This story demonstrates two things. First, if you call police to show up, there is a chance you could be the one who ends up in trouble, even if you did nothing wrong. A lot of people in the African American community already know this, and so do people in many Third World countries that have high levels of corruption and where ordinary people fear the police. Second, drinking out in public is often not a good idea and can be result in a risk of something bad happening, even if you are not drunk. I'm sure this woman was nowhere near intoxicated, but the police used the fact that she had been drinking as another excuse to be able to arrest her. I'm sure this woman would not have been arrested if the only issue had been the alcohol. The fact that the officer knew she had been drinking was just a compounding factor in this unexpected situation. Yessenia Garcia, in Scottsdale Arizona, had just been at a bar and was leaving. When she got to her car in the parking lot, she noticed that the front windshield had an impact circle of cracks from being bashed in. She called the police. When the police got there, they started interrogating her. That same night there had been another hit-and-run accidental car incident not too far from that location where someone had been killed. When police saw the impact area and cracks in the windshield, they suspected that this woman might have been the one responsible for that death. The fact that she had just been drinking alcohol did not help. The woman was arrested, based on suspicion that she may have been the one involved in the other incident where someone was accidentally killed. One of the officers at the scene claimed in his report that he noticed tiny pieces of broken glass shards on the woman's clothing. If this had been true, then it would have suggested that the woman's story was not true and that she had been in the car when the impact happened. However, it is likely that the officer was lying about this and just made this detail up so they could have a more solid reason to arrest her. A security video was later found that showed another random man get on top of the car in the parking lot and bash the front windshield, stomping it with his foot. The officer also arrested her for DUI (drunk under the influence). But she probably should not have qualified as drunk under the law, and she should not have been arrested for that. The officer was just using that as one more excuse and to be able to arrest her, because they did not have strong enough proof she was the hit-and-run driver from the other incident. She had told the officers she had just been drinking at a bar, and the officers could smell alcohol on her breath. Of course the fact that they knew she had been drinking was a major compounding factor that made them suspect she might have been the hit-and-run driver. This is how a lot of innocent people get thrown into jail, and then are just left there for more than a year, with no one actually bothering to do further investigation into the accusations. If that security video camera had not been there, to record another person bashing her car windshield, things might not have gone so well for this woman. She could have easily been forced into a plea bargain, had to spend years in prison, lost her right to drive for life. The woman and her boyfriend attempted to prove to officers Fay and Steel that they were in fact in the nightclub and that the car had not moved from where they originally parked it, but Officers Steel and Fay refused to listen to them and ignored a plethora of exculpatory evidence readily available to them at the scene which easily established that the woman and her boyfriend were telling the truth. For example, the woman and her boyfriend attempted to show the involved officers transaction receipts from their purchases at the nightclubs, they asked officers to go speak to the bouncers and security of the nightclubs where they were just at who would confirm their whereabouts earlier that evening, and pointed out that there were obviously numerous surveillance cameras surrounding the area of where the woman parked her vehicle and where the nightclubs where located, including surveillance inside of the nightclubs which would confirm their whereabouts. Further, the woman's friends, who she was with while inside of the nightclubs, also attempted to talk to involved officers to confirm that the woman was with them that evening and that she had not left the nightclub prior to returning to her car and finding the windshield vandalized. Following Garcia's arrest, she was "stripped nude and humiliated while at the jail, despite the involved officers, including Fay and Steel, knowing that there was never any glass on her clothing, including her shirt, and despite knowing that their statements to the woman were false regarding the existence of glass on her clothing, including her shirt. The woman spent the night in jail and was released the following day, only to see her mugshot circulating far and wide. A number of Scottsdale police officers were disciplined in the mistaken arrest of Yessenia Garcia in May 2020 in connection with a hit-and-run crash, the Scottsdale Police Department said. The department did not identify the officers disciplined, saying only that they received varying degrees of discipline, ranging from counseling to an unpaid 40-hour suspension and an unpaid 20-hour suspension. Garcia was held in jail for a night after her arrest on May 24, 2020, but was not charged. Video evidence later revealed that Garcia's car was parked at the time of the crash. Scottsdale Officers Disciplined In Mistaken Hit-And-Run Arrest | Scottsdale, AZ Patch
Do you have a source for this, or is it idle speculation? Before or after the lady's arrest? That would be either Driving Under the Influence or possibly drunk in public. Drunk in public is not a crime, but AZ cops can take you into protective custody for it. see above Source? So they did know she was drunk and she admits it. But that turned out not to be the case. The rest is supposition. Ever heard of preserving the chain of evidence? Following unlikely clues is how some crimes get solved. It turned out badly for this woman, but I bet the person who died is sorrier still.
She admitted to drinking, and had her windshield not been busted, she would have drove home drunk. She got what she deserved as far as the DUI goes....
Just because you have been drinking at a bar, that does not automatically make it a DUI. I doubt the woman would have called police to respond if she had been worried about being arrested for being drunk. She was also arrested outside the car. The car was not even running. I guess we cannot truly know the details, or know exactly how she appeared, but given the context of the story there is strong reason to guess that she did not actually drink enough to constitute being obviously drunk, and that she would not have been arrested if her windshield had not been smashed, which caused the officer to suspect her of being responsible for the other deadly hit-and-run incident that had taken place. It sounds like there is a high likelihood that officer just conveniently used the claim that she was drunk as an easily convenient excuse to have her arrested.
