San Diego Police officer resigns after getting locked in the backseat with female detainee
By: A San Diego Police Department officer resigned from his post after he accidentally locked himself in the backseat with a woman for more than an hour while he was transporting her to Las Colinas Women's Detention Center.
In adherence to California Law, San Diego Police released its internal investigation into then-Officer Anthony Hair and the events that took place on Aug. 15, 2023. The investigation resulted in Hair's resignation the following month.
On the night of Aug. 15, 2023, the two-year police veteran, Hair, was one of several officers to help with the arrest of two people suspected of car theft. One of the people arrested was an unidentified woman who also had a bench warrant out for her arrest.
SDPD Officer Hair was asked to take the woman to police headquarters and then to the Las Colinas Detention Center in Santee.
Minutes into the transport, Hair and the woman began to speak. Their conversation was picked up by Hair's body camera that was attached to his uniform.
Woman: "Are you married?"
Officer Hair: "Why are you asking that?"
Woman: "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."
Hair continued driving towards police headquarters. Minutes later, the body camera microphone picked up moans coming from the backseat.
Woman: "Are you single?"
Officer Hair: "Yeah. But you're not."
The conversation then turned illicit.
Woman: "I'm down to f--- right now."
Hair: "Don't say that right now...Don't say that right now because everything is being recorded right now."
For the next several minutes, as Hair sped towards Las Colinas, little could be heard between the two. As he approached Las Colinas, Hair asked what the woman was doing in the backseat.
His police cruiser then slowed and Hair 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.
At 1:34 a.m., Hair's police cruiser stopped.
More than twenty minutes after the police cruiser stopped, Hair called a fellow officer, asking if he had a master key for the patrol cars.
In a subsequent interview, the unnamed officer described the conversation to internal affairs investigators.
"I heard and noticed Officer Hair had a panicky voice," said the officer. "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."
After some back and forth, Hair finally said that he was locked in the backseat of his police cruiser with a woman that he was transporting to Las Colinas.
At 2:40 a.m., after more than an hour in the backseat with the woman, a supervisor arrived and opened the door.
Throughout the investigation, Hair maintained that he was checking on the woman and the car door accidentally shut on him.
As for his body camera being turned off, Hair told investigators that he knocked the camera off of its clip while getting out of the cruiser.
Investigators later interviewed the woman, who said that nothing inappropriate happened in the backseat of the cruiser. The department did test Hair's clothes for semen and found traces on his belt.
Hair resigned on September 14, 2023, less than a month after the incident.