The acronym was an easy way to define a concept far more complicated than the notion of using technology to map crime patterns and hot spots in the city. COMSTAT held every cop accountable for everything. No longer could the rank and file and their leaders pass the buck, look the other way, not care, not know the answer, say they couldn’t help it, were about to get around to it, hadn’t been told, forgot, meant to, didn’t feel well or were on the phone or off duty at the time, because on Mondays and Fridays Chief Hammer assembled representatives from all precincts and divisions and gave them hell.

Clearly, Hammer’s battle plan was a northern one, but as fate would have it, when she presented her proposal to Richmond’s city council, it was preoccupied with infighting, mutiny and usurpations. At the time, it didn’t seem like such a bad thing to let someone else solve the city’s problems. So it was that Hammer was hired as interim chief for a year and allowed to bring along two talents she had worked with in Charlotte.

Hammer began her occupation of Richmond. Soon enough stubbornness set in. Hatred followed. The city patriarchs wanted Hammer and her NIJ team to go home. There was not a thing the city needed to learn from New York, and Richmonders would be damned before they followed any example set by the turncoat, carpetbagging city of Charlotte, which had a habit of stealing Richmond’s banks and Fortune 500 companies.

Deputy Chief Virginia West complained bitterly through painful expressions and exasperated huffs as she jogged around the University of Richmond track. The slate roofs of handsome collegiate Gothic buildings were just beginning to materialize as the sun thought about getting up, and students had yet to venture out except for two young women who were running sprints.

“I can’t go much farther,” West blurted out to Officer Andy Brazil.

Brazil glanced at his watch. “Seven more minutes,” he said. “Then you can walk.”

It was the only time she took orders from him. Virginia West had been a deputy chief in Charlotte when Brazil was still going through the police academy and writing articles for the Charlotte Observer. Then Hammer had brought them with her to Richmond so West could head investigations and Brazil could do research, handle public information and start a website.

Although one might argue that, in actuality, West and Brazil were peers on Hammer’s NIJ team, in West’s mind she outranked Brazil and always would. She was more powerful. He would never have her experience. She was better on the firing range and in fights. She had killed a suspect once, although she wasn’t proud of it. Her love affair with Brazil back in their Charlotte days had been due to the very normal intensity of mentoring. So he’d had a crush and she had gone along with it before he got over it. So what.

“You notice anybody else killing himself out here? Except those two girls, who are either on the track team or have an eating disorder,” West continued to complain in gasps. “No! And guess why! Because this is stupid as shit! I should be drinking coffee, reading the paper right now.”