Silence.
Then she played the section where McMillan called Derek “boy.”
McMillan’s face tightened.
“I call everybody that.”
Investigators later reviewed hours of his camera footage.
They did not find him addressing white male drivers the same way.
The inquiry became more serious when the FBI and federal civil-rights officials became involved.
This was no longer about whether McMillan had been rude.
The question was whether a pattern of biased enforcement and unsupported detention had been tolerated through inadequate supervision.
Investigators interviewed supervisors.
Several claimed they had not recognized a pattern because complaints were reviewed separately.
One sergeant admitted McMillan was known as “aggressive but productive.”
Another said drivers sometimes complained because they “didn’t like being questioned.”
A lieutenant said repeated remedial counseling had been considered sufficient.
Then investigators asked him to explain why the same conduct kept producing complaints if the remediation was working.
He could not.
The most damaging evidence came from the department’s own information systems.
McMillan’s stop patterns had been visible for years.
Nobody had designed the process to flag them.
The department tracked complaints.
It tracked stop data.
It tracked searches.
It tracked citations.
But those databases were not routinely examined together.
A supervisor could see nine complaints without easily seeing that the same officer also had unusually high stop rates for Black motorists and unusually low citation outcomes.
Derek summarized the problem one night to Renee.
“They collected every warning sign.”
Renee looked up from a stack of case files.
“They just never asked the systems to talk to each other.”
“Exactly.”
The investigation lasted through July.
Derek continued working.
He did not ask to be reassigned.
He did not want McMillan controlling his professional life even indirectly.
But the stop changed him in small ways.
He became more aware of patrol cars in his mirror.
He found himself checking vehicle lights twice before leaving home.
When a police cruiser followed him for three blocks one afternoon, his pulse increased before the officer turned away.
He hated that.
Renee noticed.
“You’re allowed to be affected.”
“I’ve been through worse.”
“That isn’t how the nervous system works.”
Derek smiled faintly.
“Attorney and therapist now?”
“I contain multitudes.”
On August 2, Chief Michael Davis received the final forty-seven-page Internal Affairs report.
Its conclusions were direct.
The initiating traffic justification could not be reliably supported.
McMillan provided multiple inconsistent explanations.
The escalation toward drug suspicion was not supported by observable evidence documented on video.
His racialized language violated policy.
His report contained statements inconsistent with body-camera footage.
His interview statements conflicted with recorded evidence.
Most importantly, the department had sufficient prior information to recognize a possible pattern and had failed to intervene meaningfully.
Seven days later, Victor McMillan was terminated.
He had served twelve years.
The letter described gross misconduct, dishonesty during investigation, biased policing concerns, failure to follow department standards, and conduct incompatible with continued law-enforcement authority.
McMillan appealed.
The union represented him through the process.
His attorney argued that the encounter had to be judged from the perspective of an officer making rapid decisions at night.
He argued the disputed odor could not be disproven.
He argued Derek’s legal challenges increased tension.
He argued dismissal was disproportionate.
Then the appeal panel watched the video.
All fifteen minutes.
Nobody spoke during playback.
When it ended, one panel member asked McMillan why his explanation for the stop changed repeatedly.
McMillan again returned to officer discretion.
The panel member asked:
“Does discretion include inventing facts?”
McMillan said that was not what happened.
The appeal was denied.
Derek could have stopped there.
He did not.
Not because he wanted money.
Not primarily.
By September, he and Renee had spent weeks discussing whether litigation would make meaningful change or merely produce another settlement and confidentiality agreement.
Renee asked him a difficult question.