by Ryan Sabalow and Jeanne Kuang
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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.
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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.”
Hey no problem here. She is one one of the elite of the ONE PARTY SOCIALIST STATE IN CALIF.
You voted for them….”Laugh”