Woman mistaken for male suspect files legal claim

She says Bakersfield police violated her civil rights and beat her during arrest.

A 19-year-old woman who was mistaken by police for a male suspect has filed a claim against the city of Bakersfield, alleging officers violated her civil rights and used excessive force when they detained her.

Tatyana Hargrove was arrested June 18 because, police said, she matched the description of a suspect who was armed with a machete and had visited a grocery store. During the stop, Hargrove said, she was beaten by officers and attacked by a police dog.

It wasn’t until she was placed in the back of a patrol cruiser and provided her name that officers realized she was a woman.

“What happened to me was vicious,” Hargrove said Wednesday as tears streamed down her face at a news conference in Bakersfield. “It changed me very bad. My friends tell me I am different. I can’t talk about the story without crying. I hope and pray this doesn’t happen to anyone else.”

The city has 45 days to respond to the claim before she can move forward with a lawsuit, Hargrove’s attorney, Neil Gehlawat, said. “We think that what happened to Tatyana is an injustice and it should have never happened,” Gehlawat said.

Hargrove’s case drew attention and prompted an investigation only after she described her encounter with the Bakersfield police officers in a video widely circulated by the NAACP. The confrontation has sparked a petition demanding that the officers be placed on leave and that charges be filed against them.

Hargrove, who was arrested on suspicion of resisting an officer and assault on a peace officer, was never charged with a crime.

The police encounter started after Hargrove headed to a neighborhood store, which turned out to be closed, to pick up a Father’s Day gift. As she rode her bicycle home in the blistering heat, she said, she stopped at an intersection to take a sip of water and noticed three patrol cruisers and an officer pointing a gun at her.

The officers had been looking for a man who had tried to stab a worker at the grocery store with a machete, according to a Bakersfield police report obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

The suspect was described as a 30-year-old black man who was 5 feet, 10 inches tall, 160 pounds and had a shaved head and goatee, according to the police report. The man was carrying a pink duffel bag.

Hargrove is black, 5 feet, 2 inches tall and 120 pounds, according to the police report. She wore a red and black Spider-Man backpack.

Bakersfield City Atty. Virginia Gennaro declined to comment on Hargrove’s claim, saying the “matter seems headed to litigation.”