SACRAMENTO — A Riverside County lawmaker accused of driving drunk after a automobile crash, however cleared by a blood take a look at, took step one Monday towards suing the Sacramento Police Division, saying officers had tarnished her fame.
After Sen. Sabrina Cervantes (D-Riverside) was broadsided by an SUV close to the Capitol in Might, Sacramento police interviewed the 37-year-old lawmaker for hours at a Kaiser Permanente hospital earlier than citing her on suspicion of driving below the affect. Prosecutors declined to file costs after the toxicology outcomes of a blood take a look at revealed no “measurable quantity of alcohol or medicine.”
In an 11-page submitting Monday, Cervantes alleged that officers had retaliated towards her over a invoice that may sharply curtail how police can retailer information gathered by automated license plate readers, a proposal opposed by greater than a dozen regulation enforcement companies.
The submitting additionally alleges that the police handled Cervantes, who’s homosexual and Latina, in a different way than the white lady driver who ran a cease signal and broadsided her automobile.
“This isn’t solely about what occurred to me — it’s about accountability,” Cervantes stated in a ready assertion. “No Californian needs to be falsely arrested, defamed, or retaliated towards due to who they’re or what they stand for.”
Cervantes, a first-year state senator, has stated for the reason that crash that she did nothing unsuitable. She represents the thirty first Senate District, which covers parts of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, and chairs the Senate elections committee.
Cervantes’ lawyer, James Quadra, stated the Sacramento police had tried to “destroy the fame of an exemplary member of the state Senate,” and that the division’s “egregious misconduct” consists of false arrest, intentional infliction of emotional misery and defamation.
A consultant for the Sacramento Police Division declined to remark, citing pending litigation.
After information broke of the crash, the Sacramento Police Division instructed reporters that they’d “noticed goal indicators of intoxication” after chatting with Cervantes on the hospital. She stated in her submitting that the police had requested her to conduct a take a look at gauging her eyes’ response to stimulus, a “much less correct and subjective take a look at” than the blood take a look at she requested.
The toxicology display had “utterly exonerated” Cervantes, the submitting stated, however the police division had already “launched false info to the press claiming that Senator Cervantes had pushed whereas below the affect of medicine.”
The submitting alleges that one police officer turned off his physique digital camera for about 5 minutes whereas answering a name on his mobile phone. The submitting additionally stated that the division failed to provide physique digital camera footage from a sergeant who additionally got here to the hospital.
