The county attorney, a tired man named Everett Hale, initially offered to send summaries. Porter shook her head. "I don't want conclusions written by the people we're reviewing. I want the records that existed before anyone knew we were coming." Hale adjusted his glasses and made the necessary calls. The words sounded simple, but by sunset they had disturbed the habits of nearly everyone at the sheriff's office.
An evidence technician named Lena Price showed Porter the storage server. Lena had worked at the department for six years and had learned to keep her opinions private. She knew which supervisors wanted access reports delivered by email and which preferred a printed copy without inconvenient annotations. When Porter asked whether old recordings could be recovered after an officer marked them as irrelevant, Lena hesitated.
"Sometimes," she said. "Depends on the retention settings."
"Who can change those settings?"
Lena looked at the door before answering. "A small group of supervisors. Sergeant Hollister has access for the interdiction unit. The sheriff's administrator does, too."
Porter asked for those access logs first. Lena supplied them without commentary and watched an investigator make secured copies. On the third page, several entries showed recordings categorized in ways that did not match their linked incident reports. There was no proof of deliberate deletion yet, but the irregularities were enough to expand the preservation order. Porter thanked Lena for her cooperation and made clear that accurately preserving evidence mattered more than protecting anyone's standing inside the department.
Hollister was placed on administrative leave while the inquiry proceeded. His badge and service weapon were secured under departmental procedures, and he was instructed not to contact witnesses or tamper with evidence. The order came from Coleman's office after consultation with county counsel, not from a federal agent claiming the ability to dismiss a local officer by command. Hollister's attorney began preparing a defense almost immediately, emphasizing his years of service and asserting that the stop had followed departmental training.
The attorney's confidence depended on a simple expectation: one traffic stop would be judged in isolation. Porter had other plans. Her team obtained authorization to review a year's worth of highway enforcement records because the initial footage, the racial comments, and the handling of the cash raised questions about a recurring practice. The review involved 340 recorded stops, with case files, dispatch data, available cameras, property forms, and follow-up dispositions compared one by one.
At first the investigators worked in a borrowed room at the courthouse. The air conditioner rattled loudly enough to make conversations difficult, and the folding tables had to be cleared each evening because the county still used the room for other business. One investigator listened with headphones while another read incident reports aloud. Porter insisted they create a consistent data sheet for every stop, including the stated reason for the stop, whether consent was requested, the response given, any other claimed legal basis, the race or ethnicity recorded for the driver, and what happened after the search.