A man claiming to be a police officer from Riverside, Calif., tackled what he thought was a burglar, only to learn the 17-year-old was jumping his own fence, according to a police report.
Officers were called to the 200 block of Pine Lane about 10:53 p.m. Monday after a neighbor heard one man yelling at another.
When Carson City deputies arrived, they found the man holding the teen on the ground.
The man said he was an off-duty Riverside police officer and he had observed the teen jump over a 6-foot fence into a yard on Pine Lane, according to the report.
The man said he confronted the teen, telling him he was an off-duty police officer and to stop. But the teen looked at the man in his shorts, baseball cap and sleeveless shirt, and continued walking away.
The alleged off-duty officer then grabbed the boy in an arm lock and "escorted him to the ground on his stomach," the report states. The man held the boy there until police arrived.
When deputies arrived the teen told officers he "didn't want to wake his dad, so he used the back door and jumped the fence."
The teen said when the guy told him to stop, "he thought he was joking based on what he looked like" and kept on walking. The teen denied any injuries and was free to leave.
The man was "given in-depth instructions to contact dispatch prior to acting in an official capacity in a different state," according to the report.
Sgt. Brian Humphrey said a call to the Riverside Police Department to confirm the man's employment was not immediately returned.