Pike's attorney began with the edited radio call. He played Camille's order forbidding county units to respond, then suggested she had deliberately isolated the encounter because she intended to convert a routine stop into a political case.
He called Van first. Van admitted Pike's session remained open inside the shared cruiser, that he sometimes used the passenger terminal, and that he kept his notebook overnight before sealing it.
"So you had access to the session?" the attorney said. "You had access to the notebook, and you faced dismissal unless someone else carried the blame."
"Yes," Van said. "I had access."
The answer rippled through the room. The attorney displayed the notebook page. "Nothing here records an exact creation time. Nothing identifies which officer touched the keyboard. Isn't it true that you created the caution and blamed Officer Pike only after learning the rider was the county sheriff?"
Van looked toward Camille, then at Pike. Before he could answer, Pike leaned toward his attorney and whispered something. The attorney smiled and withdrew the question.
Camille understood the maneuver: they did not need Van to prove their version; they needed only enough uncertainty to make Pike's version possible.
The board chair called a recess with the city's evidence still unheard. As Pike passed Camille, he kept his voice too low for the microphones.
"Reasonable doubt," he said.
"Wrong forum," Camille answered.
When the board returned, one member asked Naomi whether any single record could conclusively identify the person at the keyboard.
Naomi answered honestly, "No single record can."
The board member's question hung over the hearing room. Pike's attorney leaned back as if the case had already ended. The city attorney looked down at his exhibit list. Naomi did not move.
Camille wrote one sentence on the legal pad before her and slid it forward: Stop trying to make one record do the work of five.
The city called Laya Gomez. Laya authenticated the original CAD event and the independent export produced by municipal technology staff. She explained that the audit recorded not only Pike's authenticated session, but the hardware identifier of the passenger-side terminal inside his assigned cruiser. The caution could not have been created through a handheld radio or Van's personal device.
Pike's attorney stood. "But Officer Van could use that terminal."