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A Democratic California senator is now considering suing Sacramento police for what she alleges was a “politically motivated” false DUI arrest intended to “silence” an LGBTQ Latina lawmaker, her attorney tells CalMatters.
Officers have insisted that they acted professionally, and they say they had evidence to believe Sen. Sabrina Cervantes was driving under the influence of drugs even though a blood test reportedly later proved otherwise.
Meanwhile, a Democratic district attorney insists that politics had nothing to do with his decision not to file charges.
Who’s telling the truth? At this point, the public has no way of corroborating anyone’s account.
That’s because authorities are refusing to release records such as body camera footage, police reports and search warrants that would shed light on what happened on May 19 when Sacramento police accused Cervantes, of Riverside, of driving under the influence following a crash a few blocks from the Capitol. She was exonerated nearly two weeks later, after prosecutors said no intoxicating substances were found in Cervantes’ blood.
It’s troubling that officials have refused to release records pertaining to a criminal investigation of an elected public official, said David Snyder, the executive director of the First Amendment Coalition. He said the records authorities are withholding could “shed light on whether she was being harassed or whether she was being treated deferentially.”
“There are a lot of different narratives flying around,” he said. “And in order to sort out those narratives, the public is entitled to see what the police know and what they believed at the time.”
Instead, the public is left with conflicting accounts of what happened after a driver allegedly ran through a stop sign and smashed into Cervantes’ state-owned car that Monday afternoon. Police cited the other driver for running the stop sign.
Conflicting accounts of Cervantes' treatment
After the crash, a Sacramento Police Department spokesperson told CalMatters that Cervantes was cited for suspicion of “driving a motor vehicle under the influence of a central nervous system depressant.”
When the Sacramento County district attorney announced last month that no charges would be filed, police released a second statement. In it, police claimed that when officers met Cervantes at a Sacramento hospital, they “observed objective signs that led them to believe she may have been impaired while operating a motor vehicle.”
“The officers remained professional throughout, taking time to explain the process and answer all of the senator’s questions,” the statement said.
Officers said Cervantes initially declined to participate with officers’ sobriety tests. So they asked a judge for a warrant for Cervantes to submit to a blood test and told Cervantes they had requested one.
“While the warrant was being written and processed, the senator agreed to voluntarily provide a blood sample,” police said. Officers opted to wait for a judge to sign the warrant before conducting the blood draw, police said.
The district attorney said prosecutors reviewed “all the submitted evidence, including police reports, witness statements, and laboratory results.”
“Based on our ethical duty and the burden of proof in a criminal trial, the Sacramento County DA’s Office declines to file any charges in this case,” Shelly Orio, a spokeswoman for the office, said in a May 30 email.
Cervantes maintained her innocence from the start and claimed police treated her harshly.
In a statement to reporters after police announced the DUI arrest, she said officers “accosted” her while she was being checked out at a hospital and that drug and alcohol tests would prove her sobriety.
Cervantes released heavily redacted records she said were from her hospital visit, in which a test showed a blood alcohol content of near zero. A separate urine test taken the day after the crash showed a clean drug screen.
Was senator targeted for race, sexual orientation?
On Tuesday, Cervantes’ San Francisco attorney, James Quadra, told CalMatters his client is considering filing a lawsuit alleging police violated her “state and federal rights, constitutional rights, civil rights, and to address defamatory statements made against her.”
Quadra said he and his client believe the Sacramento officers targeted Cervantes because of who she is.
“We believe they (police) were politically motivated because of how the information was disseminated (to the press), and the whole sort of picture of her being under the influence,” he said. “To our view, it’s to try to silence an active member of the Latino Democratic Caucus, of the LGBTQ+ caucus. They want to silence her voice.”
Quadra said officers at the hospital refused to let her call her attorney or her wife, and then after citing her for DUI, “leaked” the information about the case to reporters to smear her.
“It’s like a police state,” Quadra said. “It’s what we’re seeing across the country, especially with Latinos, and she’s a member of that community.”
Sacramento police spokesperson Sgt. Dan Wiseman said he couldn’t comment on Quadra’s allegations. The department declined to make Chief Katherine Lester available for an interview.
Officials reject CalMatters' record requests
The day after the crash, CalMatters reviewed footage from a nearby office building’s security camera that appears to show Cervantes wasn’t at fault.
The footage showed a white SUV rolling through a stop sign and careening into Cervantes’ black sedan at the intersection in midtown Sacramento. Cervantes appeared to have had the right-of-way.
CalMatters also filed requests under the California Public Records Act seeking body camera footage, police reports and the search warrant. A warrant would include investigators’ affidavits detailing to a judge why they believe they had probable cause to draw Cervantes’ blood.
A month later, the police department hasn’t released any of the records, saying the traffic collision remains under investigation, despite the district attorney clearing Cervantes and police citing the other driver. California police have broad discretion to withhold investigative records indefinitely and regardless of whether the investigation has concluded.
CalMatters also sought copies of the search warrant from Sacramento County Superior Court and the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office. The district attorney’s office cited the same exemption to the public records act that allows agencies to indefinitely withhold investigative records.
Wiseman said officers had returned the search warrant to the court, but when CalMatters asked for it at the courthouse Tuesday a Sacramento County Superior Court clerk said it wasn’t available.
Quadra, Cervantes’ attorney, said his client is “100% behind any and all records being released.”
“She is unafraid of that, because the records will clearly establish that she wasn’t under the influence of anything,” he said. “She was a victim of an accident. She was T-boned and taken to the hospital.”
DA denies 'partisanship' played a role
CalMatters also sought under the public records act correspondence between the District Attorney’s Office and California lawmakers that might show whether Cervantes or other influential political figures sought to influence the decision of District Attorney Thien Ho, who is also a Democrat.
The district attorney’s office replied that it had no relevant records. But the agency refused to release Ho’s appointment calendar for the month of May, saying it was confidential and that “the public interest served by not disclosing these outweighs the public interest served by disclosing them.” Other agencies routinely release appointment calendars of top officials.
Ho didn’t respond to an interview request through his spokesperson, replying instead with a brief emailed statement.
“Regarding your allegation of partisanship, we stand by our decision that no charges be filed since the lab results found no evidence of alcohol or drugs,” the statement said.
Snyder, of the First Amendment Coalition, said the public should be troubled by the secrecy surrounding the case.
“The public,” he said, “is entitled to know whether the police are applying the law even-handedly, or whether they’re creating exceptions based on who the person at issue is.”
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
