The body camera showed Hayes's movement near Daniel's jacket. The park camera showed where the officer had been standing and how he had positioned himself beside the bench.
Neither recording alone resolved every uncertainty.
Together, they raised a serious question about whether Hayes had deliberately placed the bag inside Daniel's clothing before announcing that he had discovered it.
Mercer prepared a preliminary evidence summary and presented it to the independent review team. She was careful not to describe the allegation as proven before the investigation was complete. Instead, she outlined the inconsistencies in Hayes's statement, the timing shown in the recordings, the witness accounts, and the limitations of the available footage.
The team agreed that further inquiry was necessary.
They also agreed that Daniel's position as Chief of Police should not allow him to direct the findings of the case. The review would continue under independent oversight, with all conclusions supported by documented evidence.
When Daniel was informed of the progress, he thanked the investigators and repeated his request that the case be handled according to the same standards applied to any other civilian.
DANIEL BROOKS: "I don't want the department to prove something because I hold this office. I want it to establish what happened because the evidence supports it."
INVESTIGATOR MERCER: "That is how we intend to proceed."
DANIEL BROOKS: "And if the evidence shows that the responding officers made a reasonable decision based on what they saw, that should be recorded too."
INVESTIGATOR MERCER: "We will distinguish what each person knew at the time from what we learned afterward."
Daniel ended the conversation with a sense of cautious relief. The investigation was not complete, but it was moving beyond assumption and toward verification.
For Hayes, the situation was becoming increasingly uncomfortable.
He had initially believed that his account would be accepted because he was the officer who reported the incident. When he learned that the department was preserving multiple recordings, he began asking whether the review was necessary. He was told that the investigation was standard procedure whenever serious allegations were made.
He then asked whether Daniel's identity had influenced the decision.
The investigator answered that the review had been opened because of the allegation and the evidence, and that the chief had requested an independent process.
Hayes did not appear satisfied.
He had built his explanation around the assumption that nobody could establish what had happened before the struggle. The civilian witnesses had arrived too late to see the alleged planting, and the responding officers had witnessed only the final seconds. He had expected those limitations to leave his version largely unchallenged.
But the recordings had created a timeline that could be examined from several angles.
His movements near the bench had been documented. His first commands had been recorded. His physical contact with Daniel had been captured. His account could be compared against those records, and any discrepancy could be tested rather than ignored.
The investigation was no longer dependent on whether Daniel sounded convincing.
It depended on what the evidence showed.
Over the following days, Mercer completed additional interviews and requested a formal review of Hayes's previous interactions with members of the public. The review was limited to relevant records and focused on complaints involving disputed searches, alleged fabrication of evidence, and inconsistencies in official reports.
The initial findings did not establish that every earlier complaint was valid. Some had lacked supporting evidence, while others had been closed after investigators found insufficient information to proceed. Mercer was careful not to treat an unproven allegation as proof of misconduct.
However, several records contained details that warranted closer examination.
One complaint involved a delivery driver named Marcus Hill, who had reported that an officer discovered a small packet in his vehicle after stopping him for a minor traffic issue. Hill had insisted that the packet was not his and that the officer had searched a compartment he had not consented to open.
The complaint had been closed months earlier because the available footage was incomplete and there had been no independent witness who could confirm the sequence of events.
Another report concerned a young man who claimed that he had been threatened with arrest after questioning an officer's explanation for a search. That complaint had also been closed without a formal finding of misconduct.
Neither record proved that Hayes had done anything wrong in those earlier incidents. Mercer would need to examine the evidence in each case independently. But the similarities were enough to justify a review of the procedures used to investigate them.
She requested the original reports, available recordings, dispatch logs, and documentation showing how the complaints had been resolved.