affairs investigation into deputies’ encounter with Anglero-Wyrick will become public once it is completed in accordance to Senate Bill 1421, a law that requires law enforcement agencies to make public investigations into incident involving use-of-force, Valencia said.

You can reach Staff Writer Nashelly Chavez at 707-521-5203 or nashelly.chavez@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @nashellytweets.