Callahan approached the stand reluctantly. He had slept poorly, and the difference showed in the loose skin beneath his eyes. Brennan sat beside a legal pad filled with warnings about topics his client should not volunteer. The officer still wore his uniform, but he no longer seemed entirely comfortable inside it.
James began with Dorothy Patterson. He displayed a certified record of her stop and asked whether Callahan remembered ordering a sixty-eight-year-old woman with arthritis to kneel. The officer answered that he remembered the traffic stop generally but not every detail. James showed him the complaint and his written response, then asked whether he had considered her medical condition before requiring the position.
"She said she had bad knees," Callahan admitted.
"Did you assess whether she posed an immediate danger?"
"I assessed the whole situation."
"What specific action by Mrs. Patterson made kneeling necessary?"
Callahan stared at the exhibit. "She wasn't complying quickly enough."
James nodded slowly. "Was she threatening you?"
"Not physically."
"Did she possess a weapon?"
"Not that I found."
"Was she arrested?"
"No."
James moved to Tyrell Washington, then to the documented incident involving Jasmine Torres. He was careful not to claim that Callahan's conduct in those encounters had already been proven unlawful. Instead, he asked why the same restraint had been used against people of different ages and circumstances when the reports identified no immediate attack. Callahan repeatedly returned to general officer-safety language without explaining what made the particular people dangerous.
"You describe the position as a technique for securing a scene," James said. "But in the recording involving Ms. Richardson, you describe it as a lesson. Why?"