A week ago, a clown came to Gotham. He gatecrashed a party and delivered a cruel and twisted justice. Three days later, he beat four stupid kids half to death and destroyed their faces. He hijacked airwaves and terrorized citizens. Then, he stopped. We thought it was the second coming of the Antichrist when he first appeared, but after he went quiet, we didn’t pay it much mind.

I want to say that the moment’s rest allowed me a chance to take a sigh of relief, but this is Gotham. The coffee is either too cold or too hot, there’s always a fog and a stink in the air, and the citizens always find some new way to hurt one another. There’s no such thing as relief under these conditions.

Two months before the Minstrel first appeared, one of my officers got caught up in a civilian shooting scandal. I had civil rights attorneys and teenagers on Twitter gunning for my neck, demanding that I either fire him or place a hot, led pipe in a particular orifice.

The victims were two African-American teenagers, Jada Sumpter and her twin brother, Eric. Eric died on the scene and the last I checked in, God hadn’t granted me that favor and woken up Jada. She’s in a hospital with a medically induced coma, so I can’t even deliver the sad news that her younger brother is dead.

The officer involved was Namzmiren, a man I’ve had working the beat for a few years now. A bit of a blowhard who clearly watched too many cop movies, but a good officer nonetheless. He respected God first, the troops second, and the badge third. In a precinct full of Johnny-Look-Aways that were quick to take a buck or bed one of the city’s working women, that kind of integrity made him an asset.

Jada and her brother were loitering on a municipal bench outside the new Queen building along with two of their other friends. Those friends fled when Namzmiren appeared on the scene, satisfied that they had gotten the Sumpters into just enough trouble for that day. Jada became provocative and irate when Namzmiren asked them to leave, and Eric was acting dodgy and twitching with guilt. He fit the description of a mugger and suspected dealer that had been reported in the area, so Namzmiren asked to see his identification. His sister became even more argumentative towards my officer. While he was trying to calm her down, Eric reached for a knife in his pocket. The story ends how you’d expect.

A knife was recovered on the scene, confirming Namzmiren’s story. Crime scene techs couldn’t find any of Eric’s DNA on the knife, though they did find Namzmiren’s. He made a mistake and handled it on his own without gloves, but the court of public opinion didn’t agree.

I had to take in his badge and gun, and the DA was pressured to charge him. Though my heart is with Namzmiren and his family, my official stance is neutral. I’ll stand by whatever decision the jury makes. If the court reviews all the evidence and decides that he was wrong, then he was wrong, plain and simple. But I know I won’t like the cleanup no matter what that decision is.

Continued in Chapter 8.2