Scottsdale Officers Disciplined In Mistaken Hit-And-Run Arrest

SCOTTSDALE, AZ — 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 Tuesday.

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, The Arizona Republic reported.

The department on Tuesday 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.

The officers "violated department policy and/or should have conducted a more thorough follow-up investigation consistent with the standards of our organization," the department said.

“We made some mistakes plain and simple, and the involved employees have been disciplined for those mistakes," Scottsdale Police Chief Jeff Walther said in a Tuesday news release. "We are not infallible and any expectation of such is unrealistic."

Walther apologized to Garcia but added that the officers had probable cause to arrest her based on the information available to them at the time. The officers had technical difficulties accessing the video of Garcia's car parked on the street that night, he added.

Garcia filed suit against Scottsdale, the department and the officers involved on May 24, 2021, seeking $300,000 and punitive damages. The suit named Officers Ben Roberson, Kavon Attarpour, Bryan Steel, Nicolas Fay, Craig Malley and John Ghiglia. The suit is pending.

Benjamin Taylor III, the lawyer representing Garcia in the civil suit, told Patch Wednesday that he was glad the department admitted its mistake in arresting Garcia, but that “will not remedy what Scottsdale police did to her.”

"This will affect Ms.Garcia for the rest of her life," Taylor said.

Garcia's mugshot was shared widely by news outlets and on social media, where she was painted as a drunk hit-and-run driver, and that now pops up when her named is Googled, Taylor said.

"You listen to people when they’re trying to tell you that they’re innocent instead of just jumping to conclusions and arresting," Taylor said. “An apology won’t turn back the clock.”

Taylor said the department needed to implement reforms to ensure the same thing doesn't happen to someone else.

Patch asked the Scottsdale Police Department if it planned to do so. "We value anytime there is an opportunity to learn from mistakes and how to make ourselves better professionally and personally," public information officer Kevin Quon told Patch Wednesday.

The police department investigated Garcia's arrest after her case garnered media attention last summer.

On the night of her arrest, Garcia parked on East Shoeman Lane in downtown Scottsdale at around 8:45 p.m. before heading to some bars in the area for drinks with her boyfriend, according to Garcia's lawsuit.

Surveillance footage from the nearby Galleria Corporate Center showed that her car remained parked there until she returned around 11:10 p.m. and found her windshield shattered, the suit said.

Surveillance footage also showed the window was shattered while the car was parked around 10 p.m. when a man jumped onto the hood of the car and smashed the window by stomping on it, the suit said.

When Garcia and her boyfriend returned to the car, they informed police, who were investigating the hit-and-run, that her car had been damaged while they were inside nearby clubs, the suit said.

The officers responded by telling the two that they knew Garcia's car was involved in the hit-and run, even though the two were still inside a club at 10:48 p.m., when the hit-and-run happened, the suit said.

An officer reviewed a portion of video surveillance footage from the Galleria that showed Garcia's car never left its parking space but said the footage was inconclusive since the camera panned back and forth, and her car was not always in the frame, the suit said.

But Garcia's car was never out of the frame for more than 40 seconds, not nearly enough time to perpetrate the hit-and-run and return to the same parking spot, the suit said.