Pasadena police made up evidence to arrest man for drunk driving

The trio of Pasadena police officers told David Cardona he’d be going home. He’d passed a field sobriety test, they said — but then asked him to take a breathalyzer.Show more

Their behavior abruptly changed when he asked to make a phone call.

“Take him to jail,” one said.

Two years after Cardona’s arrest, the 27-year-old electrician is suing the Pasadena Police Department, arguing that the officers fabricated evidence to wrongfully arrest, jail and prosecute him. The driver’s civil rights complaint, based in part on police recordings at the scene, says the officers willfully lied in police reports, and in sworn statements to judges and to prosecutors at the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.

Cardona — who had been arrested twice previously on DWI charges — had “his life upended by the trauma and daily deprivations of liberty inflicted by a pending felony prosecution,” according to his suit.

The Pasadena Police Department’s internal affairs unit determined Cardona’s allegations about a trumped-up arrest were substantiated by the evidence, according to documents. The Harris County District Attorney dropped the DWI charge.

DA Kim Ogg’s office declined to pursue charges against the police officers, saying there was insufficient evidence, according to a letter from a prosecutor in the public corruption unit.

The Pasadena police chief said the officers who handled the stop were found to have violated department policies and his staff ordered them to undergo retraining, but they were not demoted, disciplined, suspended or terminated.

The Pasadena city attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the federal lawsuit.

During the traffic stop, Cardona agreed to a full battery of Standardized Field Sobriety Tests and completed them without showing evidence of intoxication or impairment, the lawsuit says. The police were prepared to release him and gave him back his driver’s license. They told him he would be going home. But then a senior officer, who wasn’t present during the field tests, pushed for an additional breath test that wasn’t required based on the lack of evidence Cardona was intoxicated. Cardona began asking questions and asked to make a phone call. Then the senior officer, Mark A. Ferguson, ordered the others to “take him to jail,” according to the allegations.

The lawsuit alleges the three officers concealed the actual events of the traffic stop “to justify the unilateral and unjustified decision to arrest Mr. Cardona, as well as to further retaliate against Mr. Cardona.” The arresting officer submitted a sworn application for a warrant for a blood extraction to a judge the suit says was based on “multiple false statements that were directly contradicted by (officers’) own statements to one another on the scene” and omitted exculpatory facts the officers knew were significant. The trio passed that information on to the DA to convince the screening office to accept and prosecute the fabricated charge. The suit also says the officers submitted “yet another falsehood-ridden affidavit to a magistrate for a determination of probable cause.”

Cardona is seeking relief after being forced to submit to unwarranted blood draws, spend two days in jail and four months under conditions of pretrial release and cover thousands of dollars on attorney fees.

Pasadena Police Chief Joshua Bruegger said after Cardona’s complaint, internal investigators reviewed the stop and found the officers had violated department policies. They went to retraining.

Bruegger defended their actions, saying that Cardona’s blood alcohol levels — tested about three hours after the stop — were .057, suggesting that he was likely intoxicated at the time he was pulled over.

“All the clues were there, but the officer didn’t recognize them until speaking with his field training officer (Ferguson),” he said. “They should have done a better job articulating exactly what transpired, but it wasn’t malicious, it wasn’t a cover-up or a conspiracy.”

Attorney Jeffrey Stein, of the Washington, D.C.-based Civil Rights Corps, said Ferguson’s conduct at the scene points to a pattern of police misconduct that he believes is pervasive.

“It’s the casualness with which he condemns a man to jail knowing that he’s not going to get in trouble, that he’s going to get away with it,” said Stein, who brought the federal case on Cardona’s behalf.
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