Fuck the police. Hope she breaks them.

Firstly, the government claim that Sen. Cervantes filed against the City of Sacramento, being the entity responsible for the conduct of Sac PD: https://iecn.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Cervantes-Claim-Form.pdf

In terms of procedure, as the article explains, seeking redress from the government (ie the state, but also every political subdivision like a county, city, or special district) first requires filing a claim with that government entity. Unlike any person or corporate entity, government entities have sovereign immunity, and the only way for courts to have jurisdiction is to follow this procedure, as described by law. To my knowledge, no state has ever removed this first pre-lawsuit step.

The claim gives the government entity a chance to pay up, prior to going through the lawsuit process. However, such claims are almost universally rejected by the entity, not necessary on the merits of the claim but because it is a binary decision, to give in to all demands by the claimant, or go to court and have a judge or jury reach a more balanced result. The government almost always chooses the latter.

Upon rejection – which the entity must do within a specified timeframe – it’s now permissible to file a lawsuit, usually in the state court. This would be a civil lawsuit and would seek money compensation for the wrongs outlined in the lawsuit. Note: there are special rules about what causes of action (ie reasons) that can be filed, often limited by only to those claims made prior to receiving the claim denial.

For that reason, it is expected and customary to file a very broad claim, have it rejected, and then file a lawsuit with more tailored causes of action. As the lawsuit proceeds, it would enter the “discovery” phase, which means Sac City lawyers get a chance to probe Sen Cervantes and her lawyers for info, and likewise, her lawyers get to probe Sac City and Sac PD for videos, testimony, and other forms of evidence.

Since her claims center around a DUI charge which was improper, her lawyers would want to identify: 1) was any any reason at all for any officer to think she was under the influence?, 2) were those reasons improper?, 3) was there any evidence that would have cleared her of DUI but was wrongfully ignored?, 4) after the arrest, was there any collusion or witness-tampering within Sac PD to cover-up any of the above?

The rules on discovery mean that not everything that is found by her lawyers can be released to the public. After all, some stuff will be wholly irrelevant to the lawsuit and the judge (who reviews requests for discovery before ordering the other party to comply) would not allow their gratuitous release. But if the case actually goes to trial, then all evidence from the trial would be open, except for anything deemed sensitive enough by the judge to be kept under seal.

So that’s the process, and it could be months to years to wrap up discovery, especially if Sac City is dragging their feet. But how about the merits of Sen Cervantes’s claims?

Firstly, we should note that although sworn police officers in California can issue citations for criminal offenses, it is always up to the District Attorney of the county to decide whether to follow-through with a criminal trial against someone. In this case, the Sac County DA declined to go to trial, which dismisses the citation and criminal case against her now and forever. This isn’t a result of the Double Jeopardy clause, but rather comes from the Due Process clause: if a prosecutor announced that they won’t charge someone, they cannot later change their mind because it’s unfair for someone to remain in perpetual fear that the prosecutor could change their mind later.

So she is not in any criminal peril, but since she believes that this whole rigmarole was retaliatory, she initiates a claim (and probably a future lawsuit) against Sac City. Her claims allege certain improper actions, such as:

• Malicious prosecution, meaning Sac PD opened a criminal citation with zero reason for doing so
• Selective prosecution, meaning Sac PD charged her for something which they wouldn’t have charged someone in a similar situation
• False arrest, meaning they stopped and briefly arrested her but did not have probable cause to do so at the time, irrespective of whether future evidence proves it one way or another
• Lying under oath, meaning some officers falsified certain declarations that they needed to make in order to proceed with investigating and citing her
• Defamation, meaning Sac PD made statements to the press that are provably false and also damaged her reputation, while also knowing that those statements are false. Or not necessarily being certain but still choosing to disregard a real possibility of the statements being false

She may have other causes of actions in her future lawsuit, but we’ll just have to see. Of these, malicious prosecution and lying under oath might be the easier ones to prove, because her lawyers just need to show that zero shreds of evidence pointed to wrongdoing on the Senator’s part. That is, if she passed a field sobriety test, a breathalyzer, and not one officer actually came forward and said that she had any symptoms of DUI, then she would win malicious prosecution. That said, for there to be zero evidence against her would be extremely flagrant behavior by Sac PD, and in almost all cases, there’s going to be some officer that says “from my training, I believed she may have been under the influence”. And while that’s basically a “trust me, bro” type of evidence on its own, it does mean there was a non-zero amount of evidence, and so it’s no slam dunk. Lying under oath is also easy to find, since it’s a comparison of what’s written down versus what actually happened. But there may be ways to weasel out of that charge.

A moderately-strong claim is the lack of probable cause, which can be proven if all the evidence at the time – even any supposed lies – would not have supported the issuance of a warrant or the initial stop and her brief arrest. This is similar to the criteria for malicious prosecution, but I rank it as only moderately strong because it is not disallowed to seek a warrant even if someone is already complying.

A judge – based on reviewing initial evidence obtained by officers – can make a probable cause or evidentiary determination in parallel with seeking someone’s voluntary compliance. The idea is that if someone declined to volunteer evidence but the judge approves the warrant, then the arrest can continue. But if someone does volunteer evidence, having the warrant means that the person doesn’t have the option to later withdraw their consent. If something is voluntary, it can also be withdrawn at any time, and that may include walking straight out of a police station. An arrest warrant means that person cannot rescind consent.

Finally, the weakest claim will probably be the defamation claim. It’s not that she can’t prevail on this, but defamation is notoriously hard to prove properly. It isn’t enough that false things were said, but rather, the motive for saying those things also needs to be examined. It is permissible Sac PD to say “Sen Cervantes was cited for DUI” because that did happen – Sac PD is the one who carried it out, after all – but we now know from the DA’s statement that no drugs were found in her blood, so Sac PD was wrong to say “Sen Cervantes drove a car while under the influence”.

The distinction is that the latter asserts something about her (that is, driving under the influence) and not about something which happened to her (ie received a criminal citation). Anyone can receive a traffic violation and then fight it in court. But when a government entity is using their press podium to spread lies about someone, that’s when defamation becomes viable.

But still, the problem is to show how much her reputation was wrecked by Sac PD’s statements, since even being involved in a traffic collision is already a reputational hit. The other problem is whether Sac PD had reason to believe that she did, in fact, drive a motor vehicle while under the influence.

For defamation, she carries the burden of proof to show that Sac PD was reckless with facts, or that they intentionally spread lies even when they knew the truth. A smoking gun would be if an officer comes forward to say that she was going to be released from the traffic stop, until they received “orders from above” to fake the evidence and arrest her.

The other problem is that the burden of proof is higher, because she is a public figure, being a politician in the state of California. To prevent critics from being sued by politicians, the “actual malice” standard might mean her lawyers have a harder time proving this.

Still, she has a number of legal avenues to pursue and it’s likely this won’t so easily end, but also won’t be cheap either. Winning any of her claims in a lawsuit likely would result in being awarded hundreds of thousands, or even the low millions of dollars.