By Staff Writer Jason Glenn

I find it’s best to do stupid things early in the morning. There’s a kind of magic window of opportunity where sleep hasn’t worn off, coffee hasn’t kicked in and you exist in a delightful ether suitable for stumbling one step too far toward a bad decision.
Such it was on a recent cool and cloudless Tuesday morning at the Bellevue Fire Training Facility when I came to the full realization of what I was doing about two milliseconds after hearing that a police dog had just been released with nothing but my ample backside in his sights.
As an eye-opener, abject terror does just fine.
One of my favorite writers was the late George Plimpton. Aside from his obvious literary talents, it was Plimpton’s idea that you had to be immersed in something to get the truest story that appealed to me. He best illustrated this concept in books like Out of My League and particularly Paper Lion, where the somewhat athletic but physically gawky Plimpton went through training camp with the at-the-time not so hapless Detroit Lions.
Plimpton put himself in direct mortal danger so he could describe to the reader precisely what it was like to face a 95-mph fastball, take one on the chin from the heavyweight champion of the world or stand in the pocket as a quarterback and get blindsided by an all-pro linebacker moving at full tilt.
It was in that spirit that I asked Officer Jim Bartley, head of the Bellevue Police Department’s K-9 unit, if I could go through a training exercise in the bite suit.
At the time, months ago, it just seemed like a cool idea, one of those little side benefits of having reporter’s access.
But as I stood there that morning, Bartley looking me square in the eye and assuring me for the final time that it was OK if I wanted to back out, I wondered if maybe it wasn’t a good time for another column on what it’s like to be a new dad or how much I love mowing my lawn.
At that point, though, millennia of knuckleheaded
y-chromosome machismo had already sealed my fate. “I’m good,” I warbled.
The bite suit is about one degree of bulk shy of those Sumo wrestling getups popular at bars about 15 years ago. Having clambered into the two-piece canvas and padding outfit and taken a quick test run, er, speed waddle, I readied myself at the line. Twenty feet behind me, Spike, a 55-pound Belgian Malinois, yippered high-pitched squeals of doggie delight way too enthusiastically for my fragile nerves.
Spike, apparently, is quite fond of the bite suit and it really wasn’t anything personal. 
Bartley gave me the go sign, allowed me about 20 yards to build up a head of awkward steam, then signaled Officer Dustin Franks, Spike’s handler, to release the hound.
Obviously, I couldn’t see Spike gaining on me at the time, but watching a video afterward I saw him close the gap in what seemed like a flash. I do remember trying to keen my hearing in an attempt to hear his steps and prepare for impact.
No such luck.
Spike, traveling at about 30 mph, launched, smashed into the portion of the suit protecting my upper left arm and spun and drove me into the ground like a posthole auger.
Bartley had instructed me to, once I had collected my wits face down on the ground with a trained police dog tearing at my arm, keep that arm wiggling so Spike wouldn’t, ha ha, release and look for something tastier to sink his teeth into. Like my face.
I obliged. Immediately, and gratefully, Bartley and Franks came to my aid, Bartley putting a knee between my head and Spike’s and Franks grabbing Spike’s leash and hollering the magic word to hasten his release.
I’ve never been skydiving, but I can assume the velocity and intensity of my heart rate was similar. Once Franks had Spike off of me and backed up a safe distance, Bartley helped roll me over and get me up on my legs, which were functional but wobbly.
“Ready for Rico?” he asked, motioning toward another of the K-9s.
Rico is the big boy of the team. At 90 pounds, the brindled Dutch Shepherd is a beautiful specimen of authoritative intimidation. While he weighs less than half of what I do, he didn’t seem to mind.
The thing about dreading the unknown then confronting it and living to tell the tale is that, for some bizarre, counterintuitive-to-survival reason, it makes you want to do it again. With all the newfound bravado in me I replied, “Let’s do it.”
While Spike is a defensive back, lightning quick and prone to using torque to bring someone down, Rico is a linebacker, bold and confident that all he has to do is hit you center mass to do the trick.
This time, Bartley had me walk away and didn’t allow nearly as much time for Rico to build up speed, knowing that a hit like that might just put my lights out. Thanks, Jim.
Rico, let loose about 10 feet back, slammed square into the middle of my back, producing a solid “huk” sound of air forced from my lungs and making me feel like the class bully had just sucker punched me in the hallway between classes.
Amazingly, I kept my feet. In so doing, though, I was committed to lumbering around with a thrashing, near-100 pound creature of doom on my back. Perhaps the ground might have been a better choice.
Again, Bartley and the dog’s handler, this time Officer Joe Gray, were there in an instant to make sure the business end of Rico didn’t find purchase on any of my exposed fleshy parts.
Wide-eyed, awake, invigorated, humbled, happy to be alive, I let out probably the first good breath, aside from the “huk” of course, I had exhaled in the previous half hour. It was over and I was walking, er, waddling, away intact.
In getting me ready for the bite suit, Bartley had naturally had a little fun, exaggerating the likelihood that my pound of flesh, in this case, would be a literal payment.
The truth is the K-9 officers had everything well under control, the K-9s themselves are highly trained to do a specific task and follow their handlers’ commands to the letter, and the bite suit is well designed to prevent almost any mishap.   
That being said, being in the suit still gives you a pretty vivid idea of what these animals are capable of. When they clamp on, you feel the bite strength and you know having the imminent threat of that on bare skin, muscle and bone would be a deterrent of the highest order.
All the different things going through a fleeing criminal’s mind most certainly are focused to one thought when a police K-9 becomes a part of the equation: No more of that, please.

So, perhaps the best thing to come of my experience in the BPD bite suit, aside from the fact that my backup pair of underwear went unused, is this: Criminals, when there’s a knock at the door and someone says, “Bellevue Police, open the door or we’ll have to send in the dog,” take my advice and, unless you’ve got as sumo suit laying around, go quietly.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS