Teresa looked toward the room.
"I don't want an officer to ignore safety. I want him to check the information before treating people like they're lying."
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Then Naomi answered quietly.
"That's a reasonable expectation."
Teresa nodded.
And the meeting continued.
The city commissioned an external assessment of its complaint-review procedures.
Naomi supported the decision, even though it meant exposing weaknesses within the department she led.
The reviewers examined how complaints were categorized, which incidents triggered body-camera review, how supervisors documented findings, and whether repeated concerns involving the same officer were identified.
The process wasn't quick.
It involved interviews, policy analysis, and difficult conversations with officers who felt that public criticism had become unfairly broad.
Some believed the department was being blamed for the actions of one sergeant.
Others acknowledged that the problem was more complicated.
A patrol commander admitted that supervisors sometimes focused on clearing complaint backlogs rather than identifying patterns requiring intervention.
A training officer said existing instruction emphasized controlling encounters but didn't always provide enough practical guidance on reassessing suspicion when new information emerged.
A union representative argued that officers deserved consistent standards and fair opportunities to respond to allegations.
Naomi agreed.
Fairness was essential.
But fairness also required protecting the public from repeated misconduct.
She wanted an assessment that recognized both.
The external reviewers eventually identified several weaknesses in the department's early-intervention system.
Complaints involving similar behaviors hadn't always been connected.
Supervisory feedback was sometimes undocumented.
And the process for reviewing incidents involving questionable identity verification lacked consistency.
Naomi read the preliminary findings late one evening.
For several minutes, she sat silently at her desk.
Then she picked up a pen.
She wrote one sentence across the top of her notes.
We cannot correct what we refuse to examine.
It became the guiding principle of the reforms that followed.
The most consequential new evidence arrived almost two weeks after the incident.
An analyst reviewing the communications logs noticed a short message transmitted to the patrol unit during the encounter.
The message originated from the security monitoring company.
It confirmed that the correct homeowner disarm code had been entered at the property after the alarm activated and that the system had returned to its normal status.
That information didn't conclusively establish the identity of every person in the house.
But it substantially weakened the theory that someone had forcibly entered and remained inside without authorization.
The monitoring company forwarded the update through dispatch.
The patrol computer received it.
And the system recorded that the information had been acknowledged.
The investigators compared the time with the video.
The update arrived before Grant placed Naomi in handcuffs.