I am a civilian standing on a public sidewalk asking a lawful question about my minor child. If your body cam is functioning, it has recorded this contact. Phelps pulled his hand back fast. The way a man pulls his hand back from a surface he suddenly realizes is hotter than he expected. Corbin cleared his throat.
"Phelps, let's just run the serial number." I don't need to run. "Run it." Corbin's voice was different now. Not friendly, not sympathetic, just careful.
The particular careful of a supervisor who has been in the department long enough to know what a lawsuit looks like when it is still in its first 15 minutes of existence and who has decided, not out of justice, but out of self-preservation, that the serial number is faster than the alternative. Phelps crouched next to the bicycle. He turned the frame over. On the underside of the bottom bracket stamped into the metal in small raised characters was the serial number WTU1 such774523G. He read it into his radio.
Dispatch ran it. 14 seconds. Unit 7 serial number WTU117R04523G is registered to a Trek MT220 purchased at Caldwell Cycling Peachtree Industrial Boulevard. Registered owner Marcus D. Thompson, 62 Brierfield Lane, Ridge Haven Estates.
The sidewalk went quiet. Not peaceful quiet. The kind of quiet that falls over a room when everyone present realizes at the same moment that the thing they were all participating in, the call, the handcuffs, the assumption, the woman's pointing finger, the officer's unnapped holster was wrong. Not ambiguously wrong, not arguably wrong, documentably, provably recorded on three cameras wrong. Sandra Whitmore took one step backward, her hand dropped to her side.
Well, I The bikes look identical. Anyone could have made that mistake. Malik spoke, still in handcuffs, still standing where he had been standing for 6 minutes and 14 seconds. "Ma'am, you said your son's bike is blue. My bike is blue.
There are over 11,000 blue bicycles sold in Georgia every year. Blue is not probable cause." Nobody responded to that because there was nothing to say that would make it less true. Phelps stood up. He looked at Corbin.