In an unusually expeditious move, the St. Paul City Council is scheduled to meet behind closed doors Wednesday afternoon to discuss “threatened litigation” for last month’s K-9 attack on an innocent bystander.

The meeting comes despite the fact that Glenn Slaughter’s attorneys haven’t filed a claim or suit seeking damages. Nor is city Attorney Lyndsey Olson aware of a “demand letter” from them, an even lower stakes entry point to compel settlement discussions. Slaughter’s attorney, Andrew Noel, said they’re still gathering medical information and awaiting police reports and footage before a lawsuit will be filed.

Slaughter, 33, was leaving for work July 6 when police were looking for a man who was walking in the street and allegedly pointing a gun at homes in the area. Police K-9 Suttree was assisting in the search when his collar snapped and he attacked Slaughter for nearly 30 seconds. The attack led to immediate reforms and a six-month audit of the unit.

The city’s movement on Slaughter’s case could be a reaction to several high-profile dog bite cases in recent years, said Thomas Heffelfinger, an attorney for Kong Kue, another bystander who was attacked by a St. Paul K-9 and dragged by his face down an alley in May 2012. Kue needed extensive medical care, including reconstructive surgery.

“Now … they’ve got a K-9 department that’s costing them money,” Heffelfinger said. “If they were to litigate [the Slaughter case], it’s going to be more expensive for them.”

The city’s responses to claims and lawsuits filed by victims of police K-9 bites between 2012 and early 2018 show strong pushback by the city, a penchant for quibbling over semantics and a practice of blaming victims for their own injuries. Claims are filed with the city’s human resources department and are a cheaper and less demanding route to recovering damages before filing a lawsuit.

While injuries to people regularly took a year or more to settle, the city paid a St. Paul man and a foot clinic within two and eight months, respectively, for damage caused by K-9 Gabe, who attacked an armchair and two exam chairs during unrelated building searches.

Kue’s experience is more typical.

“Mr. Kue was intoxicated…,” St. Paul’s claims manager, Sandra Bodensteiner, wrote in response to his claim. “…your client placed himself in the situation … My investigation indicates that there is no liability on the part of the City of Saint Paul.”

“It’s a really, really shallow argument,” Heffelfinger said of the city’s stance. “My client was badly mauled, and his intoxication was no cause for him being mauled.”

Olson and Andrea Turner, director of St. Paul’s Human Resources office, which oversees claims, said the city wants to resolve claims fairly while being mindful of the cost to taxpayers.

A “respectful pushback” is to be expected, Olson said. “It’s about the totality of the circumstances … Of course we’re not just paying whatever people are demanding.”

For Kue, who still bears scars from the bite and experiences numbness in the area daily, it was a slap in the face.

“It made me feel little, like you were nobody to them,” said Kue, who took anti-depressants for a year to cope with the attack and ensuing stress.

Records show that both sides agreed in August 2014 to a settlement of $65,000, with the city continuing to deny all allegations and asserting that “all of the officers’ actions were lawful.”

Others have had it harder. Attorney Terry Duggins filed a lawsuit in September 2013 on behalf of a man who was arrested after police found him in an unoccupied business in 2007.

Duggins’ lawsuit said his client was compliant and handcuffed when a K-9 “proceeded to attack without provocation,” causing permanent damage to the man’s arm. Duggins’ client sought a reward of more than $100,000, but ended up settling with the city a year later for $425.

By contrast, the city paid Family Foot Clinic $5,097.54 for damages to two exam chairs, and a St. Paul man $346.99 for damages to an armchair caused by the same K-9 that later attacked bystander Desiree Collins in 2017. Collins is suing the city in federal court.

“They just wore the client down,” Duggins said of his case.

In responding to a February 2015 claim by a woman who was attacked by a K-9 while smoking outside, Bodensteiner argued that the woman had a “mark” and not a “scar” from the bite. She offered the woman $3,200 in response to her attorney’s demand for $30,000.

“Your client has several tattoes [sic] on her body — including her left arm, so your statement that she is self-conscious about showing her arm does not match with the image of the woman who was photographed by Saint Paul Police …” Bodensteiner wrote in another response.

“My client considers her tattoos a form of art, something she carefully considered and then made the voluntary decision to receive,” wrote the woman’s attorney, Jessica Servais. “This is in stark contrast to the scars from the puncture wounds, something she did not ask for …”

The woman settled with the city in June 2016 for $7,500.

In her response to a February 2015 claim by a Comcast employee who was bitten while installing cable at an officer’s home, Bodensteiner used quotation marks around “dog bite” and said it was “a very minor injury.”

“The wound was more of a scrape,” she wrote.

The city paid out $860.47 in a workers’ compensation claim and awarded the man $3,500 for his injuries.

Reached by phone at her home while out of the office for a few days, Bodensteiner said she did not feel comfortable addressing specific cases without the documentation before her.

“They are investigated based on the merits of each claim,” she said. “I take every claim seriously …”

Turner, who took her post this year, said she’s “taking a closer look” at how the city responds to claims and how they are resolved.

Wednesay’s council session was prompted by the “high-profile nature” of the attack on Slaughter, Olson said, and would be an “information session.”

“It’s amazing,” Duggins said of the speed in which the council planned to meet. “That type of attitude did not exist before.”

Council members have largely been quiet on the issue of K-9 bites. Asked for comment by the Star Tribune earlier this year for a story reviewing six years’ worth of dog bite reports, only Council Chair Amy Brendmoen commented, saying she was “pleased” that the department had made changes to its K-9 use policy in April.

She also forwarded a Star Tribune e-mail to police Chief Todd Axtell and Mayor Melvin Carter’s office. Many of her colleagues immediately deferred to Axtell on how to respond to media inquiries.

“I wanted to make sure you were aware of this,” Council Member Rebecca Noecker wrote in a May 16 e-mail in which she forwarded a Star Tribune e-mail to Axtell. “I’m not planning to respond.”

Council member Jane Prince also forwarded the Star Tribune’s e-mail to Axtell.

“I have no particular need to respond to this, given that I am not well-informed,” Prince wrote. “At the same time, I am willing to respond with answers that would be helpful to our [St. Paul police department].”

Staff from Council Members Dan Bostrom and Chris Tolbert’s office also forwarded a Star Tribune interview request to Axtell.

Council Member Dai Thao’s office crafted a response to the media expressing some concerns about K-9s, but never sent it.

The chief e-mailed the council, the mayor’s office and colleagues at the police department on May 16 defending his K-9 unit and offering “to provide some facts and context that you may find useful should you decide to be part of the story.”

“As you know numbers don’t always tell the ENTIRE story,” Axtell wrote. “They DON’T talk about the times K-9s have saved officers’ lives.”

There was no mention in the chief’s e-mail that at 11:13 a.m. the day before, K-9 Jaeger was giving a demonstration to a group of children and parents at the city’s Rice and Arlington Sports Complex when he turned around and bit a 10-year-old boy in the stomach, leaving behind what the handler, officer Christopher Hetland, described as a “red scratch” that later bled.

Nor was it mentioned at the chief’s annual report to the council on June 20, where he again praised the K-9 unit and was not questioned on the matter by council members.

Council Members Dai Thao and Samantha Henningson issued statements recently supporting the audit of the K-9 unit; their colleagues declined to comment.

“I have concerns about incidents over the past couple of years involving K-9s and harm inflicted on bystanders,” Henningson said. “We would not stand for these types of incidents if they involved a human officer, and I don’t see why we should treat our K-9s any differently.”