K-9 dog Jester stabbed in head, but survives

About 4 am on July 4 — the sheriff's department, police department, and the police department's K-9 unit — were called out to a Lemon Grove home where a gun was shot, lodging into the neighbor's house.

A video filmed and posted by 911 VIDEO NEWS depicts law enforcement personnel, an SDPD K-9, and a K-9 handler on standby. They were posted outside a house on Mt. Vernon St., a couple of blocks west of the 125.

Someone in the raw-news footage yelled into the PA, "If you try and run, we will send a police dog, and the dog will bite you." Then, after sunrise, the man the police sought came out, and nobody was hurt, including the police canine.

Last month in El Cajon, Jester, a K-9 helping out the El Cajon Police Department, was stabbed with a knife; Jester survived.

Earlier that June night, El Cajon Police found a man who allegedly slashed multiple car tires with a 6-inch steak knife by Roanoke Ave., less than a mile southeast of the Ballantyne Street and I-8 exit. The officer tailed the suspect and requested additional officers as backup, including a K-9 unit. Then, "the suspect, still armed with the knife, charged at an officer before running away towards a high school campus. He refused to stop, and officers used less-lethal projectiles, which hit the suspect but were ineffective," reads the police report.

Jester was deployed to stop the tire slasher, and the suspect stabbed Jester in the head. The police officers rushed in to apprehend and detain the suspect, 25-year-old Rani Alrais.

Jester survived the ordeal according to posted photos by the ECPD showing Jester wearing a plastic cone around his head.

The suspect, Alrais, was booked into the San Diego County Jail on charges of assault on an officer, assault on a police K-9, and vandalism.

"We provide [K-9 Unit] services to all of our uniformed personal out in the city," said Lieutenant Ricky Radasa of the SDPD K-9 Unit in a 2021 interview. "And it's a centralized uniform position. They respond to all of our emergencies or what we call 'hot' calls around the city."

A "hot" response is referred to as a Code 3 Response: a type of response for an emergency vehicle responding to a call (with its blaring sirens and flashing lights) about "violent suspects with weapons, burglaries in progress, or any hot or emergency call that has the propensity for violence," Radasa continued. "And [K-9s are] utilized as a less-lethal force component to basically go over there and be the first component of de-escalation involved in this particular incident."

On June 18, around midnight, several bystanders by the 200 block of 3rd Avenue in Chula Vista called police about a man punching, kicking, and elbowing people. After two minutes, a police officer arrived on the scene. Tony Mora, a bystander, clicked record on his camera, filming the perp running in his direction; the police officer distracted the perp, and then the perp ran towards the police officer. Within less than five seconds — the police officer ran toward his vehicle and opened the rear door; the perp abruptly turned around, walking in the other direction; the officer brought the K-9 down onto the street and deployed the K-9.

The suspect tried to hold the K-9 back. Then the police officers grabbed the suspect. "K9s are deployed according to policy in order to arrest dangerous persons while reducing further danger to the public or other officers," said the Chula Vista police in an official statement. "They're trained to hold onto a suspect until they can be taken into custody by an officer. Once in custody, the man assaulted another officer while medics arrived to provide treatment. The man was arrested on multiple counts of assault, including assaulting a police officer, and was taken to a hospital for treatment."

While the Chula Vista police K-9 unit has eight canines, the San Diego Police Department has 36.

Radasa from the San Diego K-9 Unit continued, "I came to San Diego specifically because, at the time, it had the largest K-9 unit in the country."

The video Radasa was interviewed in also shows the extensive training involved with the K-9s and their handlers.

Radasa noted, ".... Our bite ratio is extremely low in comparison to the number of times dogs are not only deployed, but compared to numbers of calls that are radio calls that officers actually go on."

In 2020, Radasa and his K-9 Unit teams — including a dog and its handler — responded to 21,541 calls throughout the county. And since the San Diego Police Department deployed the unique K-9 unit program in 1984, one K-9 was killed in the line of duty — Bando, a German Shepard.