He thought about the three supplemental narratives Embry had filed with language designed to transform a newspaper delivery boy into a surveillance suspect. He thought about the 47 cases in his file and now 48 49 50 51. He thought about the credential case in his bag, the one with the gold badge and the three letters embossed in blue. Not yet.
Soon, but not yet. The record's response arrived on the third business day at 4:48 p.m. 17 minutes before the office closed. Portman had timed it. Wendell knew she had timed it because people who process records requests on the last possible minute do not do so by accident.
They do so because someone told them to wait. The envelope was thin, 14 pages. The dispatch logs were there, but only for the most recent 90 days, not the 12 months he had requested. The incident reports were there, but three of the seven had been partially redacted with black bars covering the narrative sections under a claimed exemption for active personnel matters.
The body camera footage was not included at all. A single-page letter signed by the records custodian stated that the footage was under review for potential evidentiary relevance and would be made available when that review was complete. There was no timeline for the review. Wendell read every page at the kitchen table.
He separated the documents into three stacks. Stack one, what they had given him. Stack two, what they had withheld. Stack three, what they had redacted.
The third stack was the most interesting because the redactions told him exactly what they were trying to hide. And in the process of hiding it, they had confirmed that it existed. The partially redacted reports were from Micah's fourth, fifth, and sixth stops. The redacted sections corresponded to the supplemental narratives, the ones Embry had added after the fact.
Wendell already knew what those narratives said because he had obtained unredacted copies through channels that did not involve a three business day timeline. But the precinct did not know he had those copies. And the decision to redact them rather than simply include them meant that someone at the precinct understood that the language in those supplementals was a problem. He photographed every page.
He saved the images in the encrypted folder on his laptop. He drafted an appeal of the redactions to the Georgia Attorney General's Open Records Division, citing the provision requiring the government to justify withholding and allowing the requesting party to challenge exemptions. He also drafted a separate request for the body camera footage. this time specifying the exact dates, the exact badge numbers, and the exact time windows down to the minute, making it functionally impossible for the records custodian to claim ambiguity about which footage was being requested. He mailed both documents the next morning, certified mail, return receipt requested.