Another row read:
23-7712 / E-R / SEU / corrected.
That case involved $12,900 seized from a home during a narcotics search. The property room received $9,900.
E-R appeared to mean evidence-revise.
Marcus Vale's initials appeared at the bottom of the page beside a weekly review date.
The most dangerous piece of the audit was not the code list.
It was an email chain that gave the codes meaning.
A lieutenant had written to Vale after a defense attorney demanded missing body-camera footage:
Need a D-H on 22-441 before Friday. Raw segment creates issues with consent narrative.
Vale answered:
Handle under duplicate/corrupt. Make sure discovery export is clean.
D-H.
Discovery-hold.
The raw segment had later been marked non-evidentiary.
That was no longer a vague discrepancy.
It was an instruction.
Cho read the email and sat back.
"Who authenticated this?"
"City archive server. Message headers preserved. Vale's account and device certificate."
"Could someone have used his credentials?"
"Possible. Which is why the audit says attributable to account activity, not conclusively typed by Vale."
Judge Carter nodded once.
"You wrote it carefully."
"Careful is the job."
Outside the conference room, the courthouse continued its ordinary day. People argued about traffic fines. Lawyers negotiated plea offers. A child cried in a hallway because his parents were fighting over custody. The world did not stop because a police department's internal record system might have been compromised.
That ordinary motion made the evidence feel even heavier.
Every record in those folders belonged to a real person whose case had moved through rooms like these.
At 3:20, Miriam Cho received authorization from her supervisors to open a formal public-integrity investigation. The inspector general issued preservation notices to Westbridge city government, the police department, the body-camera vendor, the evidence storage contractor, and the city IT department.
The notices were deliberately broad about records and deliberately narrow about accusation.
No public statement named Vale, Vance, or anyone else.
No one was called corrupt in an official release.
Systems were frozen first.
Conclusions would come later.
By 4:00, Westbridge Police headquarters knew something serious was happening.
At 4:12, Deputy Chief Marcus Vale called Judge Carter's chambers.
She did not take the call.
At 4:16, he called Chief Judge Benton.
Benton referred him to outside counsel.
At 4:23, Vale sent a department-wide message accusing unnamed outside actors of attempting to undermine lawful police operations through "unauthorized data removal and incomplete analysis."
The message instructed employees not to speak with investigators without command notification.
At 4:31, Miriam Cho sent him a preservation notice and a reminder that no department policy could obstruct lawful subpoenas, protected whistleblower communication, or court-directed cooperation.
At 4:44, Vale sent a second message saying he welcomed transparent review.
The first one had already been saved.