Reena also examined examples of Ryan's work that had never produced complaints. Several supervisors described him as dependable during emergencies and skilled at coordinating traffic after collisions. One colleague recalled that he had stayed with a lost child for nearly an hour until a parent arrived, patiently drawing pictures to keep the child calm. Another said he was careful with physical evidence and rarely missed deadlines. The review team included those accounts because accountability meant evaluating the full record, not building a portrait from only the facts that supported a predetermined conclusion.
But commendations did not answer the questions raised by the four encounters. Reena had seen institutions use a person's good acts as though they erased unrelated complaints. She had also seen investigations ignore years of competent service because a single incident attracted public attention. Neither approach established what happened. The team would need to examine whether Ryan's reports were accurate, whether his decisions had a lawful and policy-based foundation, and whether the department itself had failed to correct a recognizable pattern.
By the following Friday, the office had requested Ryan's full activity logs for the dates of the previous incidents. The records showed that his supervisor had approved the descriptions without checking the supporting site plans or dispatch recordings. In one complaint, the reviewing officer had interviewed Ryan but never spoken to the person he questioned. In another, a missing body-camera clip had been recorded as unavailable without an attempt to recover the backup. The documents did not suggest a grand conspiracy to protect him. They suggested a comfortable routine in which an officer's account was considered complete unless someone with more time and money insisted otherwise.
Reena presented the preliminary findings to a separate review committee whose members had no role in Angela's office. She used neutral headings: supported facts, disputed facts, missing records, and potential policy issues. The committee authorized a formal investigation and directed that Ryan receive proper notice and representation before any compelled interview. It also ordered a broader process review of how the department handled complaints involving routine public contacts. The goal was not to turn one officer into an explanation for everything that had gone wrong in Greenhaven; it was to learn what allowed the mistakes to repeat.
Ryan received the notice on a Tuesday afternoon after completing a traffic detail. He read it in the locker room and felt his stomach contract at the phrase formal investigation. He called his union representative, a veteran sergeant named Paul Danner, who had defended officers in disciplinary matters for twenty years. Paul read the notice, asked for the exact policies being examined, and told Ryan not to discuss the allegations on social media. Ryan wanted to know whether the city intended to fire him for embarrassing a deputy commissioner.
"I don't know what the city intends," Paul said. "I know what your rights are, and I know you need to answer the actual evidence. Stop making this about her title."
"That's why it got attention," Ryan protested.
"Maybe. But the other complaints predate Saturday. You can't explain those by saying the mayor knows her."