He had been conducting a welfare check when the occupant became uncooperative and refused lawful requests. The subject had physically resisted when Puit attempted a standard compliance maneuver. Puit had deployed his baton in the interest of officer safety. The subject had then produced a police credential. He said this last part with the particular neutrality of a man trying to present it as an incidental detail rather than the loadbearing element of the entire story.
Silence on the other end. Kyle Morrow said, "Did you call the stop into dispatch before you activated your lights? A pause. "I was going to call it in after I made contact. Another silence, longer. "Did you turn on your body camera before you got out of the cruiser?"
It was already on from the prior patrol. Right. Morrow exhaled the exhale of a man doing mental accounting in real time. Here's the situation as I currently understand it. You stopped a detective sergeant from major crimes on his day off on his own property without dispatch notification without documented probable cause attempted to detain him.
Deployed your baton and did not identify his credential when it was produced. He didn't present the credential until after he I know when he presented it. That's not the part I'm concerned about. Morrow paused. Kyle, the body camera was on the whole time.
The statement sat between them with the weight of a very large and very immovable object. I know, Puit said, and the body camera caught everything. I know, including you putting your hand on your holster before he moved. A longer pause outside Puit's apartment window. A car alarm went off in the parking lot and then stopped.
Sunday morning continued its indifferent progress. The union files standard grievance procedures in the event of termination. Morrow said, "I can do that. I've done it before. But Kyle, I need you to understand something. The prior three complaints, I was able to manage those because the documentation was incomplete and the situations were ambiguous."
This is not ambiguous. This has a body camera and based on what Fields is telling me, it may also have civilian footage from a neighbor's security camera. He paused again. A detective sergeant from Major Crimes Kyle. Do you understand what that means for how this gets handled?