A group of Prince George’s County residents is suing the county police department for $16 million in damages over a 2021 incident where police allegedly entered their apartment without a warrant and shot their dog.

The plaintiffs in the suit — Erica Umana, Erika Erazo Sanchez, Dayri Amaya Benitez, and Brandon Cuevas, who were all roommates at the time of the shooting — allege that police officers got a key to their apartment from a maintenance worker at their Landover Hills apartment complex. The officers then illegally entered the apartment, assaulted and falsely detained them, and shot their dog, Hennessy, leaving her paralyzed and leading to her euthanization, according to the lawsuit.

The plaintiffs are represented by the prominent civil rights law firm Murphy, Falcon, and Murphy, who represented the family of Freddie Gray after he was killed by police in Baltimore.– The firm has also worked on a number of lawsuits in Prince George’s County: Earlier this year, it won a $7.5 million settlement for the family of Demonte Ward-Blake, who was paralyzed during a police traffic stop in 2019.

“I held Henny’s bloody body while she was dying in my arms, while the rest of her family was wrongfully detained and denied the ability to check on her,” Sanchez said at a press conference Monday afternoon. “I no longer feel safe in the presence of police officers, and I will never trust them ever again.”

The Prince George’s County police department did not respond to a request for comment. The Prince George’s County State’s Attorney’s office told DCist/WAMU it investigated the case but declined to press charges against the involved officers. “After reviewing all of the evidence in this matter a determination was made that actions of the officers didn’t generate criminal liability,” a spokesperson wrote in an email.

The police officers – Jason Ball, Joseph Mihanda, and Anthony Jackson – had been called to the apartment complex that day for a report of an alleged dog bite involving Hennessy, according to the suit.

“What happened after that,” the plaintiffs’ attorney Malcolm Ruff said at the press conference, “was nothing short of utter chaos created solely by these brazen, retaliatory, and completely unauthorized actions of these disrespectful officers.”

Attorneys played an edited compilation of Ball’s body camera footage and cell phone footage from one of the plaintiffs on Monday, showing the encounter from the time police arrived at the apartment building to the shooting of Hennessy and moments after. The footage showed officers immediately taking an adversarial approach: After Ball encountered Sanchez sitting on the steps outside and she declined to answer his questions, Ball ordered her to leave the property, alleging she was trespassing. The officers then went inside the building, and knocked on the roommates’ apartment door, receiving no response.

Body camera footage then shows Ball gesturing at his body camera and telling a colleague that the door to the apartment “would be open by now” if not for the camera.

“I used to open them all the time,” Ball added.

Ball and Mihanda then went back outside and flagged down a maintenance worker at the complex to get a master apartment key, which they used to open the door, video shows. The officers did not have a warrant to search the apartment, the suit said.

The officers entered the apartment with their guns drawn, according to the body camera video and the suit.

In the footage, one of the residents can be heard asking if the police have a warrant.

“We don’t need a warrant,” Mihanda replied. “We have probable cause.”

Officers attempted to detain the residents, who struggled back, the video shows.

Hennessy then enters the camera frame, barking and walking towards her owner, Umana. The footage shows bullets hitting Hennessy as he falls to the floor.

“She trots right past Officer Mihanda, so there was no fear of her attacking,” Ruff said at the press conference. “As she came out of the bedroom, she walks right past that officer, but these officers are so hyped up and panicked … suddenly they shoot poor Hennessy in the back.”

The gunshots came from Jackson and Mihanda’s service weapons, according to the suit. Ball simultaneously shot at the dog with his taser, the suit said. Footage shows Sanchez comforting Hennessey while the dog bled on the floor.

“That’s what happens when you don’t answer questions,” Ball can be heard saying in the footage.

The police department suspended both Ball and Mihanda with pay for the two years since the incident, according to the plaintiffs’ attorneys. Jackson was cleared of all administrative charges, according to the suit. A trial board found Mihanda and Ball guilty of conduct unbecoming of an officer earlier this fall and they are awaiting word on what their discipline will be, the plaintiffs’ attorneys said. PGPD did not respond to questions about the officers’ employment status or disciplinary processes.

Through the suit, the plaintiffs said they also wanted to make a broader point about police brutality in Prince George’s County.

“Nothing will ever make the pain go away, nor the hurtful memories of the abuse we had to endure,” Sanchez said Monday. “Now that you have seen for yourself the PGPD mistreated us, I ask you to stand and support us and support our effort to hold PG County accountable. This is not just about us, but it’s about everyone who has suffered at the hands of the PG County police.”

A series of Washington Post investigations published in 2001 found that Prince George’s County had a higher rate of fatal shootings per police officer than any other major city or county police force. The Justice Department launched investigations into use of force in the county, including the actions of a canine unit that investigators said had a “pattern and practice” of sending their dogs to bite people who weren’t resisting arrest. Those investigations culminated in a consent decree and years of federal monitoring. The lawsuit details numerous incidents of alleged police brutality since that federal monitoring ended in 2009. It also noted a series of racist text messages between white county police officers that surfaced as part of a lawsuit in 2020.

The lawsuit alleges that PGPD has demonstrated a “widespread tolerance, encouragement, and condonation of officers using excessive force, committing unlawful searches and/or seizures and committing police misconduct.”

This toxic culture, Ruff argued, set the stage for the suffering of his clients – Umana, Sanchez, Benitez, and Cuevas.

“What kind of police culture do you have to establish for an officer to feel comfortable enough to break into someone’s home without a warrant, without any exception to the Fourth Amendment requirement, without any suspicion that a felony has been committed or was about to be committed, and in fact, without any suspicion of any crime being committed by anyone?” Ruff asked. “Where would any police officer develop the unmitigated gall to compel a maintenance worker to give them the key to someone’s apartment and with guns drawn, burst into the most private and constitutionally protected places on the planet?”