By the end of the week, she'd stopped responding entirely. Calls from Francis's office went to voicemail. A follow-up message from Anderson asking if she'd be willing to speak on record before the oversight hearing went unread for 2 days before Oliver finally opened it and typed nothing back. She told herself it wasn't cowardice. She told herself she just needed time.
Across town at the same time Oliver was going quiet. Chief Pauler was making calls of his own. Quieter ones, more careful ones, aimed at a different target entirely. The county's DA oversight board included five appointed members, three of whom had been placed there during Mayor Howard's first term. Pauler reached out to two of them personally, framing his concerns the way he'd learned to frame everything over 28 years, not as pressure, but as fairness.
I just think it's worth asking, he said to one board member over coffee, whether it's appropriate for the district attorney to personally direct an investigation into the same raid that happened at his own house. That's not politics. That's just basic conflict of interest procedure. The seed took root fast. By Friday, a formal complaint had been filed with the board questioning Francis's standing to oversee any part of the case, citing his direct personal stake in the outcome.
It cited no wrongdoing on Francis's part, just the appearance of it, which in board procedure was sometimes enough. The notice arrived at Francis's office late Friday afternoon. Official letter head. Careful language. The kind of document built to look procedural instead of personal.
Francis read it standing at his desk. The momentum of the last week's press conference still fresh. The oversight board's talk of formal charges against Garvey still ringing in his ears from Roxan's message days earlier. He read the notice a second time, slower, understanding exactly what it was. They weren't attacking the evidence.
They couldn't. The evidence was solid and everyone knew it. They were attacking his right to use it at all. The oversight board convened the following Thursday morning in a small hearing room at city hall. Five appointed members seated behind a long table with Francis in the front row alongside Roxan and a stack of files thick enough to answer any question they might ask.
For nearly 2 hours, the board reviewed everything Francis's office had assembled. The engineers report, the recovered body cam footage, the pattern of three prior complaints tied to Garvey's unit, and the timeline of the raid itself laid out minute by minute. Board members asked pointed questions, a few pushed back, but by the time the discussion wound down, the weight of the evidence was hard to argue with. At 11:40, the board voted 4 to1 to move forward with formal criminal charges against Captain Roger Garvey for property destruction and civil rights violations. Francis felt something in his chest finally loosen.