By Mark Gutglueck
The Sacramento Police Department’s arrest of State Senator Sabrina Cervantes on suspicion of driving under the influence charges along with misrepresentations on affidavits and reports filed in conjunction with the case have brought under scrutiny the substantial license law enforcement officers are given in how they are to approach investigations and what they are allowed to put into and keep out of their reports.
On May 19 at around 1 p.m.. less than an hour before she was due to be on the floor of the upper house of the state legislature, Cervantes was driving in a state-owned black Toyota Camry sedan east on S Street in midtown Sacramento roughly seven blocks south of the Capitol building when a white Ford Explorer headed north on 14th Street that had been stopped at the stop sign there pulled into the intersection just before Cervantes entered it. Despite Cervantes’ leftward move to avoid a collision as she drove with the right-of-way at about 35 miles per hour through the intersection, the SUV collided with the right side of Cervantes’ sedan.
Both drivers stopped and remained at the scene, Cervantes’ car at the left side of S Street and the other driver near the northeast corner of the intersection. Cervantes and the other driver had what most sources agree was an approximately three-minute exchange during which they identified themselves and satisfied each other that neither party was seriously injured. Thereafter, Cervantes contacted her office. Both her chief of staff, Cesar Anda, and the fleet manager for the California Senate, Alex Cruz, responded to the scene. Cruz provided the other driver with the full range of registration and insurance information required under California law following a traffic collision. Cruz gave Cervantes another state-owned vehicle and Anda then drove her to the Kaiser Hospital in Sacramento.
The driver of the other vehicle remained at the scene of the accident, waiting for a tow truck, at which point Sacramento Police arrived. The driver was interviewed by Officer Dan Williams, who conducted an interview while the driver remained in her vehicle. During that brief contact, the driver was unable to produce for the officer either her driver’s license or proof of insurance. That driver was cleared to leave after responding that she had not had anything alcoholic to drink.
A short time later, Williams and another officer, Bailey Tye Foster, arrived at the Kaiser Hospital, where they found Senator Cervantes in the emergency room waiting area.
As a consequence of their interaction with her, they concluded Cervantes was possibly intoxicated and Williams requested that she undergo a “horizontal gaze” field sobriety test. She declined, offering instead to submit to an on-the-spot drawing of a blood sample, given that they were at a hospital. In doing so, Cervantes insisted upon making a phone call to the State Senate’s legal counsel to confirm her belief that it would be best for her and all concerned to rely upon the more accurate and objective blood analysis than the subjective and less-accurate evaluation of her eye response to a moving object. Williams resolved to go forward with taking a blood sample from Cervantes based upon a warrant, despite his observation that he could not detect an odor of alcohol on her breath and that Cervantes was willing to provide, voluntarily, a blood sample.
Williams and Foster conveyed their intentions to police headquarters, whereupon Officer Kevin Lucas authored an affidavit to obtain a search warrant. Somewhat ironically, the department’s insistence on going the route of obtaining a warrant for the blood draw delayed until 6:10 p.m. the taking of the blood sample which could have been drawn several hours earlier if the police had acceded to Cervantes’ suggestion that she voluntarily provide the blood sample to be drawn by the hospital’s medical professionals.
The Sacramento Police officers, without having the benefit of the results from the blood analysis, issued Cervantes a driving under the influence citation, although curiously, they did not arrest Cervantes by taking her into custody and booking her at the jail. Instead, they cite-released her.
Virtually immediately, even as the final touches were being put on the citation report that was forwarded to the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office for prosecution, the Sacramento Police Department put out a statement that Cervantes had been cited under a California statute that prohibits driving under the influence of “any drug,” including prescription or over-the-counter medications that might impair a driver’s ability to operate a motor vehicle.
“Senator Cervantes was cited for suspicion of driving a motor vehicle under the influence of a central nervous system depressant,” the department promulgated, emphasizing that at the hospital to which Cervantes had been taken, police officers “observed objective signs of intoxication and conducted a DUI investigation.”
Subsequently, Williams contacted the driver of the other vehicle involved in the accident, seeking statements from her which could shore up the accusation that Cervantes was impaired at the time of the accident. In the course of that phone call, the officer acknowledged, “Part of my follow-up with this entire thing is because there is body camera footage, you know, of us and things that are written in the report that are slightly different.”
The best that Williams was able to extract during the exchange is when he asked the woman, “So, what was her demeanor like when you were interacting with her?” and the woman responded, “So, she was, um, spacey. She seemed like, and I didn’t know – everyone’s fight or flight response is totally different – um, so I thought maybe she was just like shaken up.”
At some point, which is not clear from the publicly available documentation, the results from the blood analysis showing that there was neither alcohol nor other intoxicants in Cervantes’ system became available. Nevertheless, either before the results of the test were available or afterward, officers with the Sacramento Police Department opted to double down on the citation issued to the state senator. A filing was made to the California Department of Motor Vehicles to inform it of Cervantes’ citation, which would potentially, pursuant to a finding that the citation was based upon valid criteria and proof, lead to the suspension of her driver license. Williams provided a sworn statement to the Department of Motor Vehicles that Cervantes had refused to take a chemical test to determine her blood alcohol level. Such a refusal as alleged would constitute a violation of California Vehicle Code Section 23612.
Beset with the allegations against her being processed through two forums, one judicial and one administrative, Cervantes retained legal counsel to represent her and make a presentation of not only countervailing information but the known exculpatory evidence which the police department was withholding from the prosecutorial and administrative record.
That there was some problem with the case against Cervantes was perhaps first given indication when news organizations both with and without citation of the California Public Records Act sought from the police department evidence, including video footage and test results, that would establish the senator was in fact driving under the influence during the May 19 incident. Uniformly, both with media outlets that were on poor terms with the police department and ones with a far better relationship, including ones which had unquestioningly published the initial reports of Cervantes’ arrest, the police department refused to disgorge anything, claiming that doing so would, variously, compromise an ongoing investigation or the prosecution. This presaged a shift in public perception, as it raised questions about why the department had issued the citation if it was yet involved in investigating the circumstances relating to the crime.
Upon receiving the results of the toxicology analysis of the blood drawn from Senator Cervantes that showed there were no drugs or alcohol in her system, the Sacramento County District Attorney’s office declined to file any criminal charges against her. In the same timeframe, Cervantes’ legal team was able to obtain footage from officers Williams’ and Foster’s bodyworn cameras in which the audio demonstrated that Cervantes had twice consented to having her blood drawn, directly contradicting Williams’ sworn statement in the affidavit in support of the request for the issuance of the warrant to draw her blood to determine if she had been driving under the influence. That footage along with the results of the blood analysis was provided to the Department of Motor Vehicles, which then concluded the police department’s effort to cancel her driver’s license in her favor.
Ultimately, Cervantes and her attorney, James Quadra, resolved to file a claim for damages against the Sacramento Police Department for having defamed her with the false allegations of driving under the influence of drugs, thereby damaging her reputation. Under California law,  Cervantes will have six months to file a lawsuit against the City of Sacramento, its police department and the responsible parties once the city rejects the claim or two years from the date of the driving under the influence citation to file suit if the city does not respond to the claim.
This week, Quadra and Cervantes followed up with the release of a 14 minute and 53 second video which combines multiple video camera passages, including footage from a security camera for a business located at the southwest corner of S and 14th streets in Sacramento which captured the moving images of the May 19 vehicular accident, as well as video footage from officers Williams’ and Foster’s bodyworn cameras in their interaction with Cervantes that afternoon. The security video obtained from the business located at the corner of S Street and 14th Street clearly shows that it was the driver of the car that T-boned Cervantes in the intersection who was at fault in the mishap, and that Cervantes was moving through the intersection with the right-of-way at a safe speed and had, in fact, moved into the oncoming westbound lane in an effort to avoid the collision. The videos from the officers’ bodyworn cameras taken at the hospital show Cervantes was not walking with an unsteady gait. The audio passages from those videos unequivocally demonstrate that Cervantes was not slurring her speech while conversing with the officers and that she had not once but twice consented to having her blood drawn.
The passages on the video, taken together with the recitation of facts in Cervantes’ claim lay out the case that the Sacramento Police Department, or a subset of it, not only made a series of provably false accusations against her in seeking to obtain the warrant to draw her blood but did so in bad faith, knowing the accusations to be untrue. Moreover, according to the claim and the documents filed in support of it, the officers involved violated multiple laws in pursuing the case against Cervantes, repeatedly engaging in perjury along the way.
At the heart of the matter is the reality that police officers have tremendous license in how they are to approach investigations and what they are allowed to put into and keep out of their reports. That discretion represents a tremendous degree of power, or potential power. Society in general and the California legislature has vested that authority in law enforcement personnel because of the belief that if used judiciously and wisely, in the hands of a competent and honest officer of the law, that discretion can be of benefit, perhaps monumental benefit, to the community or society as a whole. In pursuing the claim he has made on behalf of Cervantes, Quadra is intent on establishing that such discretion can prove devastatingly destructive to the victims of the incompetent or corrupt wielding of that power.
While Senator Cervantes, it now appears, will likely emerge from the circumstance growing out of the events of May 19 intact and with her reputation eventually restored, it is far less likely that an average citizen, who does not have the status of being an elected official or the advantage of having a powerful lawyer to stand up for him or her, would be able to come through an incident unscathed when law enforcement officers deliberately conspire to manufacture inculpatory evidence that doesn’t actually exist against him or her while hiding exculpatory evidence. For that reason, there are elements of the California populace who believe that the officers who appeared to have abused the discretion entrusted to them in their dealing with Senator Cervantes should not remain at liberty to exercise that discretion in the future.
In his complaint filed on behalf of Cervantes, Quadra names as principals Officers Williams and Foster, who encountered, confronted and questioned Senator Cervantes on May 19 and carried out an investigation into the accident that day and thereafter; Officer Lucas, who authored the affidavit to obtain the warrant to force Cervantes to submit to providing a blood sample; and Sergeant Kristen Beal, who oversaw Williams, Foster and Lucas in their handling of the Cervantes case.
According to Quadra, Cervantes was the victim of a “false arrest.”
In the narrative of the events of May 19 contained in the complaint, Officer Williams arrived knowing that the accident involved Senator Cervantes, and was apparently gunning to use it as a means of harming the Senator and her reputation. Williams discovered early that Cervantes was not at fault in the accident, according to Quadra, in that an examination of the “vehicles show[ed] that the other driver had t-boned Senator Cervantes’ vehicle after entering an intersection where the driver had a stop sign and Senator Cervantes had the right of way.” Nevertheless, according to Quadra, Officer Williams treated the other driver with kid gloves, treating her as if she was not the party at fault. “He did not ask her to exit the vehicle to check her gait/balance and did not get close enough to detect if there was alcohol on her breath,” Quadra’s narrative states. “He did not ask to speak to her privately. He did not question her obviously false story about entering the intersection lawfully. He did not immediately cite her for failing to produce a driver’s license in violation of California Vehicle Code Section 12951. He did not ask her to submit to any sobriety tests, and asked minimal questions in a leading way designed to help her (e.g., ‘No alcohol today, right?’).
In contrast, according to Quadra, Williams was angling from the outset to implicate her in driving under the influence.
Williams, according to Quadra assumed the worst about Cervantes, and shortly after locating her at the hospital “asked Senator Cervantes, ‘Had you been drinking?’ Senator Cervantes responded that she had not. Senator Cervantes also responded to questions about her injuries. During the interview by Officer Williams, Senator Cervantes remained standing despite being in pain from the accident. Officer Williams admitted that Senator Cervantes was not at fault for the accident but nevertheless requested that she submit to a subjective sobriety test. Rather than accept Senator Cervantes’ offer of having the hospital provide test results to the police officers, Officer Williams responded that they could not accept the hospital’s test result because they are protected by Senator Cervantes’ privacy rights. Obviously, Senator Cervantes was able to consent to disclosure of drug and alcohol tests (which the hospital performed, and which were negative), but Officer Williams and Officer Foster wanted to perform their less accurate and subjective test instead of accepting the chemical tests performed by the hospital.”
Despite encountering evidence and other indicators that Cervantes was sober, Quadra said, Williams insisted upon pressing forth with his erroneous theory that Cervantes was intoxicated.
“Officer Williams’ initial interview of Senator Cervantes lasted approximately 10 minutes,” according to Quadra. “She did not slur her words, walk with an unsteady gait, smell of alcohol, or have any indicators of being under the influence. She was suffering from a spine injury, which resulted in moving with care, but she did not sway, stumble, weave back and forth as she walked down a long hallway from the emergency room waiting area to be interviewed, or give any other indicator of being under the influence.”
Similarly, according to Quadra, Officer Foster mischaracterized Cervantes condition and “falsely stated that Senator Cervantes was slurring her words.”
Both Williams and Foster utilized the description Cervantes gave to them about her car ending up on the north side of S Street facing oncoming traffic after the accident to suggest she was inebriated, Quadra noted. In actuality, according to Quadra, when Cervantes departed to the hospital with her chief of staff, Cesar Anda, the car was where she had described it as being. It was only after she was en route to the hospital and when the Sacramento police had arrived that the car was towed the slight distance westward and then next to the curb on 14th Street, completely unbeknownst to Cervantes. Williams and Foster knew this to be the case and disingenuously and corruptly exploited this discrepancy to insinuate that she was intoxicated, according to Quadra.
While he was yet at the hospital, according to Quadra, in a phone conversation to a sergeant with the department, Foster “made additional false statements, including stating that Senator Cervantes’ ‘story’ did not ‘add up,’ because of where the state vehicle was found parked after the accident, even though Officer Foster had been present when Senator Cervantes’ chief of staff explained that the state car was parked on S Street when he arrived on the scene, and even though neither Officer Foster nor Officer Williams ever asked anyone if the vehicle had been moved after Senator Cervantes left for the hospital.”
In addition, according to Quadra, Foster connived to implicate Cervantes by manipulating evidence, but doing so in a way that could not be documented.
“Officer Foster appeared to turn off his body camera, resulting in a gap in bodycam footage of approximately five minutes,” according to Quadra. “Turning off his body camera was a violation of Sacramento Police Department’s General Order 525.07, which states in part, “Once their BWC [bodyworn camera] is activated, employees shall not deactivate their BWCs until the investigative or enforcement activity has concluded.”
The falsification of evidence against Cervantes by the Sacramento Police Department, according to Quadra, was compartmentalized among several of its members.
“The affidavit in support of the warrant was signed under oath by Police Officer Kevin Lucas, and falsely claimed there was probable cause for a blood draw warrant because of supposed ‘slurred speech,’ ‘slow speech,’ and ‘unsteady feet,’” Quadra noted. The lawyer stated that Lucas claimed “when Senator Cervantes walked from the waiting room to a private room to be interviewed by the police officers, that she had an ‘unsteady gait’ and ‘appeared to be drowsy while speaking to Sacramento Police officers.’ Outrageously, the warrant affidavit referenced Senator Cervantes’ declining to undergo a subjective sobriety test by the officers as part of the reason for the alleged ‘probable cause,’ even though Officer Williams repeatedly admitted to Senator Cervantes that it was her absolute right to refuse the test, and that it was purely voluntary. The warrant affidavit also falsely stated that Senator Cervantes had refused to submit to a blood test. Based on the false information in the warrant affidavit submitted to the Sacramento Superior Court under penalty of perjury, the court issued the warrant.”
A succession of perjuries were perpetrated in the effort to frame Cervantes, Quadra maintained.
“At some point after Senator Cervantes’ blood was drawn, Officer Williams completed a false statement under penalty of perjury, which the Sacramento Police Department transmitted to the Department of Motor Vehicles. The statement falsely asserted that Senator Cervantes had refused to complete a chemical test after her arrest in violation of California Vehicle Code Section 23612, and that Senator Cervantes had refused to state what time she stopped driving. Because of this false report, Senator Cervantes’ driver’s license would have been suspended or revoked. Senator Cervantes was forced to retain counsel to demonstrate to the Department of Motor Vehicles [DMV] that Officer Williams’ sworn statement to DMV that Senator Cervantes committed a ‘violation’ through a ‘chemical test refusal’ was false. The DMV’s hearing officer reviewed the evidence provided by Senator Cervantes’ counsel, including irrefutable body cam footage showing that Senator Cervantes did not violate any law, and set aside the order that would have suspended her driver’s license.”
Quadra continued, “Sacramento police violated Senator Cervantes’ rights under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and Article I, Section 13 of the California Constitution unreasonable searches and seizures by detaining and arresting Senator Cervantes without probable cause and by conducting a blood test by obtaining a warrant without probable cause. Sacramento Police violated Penal Code §236 by detaining Senator Cervantes without reasonable suspicion or probable cause. Sacramento Police violated Penal Code §836 by arresting Senator Cervantes without probable cause. Sacramento Police violated Penal Code §1525 by obtaining a warrant and conducting a blood test of Senator Cervantes without probable cause. Sacramento Police violated Penal Code Penal Code §118.1 by intentionally and knowingly including false information in the police report relating to Senator Cervantes’ false arrest. Sacramento police violated Penal Code §118 by knowingly submitting false statements under oath to the Sacramento Superior Court and the California Department of Motor Vehicles.”
According to Quadra, officers with the Sacramento Police Department violated the Bane Act which prohibits an individual from “interfering” or “attempting to interfere by threat, intimidation, or coercion,” with the exercise or enjoyment of a constitutional or other right under California or federal law.” Quadra maintains this was done when Williams, Foster and Lucas, under the supervision of Beal, knowingly submitting false statements under oath in violation of Penal Code §118 to the Sacramento Superior Court to obtain a warrant without probable cause. In addition, Sacramento police officers violated the Bane Act, according to Quadra, when they knowingly submitting false statements under oath to the California Department of Vehicles (DMV) inaccurately claiming that Senator Cervantes had violated California Vehicle Code Section 23612.
According to Quadra, the involved officers and the City of Sacramento is open for Cervantes’ claim for false imprisonment in that the Sacramento police officers who were involved in her citation “lacked reasonable suspicion to detain or probable cause to arrest Senator Cervantes.” He cited Williams’ statement heard on the audio portion of a video captured on his bodyworn camera while he was at the hospital while he was talking to someone at the police station via cellphone. “If I had to make a wild guess, there is a possibility I have a reasonable suspicion she has something on board,” Williams said, using a roundabout and unconventional way of indicating Cervantes had imbibed some order of drug or intoxicant. His use of the qualifying phraseology embodied in the word “possibility” is proof, according to Quadra, that there was no probable cause to justify the action specified in the warrant.
“Senator Cervantes’ blood test confirmed no alcohol or drugs in her system,” Quadra asserted.
Quadra in the claim noted that the police had implied that Senator Cervantes had acted suspiciously when she called for assistance while still in her vehicle, that her briefcase had been removed from the vehicle after the accident and that she was wearing a cap and sunglasses at the hospital.
Quadra pointed out that the other driver had likewise remained in her vehicle while on the phone after the accident. He stated that Cervantes had donned the sunglasses and hat while in the hospital waiting room to “protect her privacy.”
Quadra hinted at a conspiracy within the department to hide even more damning evidence. When requests were made for Sergeant Beal’s body camera footage relating to the Cervantes matter, the department stonewalled and produced nothing, he stated.
In the claim, Quadra advanced theories as to why the Sacramento Police Department was hostile to Cervantes. “Claimant alleges that her false detention and arrest were motivated in retaliation of her political views… [and] were motivated in part by animus due to her ethnic background and sexual orientation.” The claim covers that before being elected to the California Senate, Cervantes “was the first openly LGBTQ+ [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, queer] Latina to represent her district” and that she “introduced State Bill 274 to curb potential abuses associated with use of automated license plate reader (ALPR) systems. While ALPR technology can be a useful law enforcement tool, it poses serious risks to privacy when misused.” Quadra referenced a 2020 audit revealing “ALPR data was being misused across our state. Law enforcement agencies throughout the state and their associations, such as the California Police Chiefs Association, oppose California SB 274, arguing it would hinder their ability to solve crimes. Sacramento Police Chief Kathy Lester is a member of the California Police Chiefs Association.”
There have been suggestions that misidentification and an erroneous association might be at the root of the senator’s experience earlier this year.
A female officer with the Sacramento Police Department, Alejandra Gutierrez-Cervantes, is higher paid than both of the police officers who investigated the traffic accident involving Senator Cervantes. Gutierrez-Cervantes, according to the most recently available complete payroll information, received  $203,280.99 in total annual compensation in 2024, including a base salary of $99,407, which was marginally higher than Foster’s total annual compensation of $203,128.40 with its base salary of $89,798, and substantially more than Williams’ 2024 total annual compensation of $167,098.47, with its base salary of $96,085.
The department declined to make any statement with regard to the matter involving Senator Cervantes, including the inconsistencies in the manner in which she was treated vis-à-vis the other driver, the discrepancies between what was captured on the bodyworn camera videos and what was written in the reports and affidavit for the warrant, Quarta’s allegations of perjury and other criminal acts on the part of the department’s officers, Quarta’s accusation of bias toward the senator and the reports of rivalries among members of the department that may or may not have had an impact on the outcome of the department’s investigation of the accident.
By press time, Quadra had not responded to the Sentinel’s inquiry as to whether complaints relating to the criminal conduct he had alleged in the claim he filed on behalf of Senator Cervantes had been lodged with the Sacramento District Attorney’s Office or the California Attorney General’s Office.