Photo Credit: Battle Ground Police Department
Jadarrius Rose, the man from the viral video being attacked by an Ohio police dog has spoken out for the first time since the incident. As we previously reported, Rose was attacked following a traffic stop on July 4, 2023. The K-9 officer who released his dog onto Rose, Ryan Speakman, was fired by the Circleville Police Department following an investigation by the department’s Use of Force Board. According to their ruling Speakman “did not meet the standards and expectations we hold for our police officers” Rose says he called 911, as he told ABC News: “I was just hoping that they (911 dispatch) would be able to help me. I wanted to get out. I hadn’t committed a crime. It’s not like I murdered somebody, and they got their guns ready to shoot me. I just didn’t want to die. That’s what was going through my mind. I just didn’t want to die. That’s why I called them for help.”
Benjamin Crump, a national civil rights attorney, is representing Rose and he echoed the sentiments raised by the Ohio NAACP as he tells ABC News “We have to say, we will not tolerate this. We won’t go back to the days where they’re siccing dogs on unarmed Black people,” On another video, the trooper who told Speakman not to release the dog can be heard questioning aloud if he wasn’t loud enough or direct enough, and another officer can be heard telling the trooper that he heard the instruction, indicating that Speakman chose not to heed the direction.
Rose described the incident saying that there were about 10-12 officers with guns drawn on him, but he was walking in the direction of the officer who had instructed him to come toward him. Rose says he froze when he saw the K-9 officer and his dog running in his direction because he didn’t know what to do at that point. Rose then got on his knees and placed his hands up and once the dog started attacking he pleaded with the dog to let him go. Eventually, Rose says, the dog relented. Rose was treated at a nearby hospital and then booked on a fourth-degree felony charge of failure to comply. Rose’s mother Carla is just grateful to have her son back and Rose says that he has watched the body cam footage multiple times, feeling heartbroken as he views it.
Benjamin Crump is trying to make sure what happened to Jadarrius Rose never happens to anybody else again and he intimated that the police are trying to make it seem like they were justified to chase this man and threaten to shoot him over a missing mud flap. Crump describes the fear that the video elicits in Black Americans to ABC News: “Imagine the psychological trauma and the mental anguish that Black people go through in America when sirens and flashing lights come on behind them. That’s what the Jadarrius Rose video represents to every Black person in America, the fear of being the next hashtag.”