Between 2017 and 2019, Baton Rouge police dogs bit at least 146 people, records show. Of those, 53 were 17 years old or younger; the youngest were just 13. Almost all of the people bitten were Black, and most were unarmed and suspected by police of nonviolent crimes like driving a stolen vehicle or burglary.

The Baton Rouge Police Department is an extreme outlier compared with many other police agencies across the country, in how often it uses dogs to subdue people of all ages—and in particular how often its dogs bite teenagers, once every three weeks, on average.

A joint analysis by The Advocate and The Marshall Project found that the BRPD had the second highest per-capita rate of dogs biting suspects of the cities examined. Only the police department in Auburn, Washington, a much smaller city, had a higher rate.

The results were particularly striking when it came to juveniles, who are much more likely to be bitten in Baton Rouge than in any of the 12 other cities for which reporters could obtain the age of the victims.

The analysis also revealed stark racial disparities in dog bites in Baton Rouge. All but two of the 53 minors attacked by a BRPD police dog during those three years were Black. So, too, were more than 90 percent of the adults bitten, even though Black residents make up just over half of the city’s population. And in every instance, according to BRPD’s records, the officer handling the police dog was White.

Read the full article about Baton Rouge police dogs by Bryn Stole and Grace Toohey at The Marshall Project.