The process exists for a reason. The open-records response is due Thursday, Duval says. Then we respond Thursday. We respond what we're required to respond. Nothing additional.
A pause. When I've seen these things spiral because someone decided to get ahead of it independently. The process protects everybody, including you. Duval looks at his desk at the dispatch log printout he has been looking at on and off for two days. I understand, he says.
Good man. Farwell's voice warms by another degree. This will work itself out. He hangs up. He calls his own attorney 11 minutes later and that call lasts 47 minutes during which the words qualified immunity, 1983 pattern or practice in federal monitor are used with the particular careful frequency of people who are trying to understand how bad a problem actually is.
It is worse than Farwell had hoped. But what he does not know yet, what no one in this chain of calls knows, is that the 47-minute call has been logged by the county's own phone system, which logs duration and parties for all county related lines. Duration and parties are not privileged. And the attorneys at Voss, Tanner and Cole, have already filed a second public records request. This one to the county commissioner's office for all communications between elected officials and county council regarding the October 11th incident.
The response will be due in three business days. What it produces will depend in part on whether anyone in this building has thought carefully enough about the difference between managing a situation and making it significantly worse. Several of them have not. The open-records response goes out Thursday at 4:58 p.m. 2 minutes before the deadline. It contains the incident reports, the dispatch log, and the evidence intake records.
What it does not contain is the body-camera footage from Maul's patrol car on the grounds that the footage is subject to an ongoing internal review and therefore exempt under OCGA section 50-18-72(a)(4). The law enforcement investigative records exception. The attorneys at Voss, Tanner, and Cole received this response at 5:03 p.m. By 5:45, they have filed an emergency motion in Havford County Superior Court challenging the exemption claim. The motion argues in 15 pages of tightly written legal pros that the investigative records exception does not apply to footage of an incident that is itself the subject of the complaint, that no formal internal investigation has been opened. because no formal internal investigation has been opened as the department's own records confirm and that the withholding constitutes bad faith under section 50-18-74 exposing the county to statutory damages of $1,000 per day of wrongful withholding.
The motion is assigned to Judge Patricia Ren of the Havford County Superior Court. Judge Ren schedules a hearing for the following Monday at 10 a.m. OM on Friday, eight days after the original stop. The Atlanta Courier publishes Pria Meta's article. The headline reads, "Black teen held 2 hours after traffic stop.
Father's military credentials emerged later. The subheads show stop based on anonymous tip. No charges filed. open-records fight underway." The article is precise. It cites the dispatch log directly.
41-second anonymous call, low priority classification, no corroborating basis. It cites the statutory window violation.
It cites the unlogged evidence intake for Demi's phone. It does not name Ever Caldwell's rank or current assignment. His attorneys have requested that this information not be published, but it identifies him as a retired federal official with current advisory responsibilities. By Friday afternoon, the article has been shared 11,000 times. By Saturday morning, 22,000.
Farwell calls the police chief at 6:47 a.m. Saturday. His voice has shed the practiced warmth entirely. The Monday hearing before Judge Ren lasts 1 hour and 11 minutes. The department's attorney, a county counsel named Gregory Ule, argues the investigative exemption.
He is technically competent and professionally prepared and his argument is not without merit. The exemption under section 50-18-72(a)(4) is real and courts have applied it to body-camera footage in other contexts. The attorneys from Voss, Tanner and Cole present a single additional document. It is an email obtained through a separate public records request to the county's IT department sent from Sergeant Duval's department account to a Yendai's department account at 11:53 p.m. on Friday the 11th, 6 minutes before Maul filed his incident report. The subject line reads, "Reports tonight." The body of the email reads, "Need reports aligned before Monday.
Get to Braxton first." Ule objects to the email's introduction on relevance grounds. He argues it pertains to standard report coordination, not evidence withholding. Judge Ren reads the email. She reads it again. She looks at Ule over the top of her reading glasses.
Counselor. The phrase get to Braxton first in an email sent before the incident report was filed is relevant to whether the department's subsequent claim of an ongoing internal investigation was made in good faith. overruled. She orders the body-camera footage released within 48 hours. Ule requests a stay pending appeal. Denied.
Judge Ren says her gavvel comes down with a particular finality of a woman who has considered the matter and is done with it. The body-camera footage runs 44 minutes. It begins when Maul activates his light bar in the Exxon lot. The time stamp at activation reads 8:31 p.m. The audio is clear.
The attorneys watch it in full. Then they watch it again. There are four moments of particular significance. First, at the 8-minute mark after Seldon has confirmed the registration is clean and current, Maul says to Seldon, while Demi stands 3 ft away with her hands at her sides, "Run it again. Something's off." Seldon says a Braxton it came back clean.
He says, "Run it again." Second, at the 14-minute mark, when Demi cites OCGA section 17-5-30 regarding the warrant requirement for trunk searches, Maul's body-camera captures Seldon in the background, briefly looking down at something, her phone, it appears, and then looking back up with an expression that is not quite concealment, but is also not quite neutral. She does not intervene. Third, at the 19-minute mark, immediately after Maul applies the zip tie, his body-camera captures Demi's wrist. The tie is clearly tighter than department policy permits for a non-resisting detainee. The Havford County Police Department's use of force guidelines, section 3, paragraph 8 states, temporary restraints applied to non-resisting subjects shall not impair circulation and shall be checked within 5 minutes of application.
Maul does not check them. In 44 minutes of footage, no officer checks them. Fourth, at the 22-minute mark, in the cruiser with Demi in the back seat, Maul's lapel mic captures him making a call on his personal cell phone, not his radio. The call lasts 90 seconds. The body-camera audio captures Maul's side only.
Yeah, clean registration, but the girl's a minor with a learner's only. I know, I know. Look, just run the father's name. There's something off about this. Yeah, tonight.
The attorneys note the time. 8:53 p.m. Before booking, before the detectives terminal search, before Duval's query on the restricted federal database, someone made a call before any of those things. Someone already wanted the father's name run. The question is who Maul called. That question does not yet have an answer.
The personal cell number is traceable, but the trace takes time. And time in legal proceedings is measured in weeks and months, not minutes. What can be documented right now? What is documented in 44 minutes of timestamped footage authenticated by chain of custody records confirmed by the department's own IT logs, case reference number, HAV-24-CR-4471, is enough. The internal affairs hearing is scheduled for six weeks after the original incident.