The woman in the silver bracelets remembered that sentence.
And she remembered it again as she prepared to drive through the same county.
The second complainant was a thirty-four-year-old nurse who worked night shifts at a regional hospital nearly forty miles from home.
She drove through the county three evenings each week because the highway provided the fastest route to the medical center. Her shifts often ended after midnight, and she usually stopped for coffee before making the long drive home. She had never received a serious traffic citation and maintained her registration carefully because she couldn't afford to lose access to her car.
One evening, a deputy stopped her near a closed roadside diner.
He claimed her vehicle had been connected to suspicious commercial activity.
She didn't understand.
The car belonged to her.
She showed him her registration and insurance.
He examined the documents, then said the vehicle needed to be held for further verification.
The nurse asked whether she could call someone.
He told her she could avoid the entire problem by paying a special release charge.
Four thousand dollars.
She began crying.
The deputy looked irritated.
He told her tears wouldn't change the procedure.
She didn't have the money.
The car was impounded.
For eleven days, she depended on borrowed transportation and expensive rides to reach work.
She missed two shifts.
Her supervisor initially tried to accommodate the situation, but the hospital couldn't indefinitely rearrange staffing around an unexplained vehicle seizure.
The nurse eventually borrowed money from relatives to recover the car.
By then, the amount demanded through the storage company was even higher.
She paid because she needed to work.
When the investigative team contacted her, she was reluctant to speak.
She feared the deputy might see her complaint.
She feared another traffic stop.
And she feared losing the job that supported her family.
The woman directing the investigation traveled to meet her in person.
They sat at a kitchen table covered with children's homework, utility bills, and a bowl of fruit.
The nurse described the stop carefully.
Then she looked toward the investigator.
"Can you promise he won't come after me?"
The investigator didn't offer a guarantee she couldn't make.
She explained what protective procedures might be available, what the investigation could do, and why truthful documentation mattered.
The nurse listened.