15 Mar Antioch Police K-9 Handler Found Guilty of Violating Civil Rights, Falsifying Records

(N.D. Cal. via Bay City News)

By Bay City News

A former Antioch police officer who directed his police dog to bite suspects — even when it wasn’t necessary — was convicted Friday of violating victims’ civil rights and falsifying records.

Morteza Amiri, 33, was a K-9 handler with the Antioch Police Department and kept a running bite count that he celebrated with other officers, prosecutors said.

Amiri also took pictures of the dog bites and shared them with other officers, writing in one text message that “gory pics are for personal stuff” and “cleaned up pics for the case.”

“Morteza Amiri violated the oath he swore to protect the people of Antioch,” Patrick Robbins, the acting U.S. attorney for Northern California, said in a press release. “He flouted his duty as a police officer, misused his police dog, and inflicted unnecessary and excessive force against the victim.”

Amiri pulled over and stopped a bicyclist on July 24, 2019, who, according to the officer, didn’t have his bicycle light on, prosecutors said. Amiri punched and took the victim to the ground and then called for his K-9 to bite the victim.

Amiri shared pictures of the victim’s wounds with other Antioch police officers. When one officer asked about what appeared to be a cut on the dog’s face, Amiri responded, “that’s a piece of the suspect’s flesh lol.”

Amiri then falsified a police report of the incident, stating that one of the reasons he deployed his K-9 was because he was alone, when instead another police officer was doing a ride-along with him at the time.

Amiri faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison on the count of deprivation of rights and 20 years in prison on the count of falsifying records.

The charges against Amiri were brought as part of an investigation into the Antioch and Pittsburg police departments that resulted in multiple charges against 10 current and former officers and employees of the two police departments for crimes ranging from the use of excessive force to fraud.

The prosecution was the result of an investigation by the FBI and the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office, prosecutors said.

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