"Have you seen him require other people to kneel during stops?"
She looked toward the defense table. "Yes."
"Approximately how often?"
"I personally witnessed at least twenty incidents involving similar restraint."
"Did those encounters have anything in common?"
Brennan objected to an overly broad comparison, and James narrowed the question to Rodriguez's firsthand observations. She described seeing the restraint used against people who were not, in her assessment, presenting an obvious threat at the point when she arrived. Asked whether many of those people were Black or Hispanic, she said they were. She did not pretend she had tracked every case, and that honesty gave her testimony weight.
Brennan's cross-examination was stern. He asked whether Rodriguez understood the dangers officers faced and whether she had ever relied on Callahan during emergencies. She answered yes. He asked whether she was now testifying against a former partner to protect her own career, and she replied that telling the truth might damage her career rather than protect it. When he suggested she was motivated by public pressure, she explained that she had submitted her supplemental statement before the story received significant media attention.
Finally, James asked one question on redirect. "Why are you here today?"
Rodriguez looked directly at Maya. "Because I should have said more when it happened," she answered. "I can't change what I didn't do that afternoon. But I can refuse to make it worse by repeating something that isn't true."
Her voice broke on the last word. Maya felt no triumph as she watched the young officer wipe her eyes. She knew remorse did not erase a failure to intervene, and she knew Rodriguez still had to answer for her own decisions. But telling the truth in front of a room full of people who might punish her for it was a beginning.
After Rodriguez stepped down, Dr. Patricia Holmes of Georgetown University explained her statistical analysis of the forty-seven documented encounters. She described the distribution of affected people, the demographics of the patrol area, and the importance of comparing those figures to meaningful measures of actual police contacts. She refused to declare that any individual stop had been discriminatory simply because of a percentage. Instead, she explained why the combined figures warranted scrutiny and how the absence of reliable supervisory reviews made the pattern especially troubling.
"Forty-three of the forty-seven people identified in these records were Black or Hispanic," she told the jury. "That is a striking concentration. By itself it is not a complete explanation of cause, but when considered alongside documented conduct, comparable stops, and the department's complaint history, it raises serious concerns that cannot responsibly be dismissed as coincidence without further investigation."
James thanked her. He had not demanded a magical number that would prove every allegation, and she had not provided one. The power of her testimony came from its precision and its refusal to claim more than the data supported.
At the end of the day, Maya stepped into a quiet hallway to escape the reporters. James found her standing near a window, looking at the city streets below. "You all right?" he asked. She nodded without turning.
"I thought seeing Rodriguez testify would make me feel better," she admitted. "It doesn't."