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A Maricopa County woman is suing the Scottsdale Police Department, the city, and six officers after she was accused of a hit-and-run she had proof she didn’t commit, her lawyers announced during a press conference on Tuesday.
Yessenia García alongside her lawyers, Benjamin Taylor and Anthony Ramirez, released body camera footage and surveillance video of the incident that took place on May 24, 2020, in Old Town Scottsdale.
“What we want is police reform. We want Scottsdale police to look into the situation,” Benjamin Taylor, one of Garcia’s lawyers said to The Republic. “Those officers deserve to be punished because there was no reason for her to be arrested that day. Especially someone who is giving you facts and evidence proving that they are truly innocent.”
That night, Garcia’s world would be turned upside down and would lead to her mugshot getting published in different news websites the next day.
According to the claim filed, Garcia parked her car by the Galleria Corporate Center in Old Town that night around 8:40 p.m. Garcia went to two nearby bars and had three drinks before she arrived back at her car shortly after 11:10 p.m. and found the windshield damaged, according to her attorneys.
Shortly before, officers Kavon Attarpour and Nicolas Fay started investigating a hit-and-run around 10:48 p.m. that took place on 6th Avenue on the north side of VIP Spa Massage, according to Garcia’s complaint.
Garcia’s attorneys claim that despite surveillance footage showing her car remained parked at the time of the hit-and-run and that she was actually the victim of a property damage crime, she was still booked and charged.
“She was a victim of a crime herself and then got victimized by the very police department she called to help,” Ramirez said.
Garcia was released the next morning and had to answer to charges of possession of drug paraphernalia, two counts of driving under the influence and failure to stop at the scene of an accident causing injury or death.
What happened that night
Sgt. Bryan Steel approached Garcia’s boyfriend, Kyle Thompson, while Fay was confronting him about the incident, according to court records and bodycam footage released to The Arizona Republic by Garcia’s lawyers.
Thompsom repeatedly tells officers that he and Garcia were not driving the car when the accident happened but they don’t believe him.
Instead, Steel tells Thompson that Garcia’s car had just hit a person.
“The problem is that as you guys left (Hi Fi), were involved in a collision, you panicked, you pulled over here…” Steel starts saying before Thompson interrupts him saying that wasn’t what happened.
While this discussion was happening, one of the officers, identified in the lawsuit as Fay, said he was going to the Galleria and review the surveillance video.
The lawsuit says Fay determined the video as inconclusive as to whether Garcia’s vehicle was involved in the hit-and-run because the camera panned east and west and there were segments in which the car was out of frame.
But Garcia’s attorneys say in the lawsuit that her car “is never out of frame for longer than 40 seconds, which would easily have been observed by Officer Fay after a few minutes of watching the constant, repeated pattern of the camera movement.”
The footage also shows Garcia’s car getting damaged by a man who jumped on the hood and stomped on the windshield around 10 p.m. that same night, according to court records.
The attorneys also say that while Fay was at the Galleria, Attapour took statements from Garcia’s friends, who told him they were with her throughout the night and she couldn’t have been involved in the accident.
While being questioned, Thompsom and Garcia ask officers to check the surveillance video of Hi Fi and confirm when they left the club.
At one point, Steel told Thompsom that if they did that, it would show the couple leaving the club before the accident.
But Garcia’s attorneys claim that if officers had actually checked the bar’s surveillance video, they would have seen Garcia and Thompson leaving the club 20 minutes after the hit-and-run.
Garcia’s lawyers accuse officers of fabricating evidence to incriminate her, including saying they had witnessed the car involved in the accident and that they had seen shards of glass on Garcia’s blouse.
Garcia’s claim also says Officer Ben Roberson violated her constitutional right to counsel because he refused to grant her request for an attorney.
The officer told Garcia she couldn’t get an attorney because she wasn’t in custody. Rather, he said she was detained and under investigation. Once she was put under arrest, she was told she could contact a lawyer.
Once at the police station, Garcia’s lawyers claim “she was subjected to a blood draw” and was “stripped nude in humiliating fashion in order to collect evidence of the fictional glass.”
The lawsuit and internal investigation
Garcia’s charges were dropped after the first attorney she retained, Ryan Tait, contacted Steel, who told him the department would not pursue charges because the victim of the hit-and-run did not want to prosecute.
Garcia filed a civil lawsuit in federal court in May but was told by her lawyer she wouldn’t win because of qualified immunity so she had decided to drop her claim. But before she did, she spoke out about the incident and her story was first reported by ABC15 earlier this month.
She later found her current attorneys who announced an amended complaint in court.
After her story came out, Scottsdale Police Chief Jeff Walther announced the department was going to conduct an internal investigation into the incident that should be completed by Sept. 14.
The chief also said in his prepared statement that he is committed to “maintaining a culture of accountability, transparency, and professionalism. To that end, I have also launched an internal review of our processes, policies, and systems to identify improvements and/or training deficiencies.”
Scottsdale police spokesperson Aaron Bolin would not provide any details of the investigation, saying only the department has no employees on administrative leave.
A spokesperson for Scottsdale said the city will not comment on active litigation.
The officers named in the lawsuit are Roberson, Attarpour, Steel, Fay, Craig Malley and John Ghiglia.
The Republic requested the police report of the incident on Monday but had not received the document by the time of publishing.
Her legal team is seeking compensation of $300,000 and punitive damages against the involved officers.
This isn’t the first time a lawsuit is filed against the Scottsdale Police Department and the city. Earlier this year, a Tempe man also filed a complaint in federal court, claiming brutality during a traffic stop led to his hospitalization, and later, cost him his job.
Reach the reporter at rclo@arizonarepublic.com or at 480-267-4703. Follow her on Twitter @renataclo.
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