
Background: City of Brentwood Police Department (Facebook). Inset: Talmika Bates (KGO/YouTube).
A California woman won nearly $1 million after settling with the Brentwood Police Department four years after a K-9 officer sicced his dog on her, leaving her with devastating wounds to her scalp.
The lawsuit against Brentwood Police Officer Ryan Rezentes alleged that Talmika Bates’ screams to release the police dog Marco, an 85-pound German Shepherd, were ignored, and the attack left Bates “bloody and mangled with large chunks of her scalp missing,” her attorneys said in a news release on Nov. 15. She required surgery to repair her scalp and was diagnosed with PTSD and a mild traumatic brain injury. The city of Brentwood awarded Bates $967,000, her attorneys said in a statement.