None of them had video. None of them had been believed when they reported it.
The delivery driver's complaint had been reviewed and returned to him with a notation that the officer's account was inconsistent with his allegations, and the matter was considered resolved. The nurse had been told that without corroborating evidence, the department was unable to take further action.
The graduate student's filing was categorized as a misunderstanding regarding search procedure. The older man had never filed anything because he said he had known, standing at that ATM, that no one would help him. Experience had taught him that filing a complaint against a police officer in a city where you had no connections was a way of making yourself a target without gaining anything in return.
They had all been right. Until now, they had all been exactly right.
Dana sat with the full picture for an hour before she called Desmond. She told him the total estimated amount across the documented cases exceeded $9,700. She told him Briggs had not been operating randomly. She told him the data showed a consistent selection profile: people who were isolated, disoriented, unfamiliar with local process, or who appeared unlikely to pursue formal channels.
Briggs had not stumbled into these situations. He had constructed them. He had used the geography of his patrol routes, the timing of his shifts, and the specific vulnerabilities of the people he chose to build something that looked, from the outside, exactly like a police officer doing his job.
Desmond listened to all of it without speaking. When Dana finished, he asked her one question. He asked whether the cases could stand without his name on them.
Dana understood immediately why he was asking. She told him she believed they could. She told him she was going to need more time to make sure of it. He told her to take the time she needed.
Then he told her something she had not expected him to say: the thing making him angriest was not what had been taken from him. It was that he was being listened to now only because of what he was about to become. Every one of the people she had found had said the same things he had said and been answered with silence because they had no position that made silence uncomfortable for anyone.
Dana did not respond to that directly. She wrote it down.
The department grapevine moved faster than any official channel, which was something that had been true in every precinct Desmond had ever studied. By midweek, word had circulated among the senior patrol staff that the incoming chief had a background in internal accountability and had, in at least one prior post, reopened complaint files that had been considered settled.
The specifics were vague. The anxiety was not.
Briggs heard it on Tuesday. He did not know the new chief's face. He had not attended the council session where the appointment was announced, and the internal memo had included no photograph.
What he knew was the professional summary: nearly two decades in law enforcement, focus on officer accountability, and departmental integrity reform. He knew what that meant. He had seen that kind of chief before in other cities. And he knew what that kind of chief looked for first.