No documented explanation of the legal basis for the stop.
And no evidence that anyone formally evaluated the threatened impoundment.
The original video retention period had long since passed.
That didn't prove the complaint was true.
But it made the failure to investigate more serious.
Evidence that might have supported or contradicted Adrian's account was no longer available.
When he learned his complaint was being reviewed, he said something that appeared in the audit summary.
"I didn't expect the officer to lose his job because I complained. I expected somebody to check whether what he did was allowed."
That sentence stayed with me.
It expressed the difference between accountability and punishment more clearly than many professional reports I'd read.
People didn't always file complaints because they wanted revenge.
Sometimes they filed because they wanted to know whether the rules applied.
And whether someone with authority would bother to find out.
The third case troubled the investigators for another reason.
The complainant was a white man named Peter Wallace, a retired machinist who had been stopped after leaving a restaurant late at night.
Mercer suspected impaired driving.
Peter denied being intoxicated.
The officer administered the appropriate roadside process and ultimately released him without arrest.
Peter later complained that Mercer had insulted him repeatedly and threatened to make the situation worse if he continued asking questions.
The complaint was classified as a communication concern and closed with no documented investigation beyond a supervisor's review.
Peter's account didn't establish the truth of every allegation.
But it demonstrated that Mercer's confrontational behavior wasn't necessarily limited to one racial group.
That mattered to the review.
The investigators needed to examine whether race influenced whom Mercer stopped or how he treated people, but they also needed to recognize evidence showing other patterns of conduct.
One possibility didn't exclude the other.
An officer could display discriminatory behavior and a broader tendency toward unnecessary escalation.
The investigation would need more than assumptions to distinguish them.
The records showed that Mercer's traffic enforcement activity was concentrated in several neighborhoods with large Black and Latino populations, but location alone could not establish improper motive. Investigators therefore examined the nature of the stops, their documented bases, resulting enforcement actions, assignments, and other relevant context.
The comparison raised additional concerns.
Mercer's reports frequently described vague suspicion.
Some stops resulted in no citation or arrest.
And his rate of consent-search requests appeared unusually high compared with officers working similar assignments.
The audit didn't treat those statistics as proof of misconduct by themselves.