It does not corrupt everything; it cannot afford to, and it does not need to.

It only corrupts the specific, local, load-bearing points where cases begin — the one detective, the one campus office, the one set of cameras — because it understands that if it can strangle a case in its cradle, before it ever reaches the larger system, then the larger system’s integrity never even gets a chance to matter.

The genius and the cowardice of it are the same thing: they never fought the whole machinery of justice, which they could not have beaten.

They only made sure the case never reached it.