Arizona cops frame lady to cover-up hit-and-run by drunken Cop

[Scottsdale Citizen]

https://www.abc15.com/news/local-news/investigations/i-want-to-clear-my-
name-woman-speaks-out-after-being-falsely-accused-by-scottsdale-police
https://www.ibtimes.com/woman-accused-hit-run-reportedly-vindicated-
police-open-internal-affairs-3273489
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-arizona-driver-yessenia-
garcia-cleared-20210810-axd67en5ojefpjdmp6zdssuz3a-story.html
https://patch.com/arizona/scottsdale/hit-run-false-arrest-wish-grante
https://www.azfamily.com/news/suspected-dui-driver-accused-of-hitting-
assault-suspect-running-from-scene-in-scottsdale/article_54a79d58-9ebf-
11ea-8f8e-07fe64f8a7e4.html
https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7b5pm/police-arizona-yessenia-garcia-
lawsuit-hit-and-run

First read the press reports above which are mostly accurate but very
incomplete.

The victim of police corruption, Yessenia Garcia, still hasn't figured
out the why of what happened to her.

You might first think that the arresting cops were merely:

Stupid -
ignoring proffered proof of innocence, failing to question themselves
why the perpetrator would be the one to approach cops about the
windscreen and ignoring the cop-found CCTV which exonerated the accused,
not only showing how her car's windscreen was really damaged but also
that the car was never out of cctv cover for more than 40 seconds,

and Liars -
inventing "warm hood", "glass on dress" and "car/driver identified by
eye-witnesses",

and Bullies -
intimidating and threatening the innocent woman and being violent to her
even though she and her friend offered them no resistance only shocked
surprise, exactly as wholly innocent persons would.

But cops who are Stupid, Liars and Bullies are normal and expected.

Here in Arizona it's a hard and fast rule they've gotta be all three or
they flunk Pig School.

This case is much worse than just that, which is why IA (Internal
Affairs) didn't touch it till they were forced to a couple of days ago,
14 months too late, so the trail is all stale.

This is what really happened in May 2020. I know this because a friend
of mine works for Scottsdale PD and told me and others this while he was
dead-drunk (!) earlier this year. Many people know the story so I don't
feel that exposed by recounting this.


What Really Happened

Old Town, Scottsdale AZ, late on 5/24/2020. Dark. Dry, usual for AZ.

Off-duty cop, "R", drunk-driving, has a front-end collision with a
jaywalker who coincidentally was a suspect in another crime.

R drives off without ascertaining the pedestrian's injuries or calling
911 or even stopping at all.

R's car sustains major damage to windscreen and minor damage to hood.

To give himself time to get the car fixed, off-duty cop "R" uses his
cellphone while driving away from the scene of the crime to call the son
of a friend (neither of them cops) to find a similar-looking car parked
in the vicinity of the hit-and-run, but not overlooked, and to
immediately damage its hood and windscreen without leaving fingerprints.

This secondary crime gets committed within fifteen minutes, the car
chosen happening to be the one owned by Yessenia Garcia, a Hispanic lady
in her mid-thirties, parked in a quiet yard merely 500 yards from the
scene of the hit and run but on a different block and street.

Unknown to these criminals, the vandalism and intended framing got
captured on private CCTV.

At least one of the arresting cops knew of the framing at the time of
the arrest and Yessenia would have been picked up as soon as tried to
get the windscreen changed, all local repair centers would be told to
report windscreen damage to Scottsdale PD. By that time, the cops would
have any loose ends tied-up, and any exonerating CCTV would have got
located, seized and erased.

They already got the CCTV of the hit-and-run itself erased. No idea if
it was enough to positively identify the car or driver.

Yessenia however reported it to the police in person just a few minutes
after she discovered what she still seems to think was only vandalism.

This speed caught the crooked cop (or cops) off-guard. So the only cover-
up that was possible was getting phone records erased or something, my
friend wasn't too clear on this one.

R, the off-duty drunk-driver who committed the hit-and-run, is still
serving with SPD.

Scottsdale has a new Chief, name of Jeff Walther, don't know anything
about him but an honest competent dude is very unlikely to be made Chief
of Police anywhere in Arizona! The IA investigation is certain to be
another cover-up of the first botched cover-up.

Yessenia Garcia's attorney was Mr Ryan Tait (480) 405 6767 / 6768 but
Tait & Hall doesn't seem interested, someone else tried calling them,
maybe they've been got at too by the cops, or they genuinely believe
qualified immunity lets crooked cops get away with these multiple
violations?

Can some reader fill them in, please. Bad news for Scottsdale taxpayers.

[Scottsdale Citizen]

What reporter Dave Biscobing apparently doesn't know is that at least one cop
on the scene, not saying it was Sgt Steel, knew AT THAT TIME that Yessenia was
innocent and that the hit-and-run perp was an off-duty officer who was drunk.

Scroll to bottom for my original email which gives the detail.



Gregory Carr wrote on 2021-08-17 10:33:26 UTC at
https://narkive.com/OwnphRBO....

ABC15 LOCAL NEWS INVESTIGATIONS

'I want to clear my name': Woman speaks out after being falsely accused by
Scottsdale police

While detained, scared, and crying, Scottsdale police officers repeatedly
called her a liar and ignored clear video evidence of her innocence before
handcuffing Garcia for a hit-and-run she didn’t commit.

Posted at 10:15 AM, Aug 09, 2021 and last updated 10:35 PM, Aug 09, 2021

SCOTTSDALE — For more than 45 minutes in custody, nothing Yessenia Garcia said
or did mattered.

While detained, scared, and crying, Scottsdale police officers repeatedly
called her a liar and overlooked clear video evidence of her innocence before
handcuffing Garcia for a hit-and-run she didn’t commit.

But Garcia said the reality didn’t fully set in until she heard the “click”
and felt the metal on her wrists.

“Exactly when he told me to put my hands behind my back, and that’s when
everything went black,” she said. “I just kind of heard [the officer]. It was
kind of like an echo. I was kind of in shock, and I just kind of dropped down.”

It happened the night of May 24, 2020 in Scottsdale’s Old Town district.

Making the arrest worse, Garcia was forced to strip at the police station, had
her blood forcibly drawn, and her mugshot was splashed across the internet the
following day.

Garcia’s tearful and shocked booking photo is still on several news outlet’s
websites.

More than a year later, she’s decided to tell her story publicly.

Garcia filed a lawsuit earlier this year but has decided to voluntarily
dismiss the complaint. Many attorneys tell her overcoming qualified immunity
will be too difficult in the case to make it financially viable.

So why did she sit down with ABC15 to share her story?

“To clear my name,” Garcia said during an interview. “[To let people know:]
don’t believe everything, um, you have no idea what the person in that mugshot
really just went through.”

Following ABC15’s questions for this report, Scottsdale Police Chief Jeff
Walther opened an internal affairs investigation into what happened.

TWO CRIMES, ONE SUSPECT

Garcia and her then-boyfriend met up to have a drink with some friends.

Around 8:45 p.m., the two parked her car on East Shoeman Lane. The street is
just off of Scottsdale Road, which is the downtown’s main drag.

Garcia and friends then want to two nearby bars, HiFi and Casa Amigos, where
they would stay for the next two-and-a-half hours.

Her car was parked near a corporate office building with a surveillance camera
that panned continuously back and forth.

At 10:02 p.m., the camera captures a random man jump on her hood twice and
then stomp on the passenger side of her windshield.

Garcia and her boyfriend returned to the car around 11:15 p.m. and discovered
the smashed windshield, according to video and records.

They then flagged down nearby bicycle officers to report what happened.

What Garcia and her boyfriend didn’t know was that a half-hour earlier the
same officers had responded to a hit-and-run pedestrian crash near 7300 E. 6th
Avenue.

The two locations are just 0.3 miles apart. So when officers saw the damage to
Garcia's car, case closed.

Here’s the first thing an officer says to her.

--
OFFICER: Listen up. We already know what’s going on.
GARCIA: Okay.
OFFICER: This could be serious thing if you lie about it.
GARCIA: Okay?
OFFICER: You need to be honest.
--

The officer reads Garcia her Miranda rights. A supervisor, Sgt. Ben Steel,
then walks over.

--
STEEL: Your car was just involved in a hit-and-run collision where a
pedestrian was hit. [Garcia is seen making a shocked face] And don’t make
faces like you don’t know what I’m talking about.
GARCIA: I swear to God. I don’t know.
STEEL: Listen to me, leaving the scene of an injury accident is a felony.
—
STEEL: This isn’t my first day. I know you were driving. I know you’re worried
about it because you were drinking.
GARCIA: You can ask the HiFi security guard.
STEEL: Then how does your car have damage on it?
GARCIA: I have no idea.
STEEL: Listen to me, if you keep saying you didn’t, we’re going to do DNA
tests.
GARCIA: Yes absolutely yes.
STEEL: And it’s going to show you were in the driver’s seat.
--

Body camera videos shows Garcia’s boyfriend also got the same treatment.

Officers repeatedly refused to check out the couple’s story, review receipts
from the bars, or pull surveillance video from them.

--
STEEL: I’m not going to listen to you because you’re lying to me.
—
BOYFRIEND: I came to [this smashed car], that’s why I went and got an officer
over there on the bike.
STEEL: The problem is as you left, you got in a collision, you panicked and
came back over here.
BOYFRIEND: No we did not. No we did not. You’re not pinning it on us.
STEEL: You’re not listening to me.
—
BOYFRIEND: Let me show you the transactions.
STEEL: I don’t need to see the transactions.
BOYFRIEND: Why because it validates my truth?
STEEL: No because there’s evidence you can’t dispute. Someone’s body hit the
windshield. No. I’m not going to argue with you man.
--

ALLEGATIONS OF MADE-UP EVIDENCE

Sgt. Steel and other officers claimed they saw glass on on Garcia’s black
shirt and used that claim as part of the probable cause for her arrest.

Garcia said that’s completely false.

“No, not at all,” she said.

At the scene, Garcia’s boyfriend also pushed back on the allegation, shaking
his head as Sgt. Steel doubled down on the claim.

--
STEEL: She has glass on her clothing. Like an explosion of glass.
—
STEEL: I already know she was driving. I’m not stupid. We have witnesses and
we have cameras.
--

Officers did review surveillance video from a building overlooking Garcia’s
parking spot.

ABC15 obtained a copy of the video.

It shows the random man stomping on Garcia’s windshield and causing visible
damage then be seen on the camera. The footage also shows her car never moves
from the time of the stomp to Garcia arriving to find the damage more than a
hour later.

With the camera’s pan, Garcia’s car is never out of view for more than 40
seconds.

However, in his police report, Officer Nicolas Fay wrote, “video review was
inconclusive to show if the vehicle had left and come back or remained there
the entire time based on the constant pan of the camera.”

Body camera video shows Fay asking a security guard to pull up specific
moments of video to compare to the time of the hit-and-run.

“The call came in at 10:48, so if we could go back to like 10:40,” Fay
instructs the guard.

The body camera video obtained by ABC15 cuts out before it shows what Fay is
shown by the guard.

According to time-stamps on the body camera video, it appears that Fay was
watching the footage with the guard before Garcia is handcuffed and
transported back to the station.

She was arrested on two counts of DUI and failure to stop at the scene of an
accident causing injury or death.

Garcia understands why she was an initial suspect given the damage to her car
and the nearby hit-and-run.

What she doesn’t understand is why officers were unwilling to take time to
weigh the exculpatory evidence that was already available to them.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Garcia said. “I had cooperated. I had done everything
that they asked me to do. The fact they wouldn’t just check the cameras.”

OTHER ISSUES

Following her arrest, Garcia was brought to a Scottsdale police station.

Because police at the scene claimed there was glass on her shirt, she had to
strip off her clothes in front of two female officers.

“That was pretty embarrassing and humiliating,” Garcia said. “That was the
first thing. And then they walked me out and sat me in a chair with straps [to
take my blood].”

Police got a warrant to draw Garcia’s blood for the alleged DUIs.

When she asked to see the warrant before placing the needle inside her arm,
Officer Ben Roberson refused.

“After we’re done. I don’t have time to waste with you reading documents. I’ve
served you. That’s all I need to do,” Roberson told Garcia with a handful of
detention officers surrounded her chair. “If you don’t put your arm out,
you’re going to be strapped down, we don’t want that. Put your arm out, so we
don’t have to tie you down like an animal.”

She was compliant throughout the process, body camera videos shows.

Garcia was released shortly later.

Several days following her arrest, she hired defense attorney Ryan Tait.

Tait tracked down his own copy of the surveillance video and sent police a
time-stamped guide. He said Sgt. Steel emailed him back and said the
department would no longer pursue the charges.

But by that time, the damage was already done.

Local and national media had reported on Garcia’s arrest and prominently
displayed the mugshot of her crying. One article ran in the New York Daily
News.

Despite what happened, Garcia said in a strange way she feels “lucky.” If she
had not parked in a spot in view of a surveillance camera, she wonders if she
would still be facing charges or already be convicted.

“My heart goes out to all the people who aren’t as able to be as lucky as I
am,” Garcia said. “That’s a hard thought.”

SCOTTSDALE RESPONSE

ABC15 reached out to a Scottsdale police spokesperson with questions about the
incident, specifically regarding the surveillance video and alleged glass
officers claimed was on Garcia’s shirt.

In a round of initial responses, the department said the case against Garcia
wasn’t pursued because the hit-and-run victim declined prosecution and not
because she was actually innocent.

After ABC15 sent a clip of surveillance video showing the man stomp on
Garcia’s windshield, the department sent the following statement:

“Thank you for bringing that portion of the video to our attention. Obviously
this underscores the fact that the case was never filed. The officers made
probable cause decisions based on the totality of the evidence they had at the
time of the investigation. This video does bring up questions that need to be
answered. This incident occurred 14 months ago, however, our new Chief Jeff
Walther takes these matters very seriously and has asked for a formal internal
affairs investigation to fully review the incident.”

https://www.abc15.com/news/local-news/investigations/i-want-to-clear-my-name-
woman-speaks-out-after-being-falsely-accused-by-scottsdale-police shows the
video of a young, White man damaging Garcia's vehicle. Hope Internal Affairs
does its job too bad Garcia dropped the lawsuit. Lawyer Tait did his job and
earned his pay. Why did the woman who turned out to be
not guilty have her face plastered on websites out of state including the New
York Post?


====

ORIGINAL WHISTLEBLOW August 14, 2021

The victim of police corruption, Yessenia Garcia, still hasn't figured out the
why of what happened to her.

You might first think that the arresting cops were merely:

Stupid -
ignoring proffered proof of innocence, failing to question themselves why the
perpetrator would be the one to approach cops about the windscreen and
ignoring the cop-found CCTV which exonerated the accused, not only showing how
her car's windscreen was really damaged but also that the car was never out of
cctv cover for more than 40 seconds,

and Liars -
inventing "warm hood", "glass on dress" and "car/driver identified by eye-
witnesses",

and Bullies -
intimidating and threatening the innocent woman and being violent to her even
though she and her friend offered them no resistance only shocked surprise,
exactly as wholly innocent persons would.

But cops who are Stupid, Liars and Bullies are normal and expected.

Here in Arizona it's a hard and fast rule they've gotta be all three or else

they flunk Pig School.

This case is much worse than just that, which is why IA (Internal Affairs)
didn't touch it till they were forced to a couple of days ago, 14 months too
late, so the trail is all stale.

This is what really happened in May 2020. I know this because a friend of mine
works for Scottsdale PD and told me and others this while he was dead-drunk
(!) earlier this year. Many people know the story so I don't feel that exposed
by recounting this.

What Actually Happened

Can some reader of this fill them in. Bad news for Scottsdale taxpayers. I'm
in Phoenix.

[jimm...@gmail.com]

I do *not* believe this disturbing conspiracy to frame an innocent person by law-enforcement
officers, in order to cover for a slimy brother cop, will be entitled to qualified immunity. I would
even bet on it, if it were legal to bet on it. I have read case after case involving qualified immunity,
and this utterly detestable series of felonies by cops in conspiracy with one another will not meet
the QI test, believe me. Yessenia should find a knowledgeable civil rights attorney and sue!

[jimm...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, August 17, 2021 at 6:35:03 PM UTC-4, Scottsdale Citizen wrote:

By the way, what is the name of the sonofabitch cop who set up this series of felonies?

Don't be afraid to publish the bastard's name. He ought to be in prison.

[jimm...@gmail.com]

The more I read and hear about this orgy of police corruption, the more it pisses me off.

[jimm...@gmail.com]

On Monday, August 16, 2021 at 8:09:27 AM UTC-4, Scottsdale Citizen wrote:

I called Attorney Ryan Tate and told his legal secretary about what I had read here.
She said she would give him the links to misc.legal and this narrative.

If he calls back I will fill his ears full. That cop "R" ought to go to prison.

[jimm...@gmail.com]

One proviso: the timepieces and timeline are not exactly logical with the narrative at the head of this thread.

Either the timepieces are telling the truth, or they have been tampered with.

Let's be really careful here and not make out a false case against somebody.
According to the timepieces (as I have heard), the time of the damage to the Yessenia Garcia vehicle is
inconsistent with the time of the hit-and-run accident. If the OP's narrative is correct, then the damage to
Yessenia's vehicle would have occurred AFTER the hit-and-run, not before or contemporaneously.

[jimm...@gmail.com]

OTOH, I still believe the story as told by the "dead-drunk" cop who said Yessenia was set up to take the fall for "R."

Get the polygraphers to do their jobs, and in addition obtain the identity of the man who jumped up on the hood and windshield of
Yessenia's car.

Now, Mr. OP, who is "R?" He needs to have his butt strapped up to the polygraph. Go at it like you would a murder. Find out where
he had the damage to his car repaired.