A San Diego police officer has now resigned from his job after he accidentally locked himself in the backseat of a patrol vehicle with a female suspect.
Late in the evening on August 14, 2023, Officer Anthony Hair, a two-year veteran of the San Diego Police Department, and other officers tracked down two suspects wanted in connection with a stolen vehicle. One of the suspects was a woman who also had a bench warrant out for her arrest.
‘When I was waking her up, that’s when I noticed that this door closed on me. That’s when I was trying to kind of open the door.’
The woman, whose name has not been released, was arrested and placed in the back of Hair’s patrol car. As the two made their way to the Las Colinas Detention Center, she began making advances on Hair.
“Are you single?” she asked, according to footage captured on Hair’s body camera.
When he answered in the affirmative, she then made her intentions clear. “I’m down to f*** right now,” she said, according to WKRC.
She informed Hair that she did have a boyfriend. However, she also admitted she had her reasons for propositioning him: “You’re not too bad. What’s it gonna hurt me if I work the system, you know what I mean? That’s the way I see s***.”
Hair then warned her to keep such comments to herself. “Don’t say that right now,” he said, according to the recording. “Don’t say that right now because everything is being recorded right now.”
Rather than drive directly to the detention center, Hair turned into a neighborhood a few blocks away and parked the vehicle just after 1:30 a.m. on August 15. His body camera was then deactivated.
Approximately 20 minutes later, Hair made a frantic call to a fellow officer. The following is that officer’s recollection of their conversation:
I heard and noticed Officer Hair had a panicky voice. I asked him if he was okay. He said, yes, and then asked if I had my patrol car key with me. I asked why he was asking and what did he need. Officer Hair then asked me If I could go meet him. I asked him his location and he said, near Cottonwood. I asked him why he needed me, and he said he would tell me when I got there. He said he was really embarrassed.
Within an hour, a supervisor had come to open the locked patrol vehicle. Traces of semen were later reportedly recovered from the belt Hair wore that night.
Last month, internal affairs began an investigation into the incident. Hair denied engaging in anything inappropriate with the suspect, claiming that she had experienced some kind of medical episode and that he had parked the cruiser and crawled into the backseat to check on her.
“When I was waking her up, that’s when I noticed that this door closed on me. That’s when I was trying to kind of open the door,” he said, according to the New York Post.
He also denied deliberately turning off his body camera. Instead, he said it had accidentally popped off when he was exiting the car.
The woman similarly denied that the two had had an assignation that night but indicated that Hair was romantically interested in her. “He wanted to get with me when I was done with the warrant or whatever I got arrested for,” she reportedly said.
Despite their denials, Hair decided to resign from the force the day before he was scheduled to have a second interview about the matter. Whether he will face charges in connection with the incident remains unclear.
The SDPD did not respond to the Post’s request for comment.
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