A fractured public split on whether to trust the district attorney or the police department was exactly the kind of mess that let her stay above the fray. Sympathetic to everyone committed to no one protecting the endorsement she needed for November. Let it breathe, she told her chief of staff when he asked if she wanted to issue a statement defending Francis. The DA can defend himself. That's not our job right now.
It wasn't subtle and it wasn't meant to be. Francis felt the shift almost immediately. Calls that used to come easily from other city officials started going to voicemail. A columnist who usually supported his office ran a piece questioning whether he should recuse himself from any case touching his own household. Strangers online and a few people he actually knew began repeating the same line back to him in different words.
Isn't this a little convenient? Your house gets hit and suddenly you're going after the whole department. He sat in his office that evening watching a local news segment with the sound low, the anchor's voice calm and measured as she laid out both sides of a story that only had one side that mattered. A family's home destroyed and a department that had buried three complaints just like it before this one. The segment ended with a Chiron that made his stomach turn.
DA's office faces. Conflict of interest questions. His chief of staff, Roxanne, stood in the doorway watching it with him. They're better at this than we gave them credit for. She said quietly.
They've had practice. Francis said, "This is exactly what they did to Brooks. To the other two families. Make it about them instead of what actually happened. He clicked the television off and sat in the sudden quiet, jaw tight.
It worked before because nobody with a platform was standing behind those families. It's not going to work this time. Roxanne crossed her arms. So, what do we do? Francis was already reaching for his phone, already thinking about the engineer's report sitting in a folder on his desk.
The demolition invoices, the photographs Stella had taken of the wreckage before any repairs began. He thought about his wife, still displaced from her own home, still flinching at loud noises since that morning. They want to talk about conflict of interest, Francis said. Fine, let's give them something harder to argue with than an opinion piece. He looked up at Roxanne, something hard and certain settling into his expression.
Set up a press conference in front of the house. I want the cameras standing exactly where those officers were standing when they tore it apart. When? As soon as we can get it together, Francis said they gave us a story built on doubt. It's time we gave them the receipts.