-- From Times staff reporter Christine Clarridge:

Seattle police have arrested a 52-year-old man on suspicion of a assault after he allegedly groped a woman and uttered racial epithets, according to a police report released Wednesday. The incident is also being investigated as a hate crime, police said.

According to police, the suspect, a transient, was loitering in the doorway of a woman's apartment in the 500 block of Maynard Avenue South on March 9 when she walked by him. The man allegedly grabbed her buttocks and called her a "big-butted white girl," police said. The man is black.

The 53-year-old woman later told police she felt violated and was frightened by the man's behavior and words. She went upstairs to tell her boyfriend what happened, according to the report.

The boyfriend and the victim went back downstairs to confront the man. This time, the man reached toward the woman with both hands and called her a racial epithet, according to police. The boyfriend then pushed the suspect to the ground and held him down for several minutes, according to the police report.

The man smelled strongly of alcohol when he was arrested, the report alleges. The arresting officer said the man was angry and yelled racial epithets at the white officer. The officer said he thought the man "was going to assault him, with a head butt or something." As the man was being escorted from the police car to the precinct his pants fell down and he tripped over them, according to the report.

According to Seattle Police Department spokesman Jeff Kappel, the combination of racial slurs and alleged assault qualifies the case as a "bias crime" or malicious harassment, the state's version of a hate crime. Kappel said the case has not yet been referred to prosecutors.