Tipped off by residents who reported the pungent smell of urine and feces at their neighbor’s place, D.C. police converged on a red-brick house on Hanna Place in Southeast Washington on Wednesday morning to arrest a man they believed was abusing the dogs he kept inside.
Then, police said, bullets ripped through the door, striking three of the officers.
Thus began a 13-hour armed standoff with a man who, authorities alleged Thursday, abused dogs inside his home, fired on officers trying to take him into custody, and continued shooting intermittently as police tried to coax him out. On Thursday, prosecutors filed seven criminal charges — including assault with intent to kill, assault on police officers and cruelty to animals — against the man, who they said used multiple aliases and whose age was not immediately clear.
In court, the man said his name was Julius James and asked to be referred to that way. Police had initially identified him as such and said he was 46 years old. The U.S. attorney’s office filed criminal charges under a different name — Stephen C. Rattigan — and authorities said he was 48.
Court records made public Thursday revealed new details about the allegations of dog abuse and the ensuing standoff, during which authorities said James at one point called a police officer he knew. The Humane Rescue Alliance, which investigated the dog complaints that led to the arrest warrant police were attempting to serve, said it removed 31 dogs — 20 adults and 11 puppies — from his single-family home. Court documents describe the dogs as pit bulls; an official with the rescue alliance said the dogs appear to be American Bullies.
Stephen LoGerfo, James’s attorney, argued at a court hearing Thursday that his client was firing “warning shots” into the door and did not know police officers were on the other side.
“There is no intent to kill here,” LoGerfo said, arguing his client should be released pending trial and noting he had never been convicted of a crime. “He had no way of knowing who was coming into his doorway.”
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Goldstein said James knew police “were there to arrest him and he fired at the door and aimed at the officers.” The prosecutor described James as “extremely dangerous.”
Magistrate Judge Renee Raymond ordered James held in the D.C. jail, asserting that “the escalation of events from cruelty to animals to barricading himself to then shooting out into his neighborhood” made him a danger to the community. She set a hearing for Feb. 29 and asked LoGerfo if he believed his client needed a psychiatric exam. The defense attorney said he did.
James, who was shackled, then stepped toward the judge’s bench. Three U.S. marshals yanked him back. “Who is going to look after my dogs?” James asked.
The investigation into James began in January with complaints from neighbors about foul smells. One person told a rescue alliance investigator that dogs were “living in their own waste.” That person also said dogs were frequently let loose off their leashes “and were causing safety issues in the neighborhood,” an arrest affidavit says.
Rescue alliance investigators visited the home several times that month, the affidavit says, and spoke to James at least once outside. In that instance, the affidavit says, an investigator saw James in his backyard with 10 dogs, and there were “more heard inside.”
On Jan. 17, court records show, James’s landlord filed a civil petition in court to either evict him or have the dogs removed. The landlord alleged in the petition that her tenant’s dogs “attacked a 2 year old + her guardian.” A neighbor showed an investigator a video of the incident, which the affidavit alleges shows James punching the dog six times in the face, “causing the dog to yelp each time that it gets hit.”
The rescue alliance submitted its investigation to D.C. police, which obtained a warrant for James’s arrest. Officers went to the house in the 5000 block of Hanna Place on Wednesday morning.
D.C. Police Chief Pamela A. Smith said Wednesday that during the standoff, James was alternately “very agitated” and “very positive” before he ultimately surrendered.
The affidavit says that at one point, James called a D.C. police officer who was on duty but not at the barricade scene. The officer, who knew James as “Mike,” told him to go outside with his hands up, and James said he would “not surrender his dogs, and they will have to kill me,” the affidavit says.
The affidavit does not describe how the two knew each other, but a police spokesman said the officer is not related to James.
James later told police negotiators that he shot through the door because he knew if officers entered the home, his dogs would attack them, and they would in turn kill his dogs, according to the affidavit. He told police he was unaware officers had been struck until friends called him later in the day to tell him so, the affidavit says.
After James surrendered at about 8 p.m., police said they found a disassembled Glock handgun on a bed in a second-floor room.
Chris Schindler, the rescue alliance’s senior vice president of animal welfare, said in an interview the staff did not expect to find so many animals inside. He said they found dogs everywhere. Some were loose in the house. Others were confined to an upstairs bedroom. A few were caged on the first floor.
Schindler said the dogs were taken to an undisclosed location. He described it as the single largest seizure of dogs in D.C. in at least three years. Medical examinations of the animals were still underway on Thursday, but Schindler said staff have identified “injuries associated with [the dogs] fighting among each other.”
