Another caller was a retired bus driver whose son had received a citation after asking an officer to explain a traffic stop. The family had saved the ticket but not known how to request radio recordings or dispatch logs. The fund referred them to local counsel and helped them assemble a chronology, separating what had been witnessed from what they had assumed. Morgan learned about the matter only through anonymized quarterly reports because the board had insisted that individual clients deserved privacy, even from the founder.
The first year was more expensive and less glamorous than the fundraising brochures suggested. Attorneys donated time, but investigators, translators, secure systems, transportation, and expert assessments cost money. Some cases closed after a consultation; others required months of careful work. The fund provided consultations, record-preservation assistance, or legal referrals in more than one hundred twenty matters during its first year, with a smaller group receiving ongoing representation through partner firms.
Morgan attended the annual review meeting with a pencil and a printed financial statement. She asked more questions about the cost of secure document storage than about the photographs proposed for the website. Grace laughed and said that Morgan had finally found a room full of lawyers who appreciated somebody caring about invoices. Morgan answered that a promise to help the next vulnerable person meant little if the organization spent its money trying to look impressive.
One evening, while leaving the office, she saw a young volunteer standing beside the elevator with a box of intake forms. He told her that his sister had recognized Morgan from the McLaren video and had encouraged him to volunteer because the incident had shown him why representation mattered. Morgan thanked him and asked whether he had found the work meaningful. He said he had spent the day helping someone complete a records request and that the person had cried when the confirmation email arrived.
"That seems like a small thing," he added. Morgan shook her head. "It isn't small to the person who thought nobody would answer," she said. The volunteer carried the box to his car, and Morgan stood for a moment in the lobby, remembering the clerk at the hospital who had quietly helped her obtain records while she was still too shaken to organize her own thoughts.
The legislative debate began during the second year after the stop, when state lawmakers held public hearings about camera activation requirements and the independent review of officer misconduct. The most popular proposal sounded simple: require every law-enforcement camera to record all the time and make any interruption a crime. Morgan understood the anger behind it, but she had spent enough years around evidence to know that an absolute rule written for applause could fail people in practice. Continuous recording could expose victims receiving medical care, confidential witnesses, children, and people seeking help in situations where privacy was itself part of safety.
She submitted testimony as a private witness, with the required ethics review, arguing for mandatory recording during enforcement contacts, clear limits on discretionary deactivation, documented exceptions, preservation rules, and independent audits of unexplained gaps. She supported meaningful penalties for intentional concealment or falsification, while cautioning that a dead battery should