A southern California police officer resigned from his job after he found himself locked in the backseat of his own cruiser with a woman he had just arrested.
The incident and the resignation both happened last summer, but the story became public last week when the San Diego CBS affiliate KFMB-TV obtained audio transcripts and video of the routine arrest-turned-bizarre incident.
The outlet reported San Diego Police Department officer Anthony Hair arrested a woman who had been suspected of car theft along with another individual.
Hair had been tasked with transporting the unnamed woman to the Las Colinas Detention Center.
The trip was delayed, and Hair eventually radioed a fellow officer to inform him he was stuck in the backseat of his car with the woman.
An investigation into how the officer ended up in the situation was immediately launched.
Per KFMB, on the morning of Aug. 15, 2023, Hair and the woman could be heard casually talking as he drove her to the women’s jail.
Audio from Hair’s body camera caught the woman asking him, "Are you married?”
Hair replied, “Why are you asking that?”
The woman responded, "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***.”
Per the video, Hair continued driving, but his body camera microphone picked up what KFMB described as “moans” from behind him.
A transcript of the conversation between Hair and his arrestee showed she then asked him, ”Are you single?”
The officer said he was single, and the conversation, per KFMB, then became “illicit.”
WARNING: The following video contains explicit language that may offend some readers.
The woman propositioned the officer for sex, but Hair turned her down.
"Don't say that right now,” he reportedly said to the woman, adding, “Don’t say that right now because everything is being recorded right now.”
What happened next led to Hair being locked in the backseat with the woman.
Per KFMB, at 1:34 a.m. after Hair asked the woman what she was doing in his backseat, he slowed down, parked on a residential street near the women’s jail and turned off his body camera.
Twenty minutes later, he radioed a fellow officer for assistance in letting him out of the backseat where he was trapped.
At 2:40 a.m., a supervisor set him free.
Hair said during an investigation that he became trapped in the backseat after he pulled over to check on the woman and that nothing happened between them. He also claimed his body camera was turned off by accident.
Both the officer and the woman denied that any sexual interaction had occurred, but KFMB reported San Diego Police investigators said they found semen on Hair’s clothing.
He resigned from the department on Sept. 14 of last year after two years on the job.
During the investigation, the officer that Hair had called for assistance told his superiors that Hair sounded “panicky” when he told him he was stuck in the backseat of the cruiser.
Hair has not been accused of a crime.
