Pierce deputy accused of excessive force in K-9 attack. What happened to case?
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- A domestic violence suspect claimed she was mauled by a Pierce County Sheriff’s K-9.
- The woman sued over the 2019 incident near Puyallup. The county denied wrongdoing.
- After the county agreed to settle the lawsuit for $100K, it was dismissed on Jan. 16.
Pierce County has settled a federal lawsuit alleging a sheriff’s deputy used excessive force in deploying a K-9 who attacked a domestic-violence suspect near Puyallup.
The county, which itself was no longer part of the suit, agreed to pay $100,000 to resolve the case against deputy Levi Redding, county Prosecuting Attorney’s Office spokesperson Adam Faber said Tuesday. The office defends the county and its employees in civil litigation.
“This is a good outcome that avoids lengthy further litigation and protects taxpayer funds,” Faber said in an email. “We felt we had a strong defense to the plaintiff’s claims and are pleased to end the case for a low dollar amount.”
The suit was dismissed on Jan. 16, not long after the settlement was reached, and Redding didn’t admit to fault as part of the case’s resolution, court records show.
Jenni Ellis, the plaintiff, allegedly struck her boyfriend and inadvertently hit his 17-year-old son while intoxicated during a domestic dispute in 2019, according to the lawsuit. Redding responded to a 911 call made by Ellis’ boyfriend and attempted to find Ellis, who had left the home wearing her pajamas in the pouring rain, the suit said.
Redding was accused of unnecessarily deploying a department K-9, Zepp, who mauled Ellis’ left arm and caused permanent injuries as she was returning home, according to the suit filed in 2022 in the U.S. District Court for Western Washington.
Messages left for an attorney who represented Ellis were not returned Tuesday.
Attorneys for Redding denied all alleged wrongdoing and had sought to dismiss the case, according to prior court filings.
Deputy not protected from litigation
A federal judge tossed certain claims in the lawsuit but left others intact, including the allegation that Redding had used excessive force and violated Ellis’ Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable seizure. Pierce County and Redding appealed the decision, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals weighed in.
The appellate court’s majority affirmed that Redding wasn’t entitled to qualified immunity — a controversial legal doctrine that shields government officials, including law enforcement officers, from civil claims unless certain circumstances apply.
In 2020, a Reuters investigation found that police were often granted immunity even when courts held that they used excessive force. The qualified-immunity legal doctrine, established by the Supreme Court in 1967, is intended to protect government workers from frivolous lawsuits, Reuters reported.
“Even if there is an unconstitutional use of excessive force, government officials performing discretionary functions are entitled to qualified immunity unless the unlawfulness of their conduct was clearly established at the time,” the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals noted in its unpublished memorandum opinion on Ellis’ case in March 2025.
Washington police patrol dogs are trained to bite and hold a suspect unless they’re restrained or commanded from doing so, the memo said.
Zepp’s bite-and-hold of Ellis for 25 to 41 seconds had been a seizure that Redding didn’t command to stop, and it was a longer bite than that in a 1998 case out of California in which an officer was denied qualified immunity, according to the memo.
“The unlawfulness of Redding’s conduct was clearly established, so he is not entitled to qualified immunity,” the appellate court wrote.
The three-judge panel’s decision was not unanimous. Judge Ryan Nelson wrote in his dissenting opinion that Ellis hadn’t fully surrendered or come under officer control, and it was irrelevant whether she was fleeing, resisting arrest or posing a threat to Redding or her victims.
“What is undisputed and material is that Redding was told that Ellis was violent, potentially armed, fleeing arrest, and likely to return to her victims if not arrested,” Nelson wrote. “Those facts — not the facts that Redding was unaware of — are what matter.”
The appellate court also unanimously reversed the federal district court’s upholding of two state claims, including negligence, which led to the county’s dismissal as a defendant, according to court records.
Ellis, who court records show wasn’t charged after her arrest, claimed that Redding didn’t give any verbal warnings that she could hear and had allowed Zepp to dart away from him and attack her as she was walking back home.
In a prior court filing, attorneys for Pierce County and Redding said that Redding received no response after calling out to Ellis by name and announcing himself as law enforcement. Zepp located Ellis underneath her boyfriend’s boat on a trailer in the front yard, and Ellis grabbed a hold of the dog, according to the filing.
Ellis’ blood-alcohol level was found to be .233 at a local hospital, and she was treated for three left-elbow lacerations, the filing said.
Zepp retired shortly before his ninth birthday in 2020. In a News Tribune story at the time, it was noted that the Sheriff’s Office celebrated the German shepherd’s “unique tendency to chase but not bite.”
