Police body camera footage shows that Sacramento officers lied about their interaction with Inland state Sen. Sabrina Cervantes after she was involved in an auto accident near the state capitol, her legal team alleges.

Cervantes’ lawyer on Thursday, Sept. 18, shared an edited, 15-minute video that splices together clips from the footage and shows officers talking to Cervantes, D-Riverside, and the other driver in the two-vehicle collision.

While Cervantes was cited on suspicion of driving under the influence of a drug, the Sacramento district attorney’s office declined to file charges against the senator after a blood test showed no drugs or alcohol in her system at the time of the crash.

Cervantes has filed a claim for damages — often a precursor to a lawsuit — against the city of Sacramento that alleges police misconduct and discrimination. Her lawyer, James Quadra, asked the Sacramento city clerk to include the video as a supplement to her claim.

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Citing the pending litigation, Sacramento police declined to comment Thursday.

In June, the Southern California News Group submitted a California Public Records Act request to the Sacramento Police Department seeking the body camera footage and other records related to Cervantes’ DUI citation. The department replied that the footage was exempt from disclosure because it was part of “an active traffic investigation.”

The 15-minute video shared by Quadra starts with security camera footage of the May 19 accident just blocks from the Capitol building. That footage shows a Ford Explorer stopping at a stop sign before proceeding into the intersection, where it hits the right side of Cervantes’ state-issued Toyota Camry.

“The police falsely claimed Senator Cervantes had an ‘unsteady gait’ without mentioning she was injured,” read a caption added to the video, which accuses police of perjury in a search warrant affidavit to get a sample of Cervantes’ blood.

In the video, Cervantes is shown at the hospital talking to and walking with officers while wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses.

“My back is really starting to get to me,” she tells an officer.

Cervantes also talks about her interaction with the other driver after the accident and tells police of injuries to her back, her spine and “everything on my left side.”

Contrary to what police alleged, the footage also proves Cervantes did not slur her speech when talking to officers, her legal team alleges in the video.

At one point, an officer asks the senator if she’d submit to field sobriety tests.

“The easiest way forward is to prove to me you aren’t intoxicated is a simple eye test,” an officer tells Cervantes as she nods. “The eyes will tell me a ton.”

The senator asks for the name of the test so she can consult with her lawyer. After being told the answer, she asks: “So I guess the question is can’t you all just do a blood test though?”

Later, Cervantes tells the officer: “We could just do a blood test since I’m going to be getting a full — Let me talk to (my lawyer) and could I choose which (test)?”

“You absolutely can,” the officer responds.

The footage, the video alleges, proves that officers lied when they said she refused to do a blood test without a warrant.

The video, which alleges an officer at the hospital turned off his body camera for five minutes in violation of his department’s policy, shows an officer speaking to an unknown party and describing Cervantes’ speech as “slow and lethargic” and saying “she seemed a little confused about stuff.”

“I couldn’t smell any alcohol on her breath,” the officer is heard saying. “If I had to, you know, make a wild guess, there is a possibility — I have a reasonable suspicion that she has something” in her system.

Those comments prove police had no legal basis to seek a search warrant, the video alleges.

In another clip, Cervantes is asked why she went to the hospital instead of staying at the accident scene. The senator, who did not take an ambulance to the hospital, said she was told by a senate official to get care.

“I don’t want to tie up fire and emergency services when there’s so many dire needs out there … critical needs when we have someone who could just take me to get seen,” Cervantes said.

“I’m not saying that’s indicative of anything,” the officer replied. “I’m just saying that that is odd. It’s different than what we typically see.”

The video also features footage of police interviews with the other driver in the accident, whose face is blurred out. Text in the video alleges that bodycam footage shows police treated the other driver, who was at fault, better than Cervantes.

In the video, the driver didn’t have to exit the vehicle or perform sobriety tests and could not produce a license or proof of insurance. Instead, an officer writes down her license and insurance policy numbers after the driver gives him that information from photos and emails that appear to be on her phone.

The video also shows a follow-up interview with the driver. It accuses police of asking the driver leading questions aimed at falsely asserting that Cervantes was not injured in the crash.

“She seemed spacey  … everyone’s fight or flight response is totally different, so I thought maybe she was just like shaken up,” the other driver told an investigator. “She kind of just seemed shaken up. Like she was all kind of over the place … I had very limited contact with her as far as her and I speaking.”

The investigator asked: “Did she say she was injured at all?”

“No,” the other driver said. “She said that she just felt like kind of like shaken up … She didn’t say that she was, like, injured … She didn’t look injured.”

“So to you, she did not appear injured?” the investigator said. “Like you didn’t visibly see blood or anything (like that)?”

The driver replied: “There was no blood. Nothing like that.”