Are Exeter police responsible for fatal Grover Beach dog attack? SLO civil trial begins
Five years after a retired police dog mauled two people in Grover Beach, killing a man and severely injuring his elderly neighbor, the survivor of the attack and her family members were in court Tuesday to seek damages against the Tulare County police department that trained the animal.
Attorneys for Betty Long and David Fear, who died after being attacked by the retired Belgian Malinois owned by former Grover Beach police Officer Alex Geiger, said in court Tuesday that Geiger’s former police department didn’t train him properly about how to safely keep a retired police dog.
Calling the dog a “dangerous weapon,” Long’s attorney Jacqueline Frederick told jurors in a San Luis Obispo Superior Court civil trial Tuesday that the city of Exeter and members of its police department cut corners in educating Geiger on how to safely maintain the animal, which was supposed to be kenneled anytime Geiger wasn’t around.
“They failed to teach (Geiger) what they were supposed to teach him,” Frederick said in her opening statement. “The failure to warn Alex Geiger puts liability on the Exeter Police Department.”
But attorneys for the municipality argued that Geiger signed a purchasing agreement relieving the city of liability when he personally bought the dog prior to his move to Grover Beach, which does not have a K-9 unit.
“The former owner of a dog is not liable for a current owner’s conduct,” Chester Walls, attorney for Exeter, said in his opening statement.
Jurors also heard testimony Tuesday from a retired Los Angeles Police Department K-9 unit supervisor, called as the plaintiffs’ first witness, that Geiger’s superiors in Exeter didn’t make clear to him the “serious commitment” and strict rules related to keeping a retired police dog.
It was unclear from court records and testimony what specific damages Fear’s family is seeking, but the value of the damages to Long and her family is $12.5 million, Frederick said in court Tuesday.
The trial, which began jury selection last week, is expected to last about two weeks.
It is the first civil case to go to trial in San Luis Obispo Superior Court since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic significantly limited court operations.
Jury acquitted former police officer in criminal trial
Long, then 86, was walking her small dog outside her home in the 1100 block of Nacimiento Avenue on Dec. 13, 2016, when Fear, her next-door neighbor, greeted them outside.
When Fear bent down to playfully pick up her dog, Long said Geiger’s Belgian Malinois, Neo, appeared out of nowhere and attacked her and Fear.
Fear suffered severe lacerations and bite wounds to his arms. He died three days later from complications of his injuries at age 64.
Court testimony from the criminal case revealed that Neo and a female German Shepherd also owned by Geiger broke through a fence while Geiger was on duty. They had escaped their enclosures earlier in the day and chased a mailman, who escaped unharmed, and Geiger had previously come to his home that day to secure his fence.
Neighbors interviewed by law enforcement described the dogs as a problem in the neighborhood.
Geiger resigned from the Grover Beach Police Department roughly two months after the incident.
Neo was euthanized. The German shepherd — which was not a trained police dog — was not believed to be directly involved in the attack and was moved to a safe location.
The San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office in June 2017 charged Geiger, who as of a few years ago worked as a general contractor, with two felony counts of failing to maintain the dangerous animals and a felony charge of manslaughter charge.
Geiger, now 29, faced up to almost four years in state prison if he was convicted, and would never again be allowed to work as a police officer.
While the prosecution alleged that Geiger was negligent in how he kept his Belgian Malinois and a German Shepherd at home while he was away, essentially allowing them to escape their enclosure and attack the neighbors, the defense argued that there is no standard for how owners are to keep their retired police K-9s.
The criminal trial against Geiger lasted about a month in April 2019 before the jury returned not guilty verdicts on all three counts within three hours of deliberations.
Police department ‘wanted their money back’ in selling dog, attorney says
The lawsuit filed in September 2017 by attorneys for Long and Fear’s family originally alleged that Geiger, as well as both the Exeter and Grover Beach police departments and Geiger’s former landlords were liable for the injuries and costs incurred over the attack.
An initial civil complaint alleged that Geiger should have known Neo was dangerous based on its training and that his negligence in housing the dogs led to the fatal attack.
But Geiger, the city of Grover Beach and the landlords have been removed from the lawsuit in the two years since the conclusion of the criminal case. The city of Exeter, its former police chief Clifton Bush, and the department’s K-9 coordinator, Lt. Brett Inglehart, remain defendants in the civil case.
In court Tuesday, Long, now 90, sat in a wheelchair, looking noticeably more frail than she did during the 2019 trial. She was supported by members of her and Fear’s family.
Frederick told jurors in her opening statement that Long suffered a fractured skull, a broken pelvis, a shattered shoulder and dog bites to her torso.
Some of Long’s injuries, including her shoulder, persist, and she’s since suffered a stroke that an expert witness will testify can be attributed to the attack, Frederick said.
“She can not live independently without help,” Frederick said of Long. “Betty was living a full and happy life before this occurred. .... (She was) completely independent, healthy.”
Long, a lifelong South County resident and retired bank teller, assisted David Fear in opening his first bank account when he was a child, Frederick told jurors.
The two remained in contact over the years and Fear coincidentally ended up moving in next store to Long about 25 years ago.
“These two were wonderful friends,” Frederick said.
Long remains traumatized by witnessing Fear struggle with the dog while bleeding profusely, Frederick said, and jurors will see video footage that shows an injured Long telling arriving paramedics, “No, take care of Dave — he got the worst of it.”
Frederick says her office’s investigation found that, immediately after his one-year probationary period at Exeter Police Department lapsed, Geiger was fast-tracked for a special K-9 handler assignment.
But there is “no way” he received roughly 400 required hours of training, received no classroom or written training, and was primarily taught to issue commands, she said.
After a year of Geiger working with Neo, Geiger took the job in Grover Beach to escape Tulare County weather, but was told the new department had no K-9 unit.
Frederick told jurors that Inglehart told Geiger that Neo would have to be euthanized because it had already bonded with the young officer.
His only option was to buy the dog for about $6,000. The dog still had years of future potential service in Exeter, and she said Geiger was led to believe he could keep Neo as a normal “pet.”
The police department “wanted their money back,” she said. “What’s (Geiger’s) motivation? He wanted to save Neo’s life.”
Frederick told jurors that Exeter’s attorneys will claim that Long violated the city’s leash laws by allowing her own small dog to run freely in front of her home before the attack, and that a BB gun found nearby was somehow involved.
She anticipated the defense would also suggest that the non-police trained German shepherd attacked the two neighbors, even though Neo was “covered in blood” after the attack and the second dog wasn’t, she said.
“They blame everyone and everything but themselves,” Frederick said of Exeter officials.
Defense: Dog attack was ‘just a terrible tragedy’
In his opening statement Tuesday, Walls, Exeter’s attorney, told jurors that police K-9s have been “used across the country, across the word, for generations.”
He said Geiger — who is not his client — and Neo were trained by Exeter in Schutzhund command training that establishes obedience and utilizes a “bite and hold” technique in neutralizing threats.
“They’re trained to go bite the bad guys,” he said.
But Walls also said it’s the handler’s responsibility to keep a retired K-9 secured when they are not with the animal.
He cited Grover Beach’s leash law for public places and said that Geiger was enforcing the leash law on himself when he returned home while on duty earlier in the day of the attack to fix his fence after a roommate informed him it was loose.
Walls said that “some pieces of physical evidence just don’t fit the story,” such as the BB gun found in Fear’s driveway.
“Who keeps a BB gun in their driveway?” he said, asking jurors to consider whether it was an “out-of-the-blue attack, (or) did something else happen?”
“Was this just a terrible tragedy? This was,” Walls said.
Retired Los Angeles police K-9 handler testifies
Jurors also heard testimony Tuesday from Adam Bercovici, a retired Los Angeles Police Department lieutenant who at one point served as a supervising K-9 handler for the agency.
Bercovici was given his former police K-9 after its retirement, he said.
“I understood very clearly (this was) a serious commitment,” he testified.
Bercovici said it’s the obligation of an agency to carefully instruct officers who take in their former K-9 partners to maintain the “alpha relationship” of obedience, and that “when the handler is not present that the dog is properly kenneled and the yard is secure.”
Asked by Walls whether Geiger followed those instructions, Bercovici replied, “He certainly didn’t kennel the dog, which is why we are here today.”
The Fear family is seeking unspecified damages for lost income and funeral and burial expenses, as well as attorney’s fees. Long is seeking compensation for lost earnings and past and future medical expenses, plus attorney’s fees.
Testimony in the civil trial continues Wednesday.
This story was originally published July 7, 2021 at 1:10 PM.
CORRECTION: This article initially misidentified the city of Exeter’s attorney.
