SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — The San Diego Police Department recently released its findings from an internal investigation into an incident last year that involved an officer who locked himself in the back of a patrol vehicle with a woman who he was transporting to a county detention center.
The report, which included body-worn camera footage and transcripts from witness interviews among other things, found that then-Officer Anthony Hair violated a number of policies and laws in connection to the events that transpired with the female detainee on Aug. 15, 2023.
Hair, who had been with SDPD for two years at the time of the incident, resigned from his post on Sept. 14, 2023, the report said — one day before he was scheduled to be interviewed by the Internal Affairs investigator looking into it.
In a statement, SDPD Lt. Dan Meyer said the department “takes all allegations and acts of misconduct seriously.”
“This incident was investigated by the department’s Professional Standards Unit (PSU) to the fullest extent,” he continued. “The individual is no longer employed with the San Diego Police Department.”
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Report details the timeline of events
According to the report, the incident began around 8 p.m. when Hair responded to the intersection of Denver Street and Clairemont Avenue in Bay Park with a few other officers to assist in the arrest of several people for suspected auto theft.
The officer was tasked with transporting one of the detainees, the unnamed woman who had been taken into custody under a warrant. Around 1:10 a.m., Hair left SDPD’s Northern Division substation for Las Colinas Women’s Detention Facility to book her into jail.
It was about twenty minutes after the two left the Northern Division when Hair locked himself in the rear caged cabin of his patrol vehicle just two blocks before arriving at Las Colinas, according to the report.
He was in the backseat with the female detainee for more than an hour before a supervisor arrived around 2:40 p.m. and opened the door. Throughout the time he was in the backseat, his body-worn camera was not actively filming.
Hair asserted throughout the first phase of the investigation, which he cooperated with before his resignation, that he was checking on the woman for a possible medical emergency when the car door accidentally shut and locked him in.
In interviews, the woman echoed this, saying in interviews with investigators that nothing sexual occurred between them. However, the report noted trace amounts of what was presumptively identified as semen was found on his belt.
The woman, who was reportedly high on an unidentified drug she had taken earlier in the day, was transported to a hospital after being examined by medical staff at Las Colinas for what was described by the investigator as an “unrelated health matter.”
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Body-worn camera picks up conversation
In the course of transporting the woman, Hair’s body-worn camera picked up several moments where suggestive comments were made.
When she was being transported to SDPD headquarters before heading to the Northern Division substation, Hair’s camera picked up an exchange where the woman asked if he was married.
Woman: “Are you married?”
Hair: “Why are you asking that?”
Woman: “[unintelligible] … 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.”
Shortly after, a loud noise was heard in the backseat, which was presumably her taking her seat belt off. The camera then picks up moaning coming from the backseat.
Another suggestive exchange was picked up in Hair’s recording of her transport between the Northern Division substation and the site where the officer got locked in his car, the report said.
Woman: “Are you single?”
Hair: “Yeah. But you’re not.”
[unintelligible conversation]
Woman: “I’m down to f–k.”
Hair: “Don’t say that right now. No, I said don’t say that right now because everything’s being recorded right now.”
At this point of the transport, his patrol car’s GPS was recorded at speeds of upwards of 90 miles an hour for stretches of the journey, the report said.
As they got closer to Las Colinas, Hair could be heard asking how the woman was doing in the backseat. When he made a right-hand turn at a traffic signal near Las Colinas, he turned off the recording. GPS tracking showed him turning on the northbound side of Cottonwood Avenue.
He made several additional turns before his patrol car came to a stop at around 1:34 a.m. mid-block on Cottonwood Avenue in Santee.
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Getting let out of the car
According to the report, Hair called another police officer asking if he had a master key for the cruisers just before 2 a.m. The officer noted that Hair’s voice sounded “panicky” when he called.
“I asked why he was asking and what did he need. Officer Hair then asked me if I could go meet him,” the officer recalled in a statement provided during the course of the investigation. “I was asking him why he needed me, and he said he would tell me when I got there. He said he was really embarrassed.”
The officer and his partner at the time then drove in the direction of Hair. A few minutes later, the officer said he called Hair back to ask again what was going on.
“Officer Hair said that he was really embarrassed, but his 10-16 had an emergency health situation and he went back there to check her pulse,” the officer explained, adding that Hair told him “when I went to check her pulse, I went into the back seat, and the door shut behind me.”
They ultimately decided not to drive up to Hair’s location, instead informing a sergeant who then went to open the door and let him out.
Body camera video from the sergeant who let him out showed Hair with the magnet mount for the camera, but is missing the camera itself.
In his statements, Hair asserted the camera “somehow disconnected from the mount” as he was exiting the driver seat — a claim the internal affairs report determined was “not possible,” due to the timing and the fact that the force needed to remove the camera in that motion would have also knocked the magnet mount off.
The internal affairs report findings
The report concluded that Hair violated at least seven department policies and a handful of state laws in the course of the incident, but did not make a determination about whether anything transpired between the two while he was locked in the back.
The violations included: failing to record the entirety of his transport of the female detainee, failing to notify emergency medical services when he suspected a prisoner was experiencing a medical emergency, unnecessarily driving above the speed limit, and knowingly making “provable false statements” in his police report and in statements with investigators.
“Officer Hair’s actions demonstrated a significant lack of understanding and competency in regard to the Department’s directives and his role as a sworn Peace Officer in general,” the report read. “If Officer Hair had followed the multiple Department procedures he neglected to obey, the criminal allegation [of sexual assault] and investigation may have been moot.”
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