An 18-year-old was left bloodied and bruised when he was attacked by a K-9 dog after his mother called police with concerns that he was suicidal.

Before the North Fork Police Officer Michael Dietz even arrived on the scene, it appears he was already plotting to use force against the vulnerable teen, according to official communications obtained by the Herald-Tribune during an investigation into the department's beleaguered K-9 unit.

As Dietz's superior, K-9 unit leader Keith Bush, was dispatching him to the home, he wrote in a message 'COME GET YOUR BITE'.

Three years later, Jared Lemay, the young man at the center of the vicious mauling is one of three people suing the city for civil rights violations in connection to police K-9 attacks. The other two incidents involve alleged victims who were bitten by Bush's K-9 partner Tomy.

But the department has firmly stood by their team, saying the officers were cleared to use force.

WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES

Jared Lemay was left bloodied and bruised after a North Fork, Florida police officer sicced his K-9 dog on him in 2012, after Lemay's mother called 911 worried that her son was suicidal

Lemay says he couldn't eat for a week after the attack because his face was so swollen. He says officers didn't give him a chance to surrendered before they sicced a dog on him

'We have reviewed all current legal authority and have found our K-9 handlers and the animals which we rely on to keep our community safe, to have acted in accordance within the law and in keeping with best practices,' the police department said in a statement.

The incident happened on July 16, 2012, after Lemay's mother called police saying she feared her son was trying to commit suicide.

'My daughter ... found a noose hanging in the garage,' Lemay's mother told a dispatcher. 'I'm afraid he might try to hurt himself.'

Bush dispatched his fellow K-9 unit officer Dietz to the scene, with the message 'COME GET UR BITE', according to official records obtained by the Herald-Tribune during an 18-month investigation into the department's K-9 unit.

Minutes later, Bush followed up on the initial message, adding 'IM GONNA TAKE UR BITE IF U DONT HURRY UP'.

What actually happened in the Lemay's garage when Dietz did eventually arrive on the scene differs from the officers' and the teen's perspective.

After seeing his sister on the phone, Lemay says he panicked and decided to hide in a trash can.

In their written reports, both Dietz and Bush say the garage was darkened when they arrived on the scene, making it hard for them to see where Lemay was.

Keith Bush (left), leader of the North Fork police K-9 unit, messages fellow K-9 officer Michael Dietz (right) 'COME GET UR BITE' when he dispatched Dietz to the scene. Dietz's dog Cammo bit Lemay

At the time, the then 18 year old was wanted for violating his probation on a prior charge of unarmed burglary of an unoccupied structure and resisting an officer without violence.

The officers eventually found Lemay hiding in the trash can and that's when Dietz sicced his dog, Cammo, on the young man.

But Lemay says that the officers' account of the garage being darkened is false and was fabricated to make it look as though the situation was somehow dangerous.

'They made it seem like I was posing a threat to them and saying they could not see because the lights weren't on,' he said. 'I watched it flick on through the cracks of the trash can.'

He says after the officers turned on the lights, one of them opened the lid of the trash can, saw him inside and then pushed the can over.

I remember hitting the ground on my hands to brace myself from falling, and I looked up at them, and I went to say 'Ok, ok' and the guy sicced the dog on my as soon as I started to talk. Jared Lemay

'I remember hitting the ground on my hands to brace myself from falling, and I looked up at them, and I went to say 'OK, OK,' and the guy sicced the dog on me as soon as I started to talk,' Lemay said. 'I remember (the dog's) mouth coming toward me and latching onto my face. He literally drug me out of the trash can.

'After the dog bit me a second time, one of the police officers put his knee in the back of my head and handcuffed me.'

Photos of Lemay after the attack show him bleeding profusely from the nose and the mouth and bruised fashes to his left shoulder blade.

He says after the attack, he couldn't eat for a week because his face was so swollen.

While Lemay suffered in the hospital after the mauling, Dietz was applauded by his fellow officers.

'CONGRATS,' Officer William Carter wrote, according to another obtained message.

Later that same day, Bush and fellow officer Brandon McHale discussed the incident.

'YOUR BITE OR (Dietz's)?' McHale asked.

'I LET (Dietz) HAVE IT,' Bush replied.

'NICE, HOW BAD?' McHale responded.

'BAD,' Bush wrote. 'FACE AND BACK.'

'SKIN GRAFT BAD?' McHale asked.

'NO,' Bush wrote.

'COULDA BEEN WORSE THEN, HE SHOULD HAVE COMPLIED,' McHale said at the end of the conversation.

Three years later, Lemay has initiated legal proceedings against the city in connection to the scarring attack.

However, police department officials maintain that the officers did nothing wrong in the incident, and were authorized to use force.

On July 21, 2014, the same day the Herald-Tribune first asked for documents connected to the case, the department issued a memo saying Bush's messages to Dietz to 'COME GET UR BITE' were 'unprofessional' and violated the department's rules for inter-departmental communications.

'E-mails and Messages sent via the (mobile digital terminal) are public record, and employees will be held accountable for the content of the messages,' the memo states. 'This memorandum of counseling shall be characterized as a corrective rather than punitive action. Further violations will result in progressive discipline.'

A department spokesman said the officers followed policy in the incident, and only received a memo after the attack - the least severe form of discipline.

But experts contend that the facts of the case show evidence of a premeditated attack and excessive use of force from the officers involved in the incident.

Charles Mesloh, a former K-9 officer and now a leading researcher on police use of force in K-9 units, called the attack 'horrifying' and says the U.S. Department of Justice should investigate the incident.

'This is people deciding in advance deciding how they're going to hurt someone,' he said. 'In my opinion it should be investigated by the Department of Justice. I have defended agencies accused of civil rights violations in the past, and I have never seen anything that has approached what I have seen in this report.'

Andrea Flynn Mogensen, a member of the legal panel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, says the organization considers the incident to 'be a clear case of excessive use of force and imporper use of police dogs'.

'It's tantamount to a planned use of force. If you're on the way to the scene and your information is that the subject is depressed and suicidal with no history of violence it's really not reasonable to plan a use of force on the way there,' Mogensen says.

This incident appears to indicate a larger problem within the department's K-9 unit, according to a July report by the Herald-Tribune.

The report showed that K-9 dogs in the department attacked more people from 2010 to 2014 than the neighboring municipalities of Sarasota, Bradenton, Palmetto, Venice and Punta Gorda combined during the same time.

In the three years since the attack, Dietz has left the department after being arrested for allegedly attacking his girlfriend when she tried to break up with him. Bush is now the department's senior K-9 handler and his dog has bitten 25 times since 2012.