The chairwoman leaned forward. "What would you like this city to do, Dr. Carter?"
Angela took a sip of water. "Make verification easy and refusal to verify visible. If an officer has reason to ask questions, give that officer a reliable way to check credentials without making the person's appearance the deciding factor. If a partner sees verified facts being ignored, make sure there is a protected way to document it while the situation is still happening. If a recording is missing, preserve the technical information and seek independent sources instead of treating the missing file as permission to choose a story."
She glanced at the notes Rachel had helped her prepare. "And give complaints a route that doesn't end at the desk of the same people being complained about. Independent review is not an insult to honest officers. It's a safeguard for them too."
The chairwoman asked about Fort Redstone's role. Angela explained that military credentials and controlled property required appropriate verification through the installation, but that civilian officers should retain their lawful authority and should not need a dramatic intervention to contact the correct office. A published duty number, a secure verification route, and clear procedures for preserving an item pending confirmation were more useful than waiting for an overdue tag to trigger a welfare check.
A council member asked whether such a system would be expensive. Angela did not pretend the answer was nothing. Training cost money, secure communications required maintenance, and independent reviewers needed staffing if the city expected them to do more than issue letters. But she asked the council to compare those costs with the legal fees, lost working hours, damaged public trust, and harm imposed on the person at the center of an avoidable detention.
"You can put the savings from inaction on a budget," she said. "You can't put all of its costs there. They appear later, in someone else's life."
Another member worried that the new rules could make officers hesitant in genuinely dangerous situations. Angela acknowledged that concern. She did not want officers stopping a lawful response to a real threat because they feared paperwork. She wanted the protocol to distinguish immediate safety needs from situations where a simple, available verification step could prevent an unnecessary escalation.
"A good procedure isn't one that pretends every encounter is harmless," she said. "It's one that demands a reason when we treat somebody as dangerous. That reason should be based on facts we can explain afterward, not just on an impression we can't examine."
Rachel watched the committee members write. Several asked for copies of Angela's proposal, including the parts dealing with audiovisual evidence preservation and independent oversight. For the first time that morning, the discussion moved away from whether a director deserved sympathy and toward how the city could test its procedures under ordinary conditions.
Before closing the testimony, the chairwoman asked Angela whether she wanted the officers responsible to apologize publicly. Angela looked at the empty seat reserved for Harland and then at Mercer sitting with counsel. She had thought about the question repeatedly and knew that an apology delivered under television lights could easily become another performance.
"I want the investigations to finish," she said. "I want findings based on evidence and consequences appropriate to those findings. If an apology comes, it should name what happened without asking me to make the person who caused it feel better. But I didn't come to bargain for an apology. I came to ask what happens to the next person."