Drunk driving cover up for Sergio Robles – Elk Grove refuses to release body camera video of council member’s arrest
Double standards when it serves their interests
Requests by Elk Grove News and an Elk Grove resident for Elk Grove Police to release the vehicle and police officer videos of the arrest of Elk Grove City Councilmember Sergio Robles have been denied. Elk Grove Police arrested the first-term city council member on the morning of Saturday, May 20.
Elk Grove Police officers reportedly located Robles passed out in a running vehicle in the Raley’s grocery store parking lot on Elk Grove Boulevard on the city’s west side. Social media videos showed Robles celebrating the night before at the AAPI Market Night event in downtown Sacramento where he reportedly had access to a hosted bar.
In making their determination to protect Robles from scrutiny for his admitted drunken behavior, the city sent Elk Grove News and the other party seeking the video denials citing California government codes §7923.600 and §7922.000.
Under new California video camera disclosure laws, police videos must be released in an officer-involved shooting, an assault, the death of a suspect, or sustained findings of officer[s] misconduct.
According to attorney David Loy with the San Rafael, Calif.-based First Amendment Coalition, the city can exempt the video from release. Loy noted §7923.600 allows exemption from release pending investigation of an incident.
Furthermore, Loy noted, once exempted from release, “They remain permanently exempt from disclosure regardless of whether the investigation is closed.”
He added, “I appreciate that this exemption can be highly frustrating to the extent it prevents the public from assessing how ad to what extent the police conducted an investigation.”
When asked if there was anything that prevented the police from releasing the video, Loy said there was not. Loy cited Govt. Code § 7921.500; Marken v. Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School Dist., 202 Cal. App. 4th 1250, 1262 (2012).
“Generally, unless disclosure is specifically prohibited, the CPRA’s (California Public Records Act) exemptions are permissive rather than mandatory, and an agency may choose to release certain records even if it is allowed to withhold them,” Loy said. “I’m not aware of anything that prohibits voluntary disclosure of matters covered by the investigatory records exemption.”
Compared to Elk Grove’s refusal to release the Robles video, last summer, the city voluntarily released the police video of the dog Zeus being taken by city animal controls officers and Elk Grove police officers. However, according to the family members of Ms. Faryal Kabir, the owner of the dog that was summarily euthanized weeks later, the release was initiated as a punitive measure, prejudicial, and the city was not forthcoming with a thorough explanation of the circumstances.
In a statement to Elk Grove News, the attorneys, and plaintiffs suing the city in state and federal lawsuits who identify as the Zeus Legal Team said:
“The City of Elk Grove will misrepresent the facts and release videos to suit its needs, while withholding others when the issue is fitness of one of its council members to serve. As seen in this news story it released last year about Zeus the one-year-old GSD that it had misrepresented had bit “two” people, it even went so far as to misrepresent Zeus bit “three” people on this news story”
In the Zeus case, the city freely released the video to serve its purposes, but for a public official, the standard is different.
For admitted drunk driver Councilmember Robles, a different standard was applied. Elk Grove Mayor Bobbie Singh-Allen, Vice Mayor Kevin Spease, council members Rod Brewer and Darren Suen, and the city’s public employees executives have chosen to cover up and protect one of the very persons entrusted to ensure community safety and conduct the people’s business by not releasing his arrest videos.
