Piling on. My friend worked for a Midwestern city, maintaining the water and sewer systems. Once, while in the field, 2 dudes ran across the street, one chasing the other, both in plain clothes. The chaser had a gun and was shooting indiscriminately. One bullet hit my friend's work truck, missing him by inches. He had to submit a report because of the bullet holes in his truck. His report said the chaser did the shooting, not the person being chased. He had no idea the chaser was an undercover cop. His report (about the truck) contradicted the police report of the event regarding who did the shooting. The next day at work my friend was told to resubmit his report, and to identify the person being chased as the shooter. He said no, because it wasn't true. He was then told there was a call from the police union to the head of his department, saying that if the report wasn't changed, the police would no longer support his department (police are often needed to help secure an area where repairs are being done). My friend was told if he didn't change his report, he would be fired and his pension would be in jeopardy. He ended up cashing out his pension and quitting. The police know how to protect their own.

Was your friend part of a union as well? If so, did they offer any protection at all?

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess this is the police department that was placed under federal supervision.

Good on him for cashing out.

For anyone else: if you run across something like this, collect what evidence you can without endangering yourself, if you can legally and safely record some conversations do so, and then call the FBI hotline, possibly from a friend's phone if you suspect the police might be monitoring your call log.

The FBI (well, in normal times...) does not fuck around when it comes to serious color of law violations like this. They're also very happy to get reports of local small town incidents where a town or county police department, judges, town leaders, etc are acting like they have a fiefdom.