Clarissa Cervantes Update, Gets Sweetheart Deal Out of DUI #2, and Local Paper Hides Story Behind Paywall.

… and Cervantes is continuing to campaign for Assembly! Sources told your intrepid blogger she literally went from her sentencing meeting to another meeting across the street to meet with a stakeholder for an endorsement/donation!

For those of you just now tuning in, on 7-1-2023, your intrepid blogger unloaded on the Riverside Press-Enterprise for their partial truth reporting on the DUI of City of Riverside Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes. You see, the P-E had a story about her first DUI in 2014 that you can’t find anymore. (Sources told me this) The day after we lit them up, they claimed their half-truth reporting, in particular not reporting that the 2023 DUI was, in fact DUI #2, was because Cervantes had the first Misdemeanor expunged. Expungement does not remove the fact that it still counts as both a criminal conviction and as DUI #1.

Cervantes first DUI was not easy to get records on. My people had to go to the applicable government offices and get paper copies of the records. Given that Cervantes and her powerful local family all have a history of antagonism towards law enforcement, there would be plenty of people out there motivated to expose the ugly truth.

The Riverside P-E did indeed cover the second DUI and the sentencing. There is a catch, they paywalled the article. Did they do this in order to reduce the exposure of Cervantes to public scrutiny? Is the Riverside P-E preparing to endorse her assembly campaign? Inquiring bloggers want to know.

Your intrepid blogger is on the case. So just what kind of sweetheart deal did one of the junior members of the powerful Cervantes Family get for a second DUI?

Most people get thrown in jail for at least 30 days after DUI #2, not Clarissa. The judge let her 45 days in rehab count as time served and the remaining 57 of the 102 day sentence will be served in Work Release. How many readers would prefer 57 days of picking up trash (but I doubt Clarissa will be anywhere close to doing that) to being in the can?

Also note that DUI #2 can be a felony in many cases, but not for Clarissa.

She was fined less than $2k! Most people pay $5,000-7,000 on DUI #1!!!

It also remains to be seen how long her driver’s license gets suspended. It is typically a year for the rest of us. This means that Cervantes will have to have staff drive her around to campaign appearances, unless the California DMV finds an excuse to not suspend her license for the typical amount of time.

In addition, if Cervantes is able to escape with less than the usual suspension, she has to have an alcohol interlock device on every vehicle she owns for at least 6 months. That should make for fun pictures for her primary opponents!

In short, if you are going to get DUI #2, Clarissa Cervantes got a slap on the hand and you’d want to be her. Did her relation to the powerful Cervantes family in Riverside County affect that outcome?

I had penned an admonition in a previous post that if Cervantes was serious about getting help and getting clean I would be all for that. I have been told by sources I trust that she still drinks and has expressed zero remorse for what she did. It makes sense, when you are able to get out of a near felony with a slap on the hand, where is the nexus to change?

While she was given 102 months of probation, I am almost certain given her attitude that she is a ticking time bomb ready to go off again. In the meantime, she is on a track to become a member of the California State Legislature… we certainly can do better, can’t we?

P.S. Attached here is a PDF of court documents that back up what I wrote about the sentence.