And he had previously described customers who challenged stops as people trying to avoid accountability.
Those attitudes did not establish that he knew the judge had been specifically targeted.
The evidence available at that stage suggested he was largely unaware of the executive plan to force her recusal.
But ignorance of that plan did not excuse his conduct.
He had been used.
And he had made himself useful by behaving exactly as the people behind the scheme expected.
The investigation ultimately sustained serious misconduct findings against him.
His body-camera failures and inaccurate reporting were considered alongside the unjustified force and his refusal to examine readily available exculpatory evidence.
Following the department's formal procedures, Cole was terminated.
The decision ended his career with that police agency.
He appealed.
His attorney argued that the department was blaming one officer for failures created by a private security system and inadequate supervision.
Some of those concerns were legitimate subjects for review.
The broader system had failed.
But the footage still showed Cole's personal decisions.
The appeal did not reverse his termination.
For the judge, the news produced complicated emotions.
She felt relief that the conduct had been addressed.
She felt anger when she remembered the pain in her wrist.
She felt sadness when she thought about how easily a career built over years could be destroyed by repeated bad judgment.
But she did not feel triumphant.
She had never wanted to become the center of a public spectacle.
She had wanted to buy groceries and visit her mother.
The disciplinary decision could not give her that afternoon back.
It could not erase the fear.
And it could not answer the question her niece had asked at the kitchen table.
What if you weren't a judge?
That question continued following her.
So when her attorney told her that investigators had found earlier victims of the retail-security system, she asked to learn what the records showed through appropriate channels.
The stories were painful.
One involved a Black nurse in her sixties who had been stopped after purchasing expensive skincare products for her granddaughter.
Her transaction had been approved.
But a security employee flagged her purchase because the amount exceeded what he considered normal for someone dressed in hospital scrubs.
Police questioned her outside the store.
She was released without charges.
The encounter was recorded internally as a successful fraud-prevention intervention.
Another involved a young Black accountant who purchased a laptop for work.