SACRAMENTO — A Riverside County lawmaker accused of driving drunk after a automotive crash, however cleared by a blood check, took step one Monday towards suing the Sacramento Police Division, saying officers had tarnished her popularity.
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 expenses after the toxicology outcomes of a blood check revealed no “measurable quantity of alcohol or medication.”
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 girl driver who ran a cease signal and broadsided her automotive.
“This isn’t solely about what occurred to me — it’s about accountability,” Cervantes stated in a ready assertion. “No Californian must 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 mistaken. 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 popularity of an exemplary member of the state Senate,” and that the division’s “egregious misconduct” contains 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 advised reporters that that they had “noticed goal indicators of intoxication” after talking to Cervantes on the hospital. She stated in her submitting that the police had requested her to conduct a check gauging her eyes’ response to stimulus, a “much less correct and subjective check” than the blood check she requested.
The toxicology display screen had “utterly exonerated” Cervantes, the submitting stated, however the police division had already “launched false data to the press claiming that Senator Cervantes had pushed whereas below the affect of medication.”
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 supply physique digital camera footage from a sergeant who additionally got here to the hospital.
