"His children watched their father get treated like a criminal outside their own home," she said. "You don't get to decide that the experience meant nothing because the cuffs came off."
The remark followed her through the department.
Some colleagues admired her.
Others considered her unnecessarily strict.
Naomi didn't change her position.
She believed the badge meant responsibility.
Not immunity.
Her promotion to deputy chief came after nearly two decades of service.
By then, she had developed a reputation for careful investigation, strong administrative judgment, and an insistence that officer safety and civil rights weren't opposing objectives.
She helped modernize training.
Expanded the department's use of evidence-based performance reviews.
And supported procedures requiring supervisors to examine patterns in complaints rather than treating every incident as unrelated.
Some officers welcomed the changes.
Others felt threatened.
Naomi understood the resistance.
Reform often required experienced employees to reconsider habits they'd practiced for years.
But she believed that good officers had nothing to fear from standards that made their decisions clearer and more defensible.
When the previous chief retired, the city appointed her to lead the Eastbridge Metropolitan Police Department.
She was forty-one.
The appointment received widespread attention.
She became the department's first Black female police chief.
At the ceremony, Imani sat beside Naomi's parents in the front row.
When Naomi raised her right hand and took the oath, her daughter cried.
Afterward, Naomi hugged her.
"What's wrong?"
Imani laughed through tears.
"Nothing. I'm just proud."
Naomi held her tightly.
Then whispered, "So am I."
But her pride wasn't simply about the title.
She believed she had an opportunity to make the department more worthy of the community's trust.
And she intended to take that responsibility seriously.
The first year was harder than she'd expected.
The department employed hundreds of sworn officers and civilian personnel across patrol, investigations, administration, community services, and specialized units.
Naomi inherited budget pressures, staffing shortages, aging technology, and unresolved concerns about supervisory practices.
Some problems were straightforward.
Others had been developing for years.
One recurring issue involved officers treating identification disputes as challenges to their authority.
In several reviewed incidents, residents had offered documents or information that could have clarified their identity.
But officers sometimes refused to examine the evidence because they'd already decided the person was being deceptive.
The resulting encounters escalated.
Some ended in unnecessary arrests.
Others generated complaints.
And a few resulted in expensive civil claims against the city.
Naomi instructed Deputy Chief Brooks to coordinate a comprehensive review.
The goal wasn't to punish officers for every imperfect decision.
It was to identify where training, supervision, and accountability had failed.
The review examined body-camera footage, dispatch records, complaint histories, and the circumstances surrounding use-of-force incidents.
Most officers performed their duties professionally.