The detective enhanced the feed. Perry was laughing, eating his donut. But then, for a brief window of about 45 seconds, he pulled his personal cell phone out of his pocket, he hunched over, shielding the screen with his hand, and typed a rapid message before slipping the phone away. He sent a text, Donovan observed, his eyes narrowing. Who is he texting at 3:20 in the morning after a contested arrest?
James's mind raced. He knows Harrison is a liability. He knows the arrest report is flimsy. If he's smart and he's cunning, if nothing else, he knows the only thing that can undeniably sink him is the dash cam footage from unit 42. The body cam he can try to explain away as a scuffle, but the dash cam shows the driving.
It proves the initial stop was a complete fabrication. He was texting dispatch. Donovan realized the pieces clicking together. The IT servers for the cruisers are housed in the downtown hub. He's got a buddy in dispatch who owes him a favor.
He was trying to get the footage corrupted or wiped. Donovan grabbed his radio. I team 2, this is Donovan. I need a seizure warrant for Bernard Perry's personal cell phone right now and get a team over to the central dispatch server room. Lock down all data for unit 42.
10 minutes later, the door to the office opened and a detective walked in holding a sealed evidence bag containing Perry's iPhone. He tried to smash it when we walked into the interrogation room, Captain, but we got it before he could crack the motherboard. It is pulling the logs now. At 5:15 a. m., Thomas O'Grady, the formidable Union representative for the patrolman's benevolent association, pushed his way into the commander's office. "O'Grady was a big red-faced man who made a living defending the indefensible.
" "Chief James, Captain Donovan, " O'Grady barked, leaning heavily on the desk. "This is a gross violation of due process. You stripped a decorated veteran of his badge on hearsay from a rookie and you locked him in a box. I want my client reinstated and I want him released or I will have the mayor's office burying you in injunctions by 9:00. James didn't stand up.
He simply slid a printed piece of paper across the desk toward the union rep. "Read it, Tom, " James said softly. O'Grady scowlled, picking up the paper. It was a printed transcript of a text message extracted from Perry's phone sent at 3:21 a. m. to a dispatcher named Kevin Lewis. Message Kev, need a huge favor.
Unit 42 dash cam from 0200 to 0230. A glitch happened, right? Corrupted file. I owe you big time. Delete it before morning shift.
O'Grady's red face drained of color, turning a sickly shade of gray. The bluster instantly vanished from his posture. A bad arrest could be defended in arbitration. Excessive force could be debated in front of a sympathetic civil service board. But conspiracy to destroy digital evidence, soliciting another city employee to commit a felony cover up, that was a federal crime.