It is a formal disciplinary hearing under Georgia POST Act procedures, the peace officer standards and training act which governs officer conduct and the grounds for certification suspension or revocation. The hearing examiner is an independent officer appointed by the Georgia POST Council, a woman named Denise Okafor, whose professional reputation for thoroughess is well established and whose patience with procedural maneuvering is not. Officers Braxton Maul and Petra Seldon receive notice of the hearing on a Tuesday. They are placed on administrative leave with pay effective immediately. Their union provides representation, a labor attorney named Tomkins, who was experienced and unsentimental, and who tells them both in separate conversations, that the email and the body-camera footage together represent a significant evidentiary problem that will require them to address directly rather than deflect.
Maul's response to Tomkins is that he was doing his job, that the call was real, the suspicion was legitimate, and everything that followed was within standard procedure. Tomkins asks him who he called from the cruiser at 8:53. Maul says it was a personal call. Tomkins asks him again. Maul says he doesn't remember.
Tomkins closes his folder and looks at him with the expression of a man who has been doing this work for 21 years and has heard I don't remember used as a procedural strategy approximately 400 times. Braxton, he says, the number is on the tower log. They're going to have it within the week. You need to be ahead of this. Maul says nothing.
Tomkins closes his briefcase. Demi is in AP Chemistry when the hearing date is confirmed. Her phone buzzes once, a text from a number she recognizes, and she reads it under the lab table. And then she puts the phone back in her pocket and finishes the titration she was working on with the same level focus she brings to everything. The kind of focus that looks like calm from the outside and is something more complicated on the inside.
After school, she sits in the car for 7 minutes before starting the engine. She is not crying. She's not relieved. She is something harder to name. The particular feeling of a process being validated, which is not the same as a process being finished and not the same as a wound being closed and carries within it the awareness that Devett still has his badge.
And Alende has gone very quiet. And somewhere in this county, there is a cell number on a tower log that nobody has explained yet. She starts the engine. She drives home. Her father is in the kitchen.
When she gets there, he is reading something at the table. Actual paper, a printed document, the kind that arrives in envelopes from law firms. He looks up when she comes in. POST hearing confirmed, she says. I know.
He sets the paper down. How was school? She puts her bag on the counter. Maul's attorney called yours. Tomkins.
How do you know that? You left your call log open on the counter this morning. He looks at her for a moment. Something shifts in his expression. Not quite a smile.
Not quite the opposite. You weren't supposed to see that. I know. She opens the refrigerator, takes out a carton of orange juice, pours a glass. What did Tomkins want? To understand the scope of our complaint.
Her father picks up the document again. And to understand whether we intended to pursue the civil component under Section 1983. He pauses. We do. She drinks her orange juice, looks out the kitchen window at the backyard, the old oak tree, the tire swing her father put up when she was nine, and that she is slightly too old for now, but has never asked him to take down. The cell number, she says, from the cruiser call.
It's being traced. Hint number four, she says almost to herself. Her father looks up. What? Nothing.
She sets the glass in the sink. How long does the civil case take? Months. Could be longer. He watches her.
Demi, you understand that the hearing next month, the POST hearing, that's the beginning, not the end. I know. She turns to face him. I've always known that. He holds her gaze for a moment.
His daughter, who reads registration documents and counts badge numbers and memorizes detention procedure handbooks. His daughter, who was in a holding room for 2 hours and 14 minutes and came out with a complete, accurate, chronological record of everything that occurred, start to finish. His daughter, who was scared and did not show it and did it right anyway. I know you know. He says the POST hearing takes place on a Thursday in November.
The hearing room is a municipal conference room on the second floor of the Havford County Government Center and it is not large. 12 seats at the table, a small gallery behind a low railing, fluorescent lights, a wall clock. Hearing examiner Okafor calls the proceedings to order at 10:03 a.m. The record is entered. Havford POST 2024-089. Complainant Demi R.
Caldwell minor represented by guardian Everett G. Caldwell and counsel from Voss, Tanner, and Cole. Respondents officers Braxton Maul and Petra Seldon represented by labor counsel Tomkins. The attorneys for the complainant present the documentary record in order. The 41-second dispatch call in its low priority classification.
Maul's incident report with the discrepancy from the dispatch log identified and read into the record. The body-camera footage excerpted at the four timestamps previously noted. The evidence intake log showing Demi's phone recovered from an evidence bag with no intake record. The statutory analysis of the detention clock violation under Georgia Code section 15-11-42.
And the email subject line read, "Reports tonight." The body read, "Need reports aligned before Monday. Get to Braxton first."
Sent from Duval's account at 11:53 p.m. Maul sits through this with his hands flat on the table and his jaw working. The way a man's jaw works when he is holding something back and the effort of holding it is visible. He does not look at the attorneys.
He does not look at the screen where the body-camera timestamps are displayed. He looks at a point on the table about 18 inches in front of him and his eyes do not move. And the effort of that stillness is its own kind of confession. Seldon sits beside him. Her stillness is of an entirely different character.