Latina lawmaker should take Sacramento Police to court over false accusations | Opinion
It was a relatively routine car crash that happened near the Capitol.
Sacramento Police had already cited the other driver for causing the accident, but now they needed to talk to the victim, who was now at the hospital: State Sen. Sabrina Cervantes, D-Riverside. That interview ended in her citation for suspected driving under the influence, a warrant and, ultimately, two clean DUI blood tests proving that the senator was completely innocent of the trumped up accusations made by police that day.
The Sacramento Police officers who responded to the minor traffic accident on May 19 involving Cervantes clearly misrepresented her to the public and in the recently released warrant application. They created headlines that damaged her political career and opened themselves up to questions of ethnically-profiling a Latina legislator.
Right now, in California, Latinos feel targeted by law enforcement for simply looking Latino. What happened to Cervantes in Sacramento is on the same spectrum as what’s happening to people of her community in California as a whole.
Cervantes was the victim of an accident, yet she was treated as a criminal. Her name will now forever be linked to a false DUI accusation.
While the city’s police department has refused to release any body camera footage or other reports, CalMatters obtained a copy of the search warrant that was filed with a judge authorizing police to perform a DUI blood test some hours after the incident.
Cervantes’ lawyer, San Francisco-based civil rights lawyer James Quadra, said he believes his client was singled out by the police for her ethnicity and sexual orientation, and was possibly the target of a political attack. (Cervantes is a prominent Latina Democrat, and is married to a woman.)
“The content of that application for a warrant is completely false,” Quadra said. “It contained information that has been proven to be false and there are lots of false statements about how she presented at the hospital.”
Quadra said Cervantes wanted to consult with Senate counsel after the accident and refused to take a second blood test until police obtained a warrant. They believe Sacramento Police used that request to persecute her, claiming she was using a stalling tactic even though she had a constitutional right to ask for a warrant first.
Cervantes eventually consented to the blood draw before a warrant was signed, but police waited until a judge approved the warrant to proceed.
“We believe it motivated them to try and fabricate a situation where they could find she was under the influence,” Quadra said, adding that he believes when the senator asked to call her wife, while being treated at the hospital, Sacramento police began to discriminate against Cervantes based on her sexual orientation.
“This (situation) was fabricated to hurt her politically and the information was improperly disseminated to affect her political career,” Quadra said. “Even if she was disoriented after a car accident, that would be normal. But she was conscious and able to answer questions and took a blood test. There was no indication that she did anything wrong, no traffic violation on her part.”
In his request for a search warrant to conduct a drug test, Sacramento Police Officer Kevin Lucas describes her as having “left the scene of the accident.” Lucas describes Cervantes as wearing “a black face mask and … large sunglasses” in the emergency waiting room to cover her face, then accuses her of having “difficulty standing,” “having an unsteady gait” and “appear(ing) to be drowsy” or “stumbling over her words.” Keep in mind that Cervantes was at the hospital after having just been T-boned at an intersection.
That scenario would heighten any average person’s anxiety and lead to unusual behavior.
Quadra said he believes Cervantes was unlawfully detained by police at the hospital and that her due process rights were violated by the Sacramento Police Department after she already submitted to a blood test.
“The content of that application for a warrant is completely false,” Quadra said, speaking on Cervantes’ behalf, whose office referred all questions about the incident to her lawyer. “It contained information that has been proven to be false and there are lots of false statements about how she presented at the hospital,” referring to the police’s claims of Cervantes having slurred speech, drowsiness or “unsteady gait” as evidence of her supposed intoxication.
Police spokesman Daniel Wiseman said in an email that “based on what the officers believed to be objective signs of impairment, they lawfully initiated a DUI investigation … and secured a warrant for a blood draw, which a judge authorized. The process was conducted respectfully, and the officers explained each step thoroughly.”
Cervantes and her lawyer dispute that she was treated respectfully.
“To say they didn’t know who she was, they obviously knew and referenced on the warrant that she wanted to reach out to Senate counsel.”
Moving forward
In the days after the blood tests came back clean, I called for Sacramento Police Chief Kathy Lester to apologize publicly to Cervantes. Obviously, Lester didn’t take my advice.
Now, however, I think the senator should sue the pants off the Sacramento Police Department and the city of Sacramento.
If a state senator is subjected to this kind of mistreatment by law enforcement, it’s difficult to imagine how many Sacramentans are harassed and unlawfully detained every day.
“This is not something we can stand by and allow to occur,” Quadra said. “She’s not going to be silenced.”
Personally, I look forward to seeing the Sacramento Police Department held accountable for their accusations, and as a Sacramentan, I am deeply embarrassed and regretful that anyone is, was — and likely will be forced to experience such treatment at the hands of my city’s police.
