A man who was bitten by a Baytown police dog during a traffic stop on Valentine's Day, 2021, filed a federal lawsuit against the city and the K-9 officer who initiated the stop, claiming the officer used excessive force. The plaintiff’s attorney also claims that dashboard camera footage disproves the officer’s claim of a traffic violation.

Attorney Randall L. Kallinen held a press conference Friday about the lawsuit. The plaintiff, Benjamin Benfer, participated in the press conference remotely. Benfer, who has a home in Wyoming, is an environmental consultant who works in the oil and gas industry; he was living in Baytown temporarily while working at a plant here and is currently working in Canada.

According to the lawsuit, Benfer and his wife were on the way to their apartment on West Cedar Bayou Lynchburg Road when Baytown police officer Barry Calvert pulled them over. They pulled into the parking lot of their apartment complex.

Benfer got out of his car and Calvert released the dog, Hero, which bit Benfer numerous times, requiring stitches.

In the video of the arrest, Benfer can be heard screaming, “your dog is eating me,” and “get control of your dog, sir” throughout the arrest as seen through the officer's body camera and a cell phone recording from a bystander.

Other details of the incident are in dispute in the lawsuit.

Kallinen said the same officer and his dog were involved in a similar incident in 2019 and received not discipline or retraining.

The officer reported seeing Benfer run a red light. He also said the car they were in was similar to one that had just been reported stolen in Chambers County.

The lawsuit claims that video footage disproves the claim of running a red light, and also disputes how similar the 2020 Mitsubishi Benfer was driving appeared to the 2020 silver Toyota RAV4 reported as stolen. It also says a license plate check would have confirmed the make of the vehicle and that it was at the location where it was registered.

The lawsuit includes as an exhibit an analysis by a retired Los Angeles County deputy sheriff, who is a police canine trainer.

He claims in the analysis that the dog should be considered a weapon and that the facts of the stop did not justify use of a weapon capable of inflicting such serious injury. Some of the bites, he said, were near the brachial artery; a puncture of that artery could have been fatal.

He also claimed there were an excessive number of bites and that the dog initially did not respond to commands to stop the attack.

“It is not natural for an attack-trained dog, without handler support, to persist in biting an unarmed and non-threatening citizen for two minutes, fourteen seconds,” he wrote in the report. “In other words, this purported domesticated BPD dog is not behaving as a domesticated dog is expected to behave. Rather than casting his lot with people, this dog, K9 Hero #244, would treat people like prey. Had he not been removed by physically choking him off the bit, he would have eventually eaten Mr. Benfer.”

At the press conference, Benfer said he believed filing a lawsuit was his only option. “I guess the biggest thing I want to accomplish out of this is to not see it happen to anybody else.”

“I don’t understand how this continues to go on in the Baytown Police Department and how it’s allowed,” he said.

Baytown police spokeswoman referred questions to the city’s legal department. City spokesman Jason Calder said the city would not comment on pending litigation.