Nearly a year after a San Diego Police Department officer resigned from his post, the released internal investigation shed light on the incident that found him in an embarrassing position.
Former SDPD Officer Anthony Hair resigned one month after the Aug. 15, 2023 incident that found him locked in the backseat of his squad car with a female detainee. Details about the encounter and newly released bodycam footage that showed the woman propositioning him for sex have been released by the SDPD per California law.
The unidentified woman had a bench warrant out for her arrest when she was arrested by Hair for suspected car theft. The two-year police veteran was tasked with transporting the woman to police headquarters and then to the Las Colinas Detention Center in Santee, according to KFMB.
Inside the car, Hair’s body camera picked up the conversation as the female suspect asked him if he was married.
“Why are you asking that?” Hair asked.
“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—t,” she replied.
“Are you single?” she added, to which the officer responded, “Yeah, but you’re not.”
“I’m down to f— right now,” the suspect could be heard saying, prompting Hair to caution her, “Don’t say that right now…Don’t say that right now because everything is being recorded right now.”
Nearing the detention center, Hair is heard asking the woman what she was doing in the back seat before he slowed his vehicle and turned off his body camera.
“According to the GPS tracking system inside Hair’s police cruiser, Hair’s car quickly slowed to seven miles per hour before turning down a dark residential street just blocks away from Las Colinas,” KFMB reported. “At 1:34 a.m., Hair’s police cruiser stopped.”
But 20 minutes later, Hair reportedly called a fellow officer for help.
“I heard and noticed Officer Hair had a panicky voice,” the unnamed officer said in an interview with internal affairs investigators.
“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,” the officer continued.
A supervisor arrived and unlocked the door after Hair had been in the back seat for over an hour with the female suspect.
Dozens of videos and audio files from the night in question were released by San Diego Police. In one video, Hair is seen demonstrating to investigators what happened when he thought the woman was having a medical emergency and how his foot accidentally kicked the door closed on himself when he went to check the backseat.
“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 in the video.
But investigators noted that Hair did not call for medical assistance or backup. The woman maintained that nothing had happened between them though later, in a taped interview, she reportedly said, “He wanted to get with me when I was done with the warrant or whatever I got arrested for.”
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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida. Powers also contributes to BizPac Review.
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