California police beat up teen girl after mistaking her for black male suspect

Hargrove was beaten up and had a K-9 dog unleashed on her in a case of mistaken identity

Bakersfield police officers beat up a teenage girl on June 19 after mistaking her for a black male suspect and even unleashed a K-9 dog on her before arresting her.

The incident has resurfaced after NACCP Bakersfield branch shared a video of 19-year-old Tatyana Hagrove as she tells her account of the story. The Facebook video gathered 4.8 million viewers and 36,000 reactions.



According to Bakersfield Califronian, Hargrove’s story has been gaining attention this week after the NAACP's Bakersfield chapter released a Facebook video on Monday morning recapping the incident, which it said was racially motivated.

The incident is of a mistaken identity where the police mistook this teen of colour for another male suspect who they had been looking for earlier that day. The police were looking for a man they described as a 25 to 30-year-old, bald, black man standing 5-foot-10 and weighing about 170 pounds. He had threatened several people with a machete at nearby grocery stores.



Hargrove, who was riding her bike the day of the incident, is 5-foot-2 and weighs less than 115 pounds. “She appeared to be a male and matched the description of the suspect that had brandished the machete and was also within the same complex the suspect had fled to,” Christopher Moore, the arresting officer, wrote in his report of the incident.

Evidently, Hargrove is none of the things that the police described, she is quite the opposite, and the only similarity she shared with the suspect was the colour of her skin. In NAACP’s video, Hargrove stands with a pair of crutches near the intersection where she was stopped by police and described how one of the officers demanded she give him her backpack.

Upon asking if the police had a warrant to check her belongings, the officers gestured towards the police K-9 behind him, she recalled. “I then got scared and then I was like, here, take the backpack, just take the backpack,” Hargrove added.

After that, she said in the video, the officer grabbed her by her wrist, then punched her and threw her onto the ground; shortly afterward, the police K-9 “came and started eating at my leg.” The same officer then put his knee on her back and the other knee against her head despite her multiple protests.

“I told him ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe’ and then I started yelling out, ‘Somebody help me, somebody help me! They’re gonna kill me!’” she said. “And then finally, he let me up, he tied my hands behind my back and then he tied my feet together and he threw me in the back of the car.”

According to the official police report, Hargrove was arrested for resisting or delaying an officer and aggravated assault on an officer as well. She was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment of her injuries, including multiple abrasions on her face, and scrapes and punctures from the police K-9, the arresting officer wrote in his report.

Moore, the arresting officer, added that “several nurses” at the hospital referred to Hargrove as a male and that “when I corrected them and advised she was a female they were surprised and apologised for the mistake.”



After being treated, Hargrove was booked into jail, the report dictates. She was detained for 16 hours before being bailed by her parents, reported NAACP.

In the police report, Moore wrote that Hargrove had “spun into” one of the officers with her left shoulder, causing him to fall backward, and then “quickly maneuvered her body to get back on top of him” after the officer punched her.

“At this time I was forced to quickly consider the following; [Hargrove] matched the description of the suspect that had brandished a machete, her backpack was within her arm’s reach and the main compartment was unzipped allowing her immediate access to the machete,” Moore wrote. After weighing whether he could use his Taser or baton on Hargrove, Moore wrote that he decided to unleash the police K-9, Hamer.

“While Hargrove was in the backseat I asked what her name was and when she provided it as ‘Tatyana’ I said, 'Don’t lie to me, that’s a girl’s name. What is your name?’ ” the police report stated. “Hargrove said, ‘I’m a girl, I just don’t dress like one.’ This was when I first discovered she was a female.”

A search of her backpack revealed no weapons, the report stated. The Bakersfield police spokesperson told The Washington Post that the officers had “exercised appropriate use of force on Hargrove.”

In the video on the Bakersfield NAACP’s Facebook page, Hargrove does not say anything about fighting back at the officers. “I read the paper, my paperwork, though, and it said that I shoved an officer and flipped him on his back,” she said in the video, adding a look of disbelief. “There were dogs and guns drawn on me. Like, I would never do anything like that.”



NAACP is organising a “Justice for Tatyana” rally Thursday and has started a Change.org petition to have Hargrove’s charges dismissed. It has also launched a crowd funding page to raise money for her medical bills and legal fees. Hargrove’s parents, who were interviewed for the video but not named, said it was extremely difficult for them to believe what happened to their daughter could be justified.

A gofundme campaign has been launched in support of Tatyana Hargrove PHOTO: GOFUNDME

“Every day I have to change her bandages and I see her, the injuries that she has. It’s really hard for me,” Hargrove’s mother said in the video, fighting back tears. Why should my daughter be charged with a crime? All she did was stop to drink some water because it was 100-something degrees. That’s ridiculous,” Hargrove’s father said in the video. “She was coming home to celebrate Father’s Day with me. It’s not right. It’s not right.”

This article originally appeared on Washington Post.